April 12, 2022

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

New York. Wowza! William Rashbaum, et al., of the New York Times: "Lt. Gov. Brian A. Benjamin of New York, the state's second-in-command to Gov. Kathy Hochul, surrendered early Tuesday morning to face a federal indictment charging him with bribery, fraud and falsification of records in connection with a scheme to funnel illegal donations to a previous campaign. The five-count indictment accused Mr. Benjamin of conspiring to direct state funds to a Harlem real estate investor in exchange for orchestrating thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to Mr. Benjamin's unsuccessful 2021 campaign for New York City comptroller.... The investor was arrested on federal charges in November.... There is no suggestion that Ms. Hochul was aware of Mr. Benjamin's alleged criminal conduct, which prosecutors said occurred when he was a state senator. Still, she took office last year promising to end an era of impropriety in Albany, and selecting Mr. Benjamin, 45, was among her first major decisions as governor.... Even if he were to step down, [Mr. Benjamin] will likely remain on the ballot in June, when he faces two spirited primary challengers." An AP report is here.

Joshua Zitser of Business Insider, republished in Yahoo! News (April 10): "Speaking at a rally in Selma, North Carolina on Saturday evening..., Donald Trump claimed that he is one of the most honest human beings to walk on earth.... 'I think I'm the most honest human being, perhaps, that God ever created.' There were ripples of laughter from his supporters as he said it.... Trump became the first president to be impeached twice. According to The Washington Post's Fact Checker database, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidency. He told 21 lies a day on average, per The Post. During his time as president, Trump also promoted several conspiracy theories[.]..." Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead. See also his commentary in today's thread.

The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Tuesday are here.

U.K. Police to Fine Lockdown Party Animals. Ivana Kottasová & Amy Cassidy of CNN: "Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his finance minister Rishi Sunak have been told they will be fined by police over lockdown-breaking parties held on UK government premises, a Downing Street spokesperson told CNN on Tuesday. London's Metropolitan Police said earlier Tuesday they had issued more than 50 fines as part of their ... investigation into gatherings held on government premises in Downing Street and Whitehall while the rest of the country was living under strict pandemic restrictions. Revelations of the parties sparked national outrage."

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Putin's War Crimes, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of developments Tuesday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "Austria's chancellor visited Mr. Putin on Monday -- the first European leader to see him in person since the war began -- and said he came away feeling not only pessimistic about peace prospects but also fearing that Mr. Putin intended to drastically intensify the brutality of the war.... A Ukrainian unit in Mariupol asserted Monday on social media that Russian invaders had already used chemical weapons there. Lesia Vasylenko, a member of Ukraine's Parliament, made a similar charge. But those reports could not be independently confirmed." ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Tuesday are here: "... Vladimir Putin will meet his ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, for talks Tuesday about Ukraine and ways to 'counter' pressure from sanctions by the West, Russian news agencies reported. Putin flew to Russia's far-east Amur region for the talks -- as his military sends reinforcements and supplies to troops positioned in Ukraine's east.... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky charged that Russia's forces retreating from the north have left behind mines 'everywhere.' Zelensky said Russian troops 'deliberately did everything to kill or maim as many of our people as possible, even when they were forced to withdraw from our land.'" ~~~

     ~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Tuesday are here: "... Vladimir Putin has justified Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying he had taken 'the right decision'. Visiting Vostochny Cosmodrome, he said: 'On the one hand, we are helping and saving people, and on the other, we are simply taking measures to ensure the security of Russia itself. It's clear that we didn't have a choice....'"

Dan Lamothe, et al., of the Washington Post: "Ukraine and its international partners are bracing for Russia to launch a new offensive, with the Pentagon on Monday saying there are signs that the Kremlin has begun reinforcing and resupplying its forces in the eastern Donbas region as a top official in Moscow vowed there would be no letup in hostilities before the next round of peace talks.... U.S. intelligence has observed a massive Russian military convoy making its way south toward Izyum, a strategically important town in northeast Ukraine that Russia seized earlier this month and may use now as a staging point to carry out assaults on larger cities to the south, said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.... The mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, said in an interview with the Associated Press that 10,000 civilians there have been killed."

Jesus Jiménez of the New York Times: "President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in his latest address seized on an apparent Russian threat to use chemical weapons against the remaining defenders of Mariupol, as they prepare for what he called a 'new stage of terror against Ukraine.' Mr. Zelensky's comments came after Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the Kremlin-backed, separatist Donetsk People's Republic, said on Russian television that Russia should bring in 'chemical forces' to use in Mariupol, the besieged southern city. He said the remaining Ukrainian forces in Mariupol were dug in at a steel plant and that Russia should encircle it and 'smoke out the moles.' Referring to those remarks, Mr. Zelensky said in his latest video address, 'We take this as seriously as possible.'"

Michael Shear & Mujib Mashal of the New York Times: "President Biden on Monday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India not to increase his country's reliance on Russian oil and gas, officials said, part of a global effort by the United States to maintain economic pressure on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Biden also emphasized growing defense cooperation with India in a virtual meeting with Mr. Modi -- a line U.S. officials have increasingly highlighted in the hopes of convincing New Delhi to come off the fence over Russia's invasion. In the meeting between the two leaders, Mr. Biden offered to help Mr. Modi acquire oil and other energy from other sources.... But Mr. Biden stopped well short of pressuring India to stop buying Russian oil, which amounts to about 1 percent of its imports. And American officials said the president did not ask India to condemn Russia by name for the brutal military campaign against its neighbor, a step that India has been unwilling to take since the beginning of the invasion."

Loveday Morris of the Washington Post: "Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said he had a 'direct' and 'tough' conversation with Vladimir Putin on Monday as he became the first Western leader to meet with the Russian president since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Following their 75-minute meeting in Moscow, Nehammer said that he had pressed for an immediate cease-fire and humanitarian corridors. 'This is not a friendly visit,' he said in a statement. 'I have just come from Ukraine and have seen with my own eyes the immeasurable suffering caused by the Russian war of aggression.'... Austria has backed European sanctions against Russia, but it has been one of several E.U. countries that opposed adopting tougher measures on Russian energy."

Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "Christo Grozev, executive director of Bellingcat, is reporting that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a mass purge at his intelligence agencies amid his country's floundering invasion of Ukraine. As relayed by the London Times, which described the purge as 'Stalinist,' Grozev said he has learned over 100 intelligence agents have been dismissed from the Federal Security Bureau, including some who have even been arrested. What's more, Grozev claims that 68-year-old former FSB chief Sergei Beseda has been sent to a prison in Moscow after being put under house arrest last month."

Pjotr Sauer of the Guardian: "A prominent Russian opposition activist and outspoken critic of the invasion of Ukraine has been detained in Moscow, his lawyer told the independent news outlet Sota on Monday evening. Vladimir Kara-Murza, 40, is a veteran Kremlin critic who says he was deliberately poisoned in Moscow in 2015 and 2017 as retaliation for his lobbying efforts to impose US and EU sanctions against Russian officials accused of human rights abuses. A close friend of the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot and killed in 2015, Kara-Murza nearly died from kidney failure in the first incident." ~~~

     ~~~ MSNBC's Ali Velshi interviewed Kara-Murza this past Sunday (video).

Anna Cooban of CNN: "Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt because it offered bondholders payments in rubles, not dollars, credit ratings agency S&P has said. Russia attempted to pay in rubles for two dollar-denominated bonds that matured on April 4, S&P said in a note on Friday. The agency said this amounted to a 'selective default' because investors are unlikely to be able to convert the rubles into 'dollars equivalent to the originally due amounts.' According to S&P, a selective default is declared when an entity has defaulted on a specific obligation but not its entire debt." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Cora Engelbrecht of the New York Times: "Two days after a Russian missile strike hit a train station in eastern Ukraine's city of Kramatorsk, killing more than 50 people, volunteer drivers across the Donetsk region are coming forward to help residents still looking to flee before an anticipated onslaught from Russian forces.... Yuroslav Boyko, who is from Kramatorsk..., heads Everything Will Be Fine, a Ukrainian aid organization that has been working to evacuate people from Donetsk since the start of Russia's invasion.... Two train stations are still operational in the Donetsk region -- in the towns of Sloviansk and Pokrovsk -- but residents have become wary of gathering in stations since the attack [on the Kramatorsk station].... The volunteer fleet consists of at least 400 vehicles -- including city buses and private vans -- operated by approximately 1,000 volunteer drivers, who fan out daily to towns and villages across Donetsk to retrieve passengers." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Paul Sonne, et al., of the Washington Post: "... questions are mounting about how a Russian leader steeped in security policy and known for railing against the folly of regime-change wars could have sleepwalked into a such a strategic morass.... Putin rushed headlong into Ukraine, confident in his ability to secure a quick victory and weather any blowback within the authoritarian system he erected at home, [observers] said. Underpinning his assumptions: misconceptions about Ukraine fundamentally rooted in Moscow's colonial past.... The [failed war] operation, analysts said, bore the personal fingerprints of Putin. 'It's clear this was a military operation designed by spooks, not generals,' said Mark Galeotti, a Russia analyst...."

Jon Henley of the Guardian: "Sweden's ruling party has begun debating whether the country should join Nato, and neighbouring Finland expects to reach a decision within weeks, as Moscow warned that the Nordic nations' accession would 'not bring stability' to Europe. Both countries are officially non-aligned militarily, but public support for Nato membership has almost doubled since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, to about 50% in Sweden and 60% in Finland, multiple opinion polls suggest. Sweden's centre-left Social Democrats, led by prime minister Magdalena Andersson, said their 'security review' was about more than just joining the 30-nation alliance, adding that the party could decide to apply even without the backing of members."

Glenn Thrush & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "President Biden nominated a former federal prosecutor, Steven M. Dettelbach, on Monday to run the embattled Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- part of a renewed effort to combat gun violence and jump-start a stalled gun control agenda. Mr. Biden, facing pressure from gun safety groups to take bolder action, also announced completion of a rule to ban the unregulated online sale of 'ghost guns,' untraceable firearm components without serial numbers that are often sold in ready-to-assemble kits. Yet the president was visibly frustrated as he spoke in the Rose Garden during an appearance with victims of shootings and their families. He acknowledged that his core agenda -- renewing the ban on assault weapons and instituting universal background checks on gun buyers -- has been blocked by Congress, forcing him to take more modest actions." (This is an update of a story linked yesterday afternoon.) An NBC News story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: What a bad break for us former needleworkers who had switched to the satisfying craft of fashioning ghost guns from those nice kits.

Will Weissert of the AP: "President Joe Biden is visiting corn-rich Iowa on Tuesday to announce he'll suspend a federal rule preventing the sale of higher ethanol blend gasoline this summer as his administration tries to tamp down prices at the pump that have spiked during Russia's war with Ukraine. Most gasoline sold in the U.S. is blended with 10% ethanol. The Environmental Protection Agency will issue an emergency waiver to allow widespread sale of 15% ethanol blend that is usually prohibited between June 1 and Sept. 15 because of concerns that it adds to smog in high temperatures." ~~~

~~~ Because. Paul Wiseman of the AP: "With ever-rising costs for food, gasoline, housing and other necessities squeezing consumers and threatening the economy, inflation in the United States likely set yet another four-decade high in March. The government's consumer price index being released Tuesday is expected to show that prices shot up 8.4% from 12 months earlier, according to economists surveyed by the data firm FactSet. That would mark the fastest year-over-year inflation since December 1981. And it would surpass the 7.9% 12-month increase in February, which itself set a 40-year high."

Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "A former police officer from Rocky Mount, Va., whose bond was revoked last summer after he stockpiled firearms and endorsed political violence, was found guilty on all counts Monday at the second jury trial of a participant in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. After a three-day trial, a federal jury in Washington deliberated a day and a half before convicting Thomas Robertson, 49, on six counts including obstructing Congress as it met to confirm President Biden's 2020 election victory, interfering with police during a riot, destroying evidence, and trespassing and disorderly conduct at the Capitol while armed with a dangerous weapon." An NBC News report is here.

Marie: I skipped linking the following story, published April 10, because I'm really sick of stories about how the Trump Crime Family is profiting, but listening to the teevee tonight, I realized I should have linked it: ~~~

~~~ David Kirkpatrick & Kate Kelly of the New York Times: "Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, a close ally during the Trump administration, despite objections from the fund's advisers about the merits of the deal.... Those objections included: 'the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management' the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for 'the bulk of the investment and risk'; due diligence on the fledgling firm's operations that found them 'unsatisfactory in all aspects' a proposed asset management fee that 'seems excessive'; and 'public relations risks' from Mr. Kushner's prior role as a senior adviser to ... Donald J. Trump.... But days later the full board of the $620 billion Public Investment Fund -- led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler and a beneficiary of Mr. Kushner's support when he worked as a White House adviser -- overruled the panel. Ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner's actions in the White House -- or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC was way surprised that all those Republicans who have been screaming about Hunter Biden's shady international dealings (and Hunter never held a government position) have been absolutely silent about the Saudis' $2 billion gift to the risky, inexperienced & unsatisfactory Kushner boy. I would add that way worse than whatever schemes Hunter & his pals cooked up were Donald Trump's holding back & threatening not to deliver military aid to Ukraine unless President Zelensky produced some fake dirt on Hunter & Joe Biden. It's one thing to trade on your connections (and, no, that's not a good thing) but quite another to use your own vast power to manipulate another government and threaten European peace, all to enhance your own political position.

Beating a Dead Horse. Will Steakin, et al., of ABC News: John "Eastman, a right-wing lawyer who drafted a plan for ... Donald Trump to cling to power by falsely claiming then-Vice President Mike Pence could reject legitimate electors during the 2020 presidential election, was part of a small group of Trump allies who secured a private meeting last month to try and convince the Republican leader of the Wisconsin state Assembly to decertify President Joe Biden's win.... On March 16, Eastman and others spent nearly two hours behind closed doors pressuring Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to nullify the 2020 election and reclaim the electors awarded to Biden, the sources said, which legal experts say is impossible.... The Wisconsin meeting is just one instance among many in an ongoing effort by Eastman and other Trump allies who, even 15 months into President Joe Biden's tenure, have continued to push for the results of the 2020 election to be overturned despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Too bad Eastman wasn't a subject of the study cited in this next report. Maybe it would have helped him lose the crazy. ~~~

~~~ ** Fox "News" Viewers Can Be Deprogrammed! Adam Gabbatt of the Guardian: "In an unusual, and labor intensive, project, two political scientists paid a group of regular Fox News viewers to instead watch CNN for a month. At the end of the period, the researchers found surprising results; some of the Fox News watchers had changed their minds on a range of key issues, including the US response to coronavirus and Democrats' attitude to police. The findings suggest that political perspectives can be changed -- but also reveals the influence partisan media has on viewers&' ideology.... David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, political scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale university, respectively, paid 304 regular Fox News viewers $15 an hour to instead watch up to seven hours of CNN a week during the month of September 2020." MB: I think Akhilleus mentioned this study last week in the Comments. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "America's attempt to vaccinate the world against Covid is about to come to an end.... Such funding does not appear to be forthcoming.... Even for a body as broken and ineffectual as Congress, this level of self-sabotage is hard to fathom.... Because of the filibuster, Senate Democrats need 10 Republicans to support a stand-alone Covid bill, and Republicans are balking at more money for international Covid programs.... [Republicans are] re holding up authorization of any more Covid aid unless the administration reinstates Title 42, a policy adopted in 2020 to rapidly expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum, all in the name of protecting public health." MB: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of Congressional Republicans."

Michael Luciano of Mediaite: "Tucker Carlson told a group of churchgoers in San Diego he is not vaccinated against the coronavirus. Speaking at Awaken Church on April 2, the Fox News host mocked the idea of getting a second booster shot. 'I skipped the first three, I'm not getting that one either,' Carlson said, according to the Voice of San Diego.... [The Daily Beast reported that Tucker said that he had grown up] 'next to the Salk Institute in La Jolla' as evidence that he is 'obviously' not opposed to vaccines. 'I've had like a million of them.'.." MB: I grew up next to the town dump. Obviously, I oppose recycling. Yeesh! Maybe all that stupid isn't an act.

Beyond the Beltway

Florida. DeSantis Prevails Against Black Residents' Voting Rights. Steve Contorno of CNN: "Republican legislative leaders in Florida have given up trying to draw new congressional boundaries that can win Gov. Ron DeSantis' signature and, in an unprecedented move, announced Monday that they intend to essentially cede this constitutional power to the executive branch.... Last month, DeSantis vetoed the new district boundaries approved by lawmakers -- a rare public display of contention between the governor and a state legislature controlled entirely by his own party. DeSantis has demanded the legislature join his fight to eliminate two districts where Black residents are a plurality.... [DeSantis' map] was critiqued by opponents as a clear violation of a state constitutional amendment known as Fair Districts, which requires lawmakers to give minority communities an opportunity to 'elect representatives of their choice.'"

Way Beyond

Mexico. An Election about Nothing. Oscar Lopez & Natalie Kitroeff of the New York Times: "Pitched by [Mexico's] president as a landmark exercise for Mexico's democracy, Sunday's recall referendum gave voters the chance to remove their head of state from office for the first time. But with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's popularity still high and the opposition largely boycotting the event, the results of the referendum were almost assured. Instead, like so much in the country's polarized politics these days, the vote became one more trench from which each side of the political spectrum could do battle. On Sunday, almost 18 percent of the electorate cast their ballot, far less than was needed for the result to become binding, making the outcome largely symbolic."

News Ledes

CNN: "America's inflation problem didn't abate in March. Prices kept creeping up, hitting a fresh 40-year high, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Tuesday. The Consumer Price Index rose 8.5% for the year ended in March, not adjusted for seasonal swings. That outpaced February's elevated reading of 7.9% and marked a level not seen since December 1981 when the CPI stood at 8.9%. Tuesday's March data was slightly higher than the 8.4% economists had predicted."

New York Times: "Several people were shot on the platform of a Brooklyn subway station during the Tuesday morning rush, officials said, a violent episode that heightened simmering fears about public safety that have hindered New York City's push to recover from the pandemic. Preliminary reports indicated that five people were shot, a law enforcement official said. The police were seeking a man with a gas mask and an orange construction vest, the official said. Police officers were called to the 36th Street subway station, where the D, N and R lines pass through the Sunset Park neighborhood, at around 8:30 a.m., a Police Department spokeswoman said. They had also received reports of smoke inside the station." This page is a liveblog. ~~~

     ~~~ Update: "At least 16 people were injured, 10 of them by gunfire, in the subway in Brooklyn during the Tuesday morning rush, officials said, after a man released a canister of smoke and opened fire on an N train. Just before 8:24 a.m., as the train pulled into the 36th Street Station in the Sunset Park neighborhood, a man in a construction vest put on his gas mask before firing shots that hit people on the train and the nearby platform, said Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell. The Fire Department said that five people were in critical condition, but none of them had suffered life-threatening injuries." ~~~

     ~~~ Update: "Five miles away from where a man opened fire in a subway train in Brooklyn and shot 10 people during the morning rush, the police recovered a rented U-Haul van late Tuesday afternoon that they believed had been driven by the gunman, a senior law enforcement official said. But the van was empty, the official said, and the shooter remained at large, as agents from dozens of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies searched for him, more than eight hours after he donned a gas mask on a crowded N train, released a canister of smoke and began shooting." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Fortunately, America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani was there to help: "The U-Haul was found after a man who lives in the Highlawn, an apartment building on the street, called the police to report it.... The man said his superintendent had complained to him that morning about a van with Arizona plates blocking the driveway, preventing him from moving his car. The tenant said he later heard about the hunt for the van on Rudy Giuliani';s radio show." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: From the NYT liveblog: A "high-ranking police official said that the attack appeared to have been planned...." During an evening news conference officials said the perp had left behind quite a bit of stuff, including a Glock, the key to the U-Haul van & a credit card. This struck me, because a law enforcement expert who appeared on MSNBC this morning said that these bozos may plan their attack but they often don't plan the getaway. (Of course it's possible that this is all a masterful example of misdirection & the perp has stolen the identity of an innocent person.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update: "The police in New York on Tuesday evening identified a man they called a 'person of interest' in the mass shooting on a crowded subway train.... The police said that the man, Frank R. James, 62, had rented a U-Haul van in Philadelphia. A key to the van, they said, was found in a collection of belongings on the train that they believed belonged to the gunman, including a Glock 9-millimeter handgun, three ammunition magazines, a hatchet, fireworks and a liquid believed to be gasoline."

April 11, 2022

Afternoon Update:

Anna Cooban of CNN: "Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt because it offered bondholders payments in rubles, not dollars, credit ratings agency S&P has said. Russia attempted to pay in rubles for two dollar-denominated bonds that matured on April 4, S&P said in a note on Friday. The agency said this amounted to a 'selective default' because investors are unlikely to be able to convert the rubles into 'dollars equivalent to the originally due amounts.' According to S&P, a selective default is declared when an entity has defaulted on a specific obligation but not its entire debt."

Cora Engelbrecht of the New York Times: "Two days after a Russian missile strike hit a train station in eastern Ukraine's city of Kramatorsk, killing more than 50 people, volunteer drivers across the Donetsk region are coming forward to help residents still looking to flee before an anticipated onslaught from Russian forces.... Yuroslav Boyko, who is from Kramatorsk..., heads Everything Will Be Fine, a Ukrainian aid organization that has been working to evacuate people from Donetsk since the start of Russia's invasion.... Two train stations are still operational in the Donetsk region -- in the towns of Sloviansk and Pokrovsk -- but residents have become wary of gathering in stations since the attack [on the Kramatorsk station].... The volunteer fleet consists of at least 400 vehicles -- including city buses and private vans -- operated by approximately 1,000 volunteer drivers, who fan out daily to towns and villages across Donetsk to retrieve passengers."

BBC News: "has warned Finland and Sweden against joining Nato, arguing the move would not bring stability to Europe. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that 'the alliance remains a tool geared towards confrontation'.... US officials expect the Nordic neighbours to bid for membership of the alliance, potentially as early as June."

Glenn Thrush & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "President Biden is expected on Monday to nominate a former federal prosecutor from Ohio ... Steven M. Dettelbach ... to run the embattled Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, administration officials said, part of a series of measures meant to demonstrate the White House&'s modest progress on gun control. The moves include the completion of a rule banning online sales of 'ghost guns' -- untraceable firearms without serial numbers, assembled from components bought online -- and come as Mr. Biden faces intensifying pressure from gun control groups to revive a key element of his policy agenda that has been stymied in Congress."

** Fox "News" Viewers Can Be Deprogrammed! Adam Gabbatt of the Guardian: "In an unusual, and labor intensive, project, two political scientists paid a group of regular Fox News viewers to instead watch CNN for a month. At the end of the period, the researchers found surprising results; some of the Fox News watchers had changed their minds on a range of key issues, including the US response to coronavirus and Democrats' attitude to police. The findings suggest that political perspectives can be changed -- but also reveals the influence partisan media has on viewers' ideology.... David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, political scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale university, respectively, paid 304 regular Fox News viewers $15 an hour to instead watch up to seven hours of CNN a week during the month of September 2020." MB: I think Akhilleus mentioned this study last week in the Comments.

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The Washington Post's live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "... Vladimir Putin will meet with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Monday in the first face-to-face meeting between Putin and a European leader since his country's invasion of Ukraine. Austria has been militarily neutral since the 1950s, but Nehammer has spoken against Russia's war. In a tweet announcing the Moscow meeting, he called for 'humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire & full investigation of war crimes,' adding that Putin 'has to stop!'... Evacuees have been trickling out of the seaside city of Mariupol, which faces continued heavy assault. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that 213 Mariupol residents were evacuated on Sunday, among 2,824 evacuees total across the country that day. Russian forces 'made territorial gains' there this weekend but struggled farther inland in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to an assessment by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War." ~~~

     ~~~ The New York Times' live updates for Monday are here: "Ukrainian authorities are urging citizens in the separatist east to flee as the military battens down for a renewed assault by Russian forces to capture the region. But the road out is a dangerous one, with reports across the country of civilians being killed as they try to escape. On a highway near Kyiv, the capital, as many as 50 bodies of civilians were discovered, according to a local mayor who captured photos of the apparent massacre." ~~~

     ~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Monday are here.

Taylor Telford, et al., of the Washington Post: "Russian forces bombarded several towns in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, destroying an airport and damaging several civilian targets, as the war careens toward a pivotal new phase. The shift of the war and fears of full-scale military confrontation on open terrain prompted Ukrainian officials to again call for Western alliances to step up weapons supply efforts to strengthen Ukraine's position on the battlefield. Ukraine is preparing for a 'massive attack in the east,' its ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, warned Sunday on CBS's 'Face the Nation.' Of the Russian forces, she said: 'There are so many of them and they still have so much equipment. And it looks like they're going to use all of it. So we are preparing for everything.'... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on CBS's '60 Minutes' again called on Western countries to step up in providing arms. 'They have to supply weapons to Ukraine as if they were defending themselves and their own people,' he said in an interview recorded Wednesday and broadcast Sunday." ~~~

     ~~~ Video & transcript of Scott Pelley's "60 Minutes" interview of President Zelensky is here. Pelley went to Kyiv for the interview.

Emma Bubola, et al., of the New York Times: Russia's war on Ukraine has "reached deep into the fertile plains of a region known as Europe's breadbasket, paralyzing harvests, destroying granaries and crops, and bringing potentially devastating consequences to a country that produces a large share of the world's grain. Ukraine has already lost at least $1.5 billion in grain exports since the war began, the country's deputy agriculture minister said recently. And the economic fallout from the war has also disrupted supplies from Russia, the world's leading grain exporter. The combination is creating a global food crisis 'beyond anything we've seen since World War II,' the chief of the United Nations World Food Program has warned. In Ukraine, warehouses are filled with grain that cannot be exported. Russia has blocked access to the Black Sea, Ukraine's main export route, cargo trains face logistical hurdles, and trucking is stymied because most truck drivers are men aged 18 to 60 who are not allowed to leave the country and cannot drive agricultural exports across the border."

Carlotta Gall of the New York Times: "We visited Bucha, documented dozens of killings of civilians, interviewed scores of witnesses and followed local investigators to uncover the scale of Russian atrocities." Photos by Daniel Berehulak.

Dusan Stojanovic of the AP: "Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region. Media and military experts said Sunday that six Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport planes landed at Belgrade's civilian airport early Saturday, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military.... The arms delivery over the territory of at least two NATO member states, Turkey and Bulgaria, was seen by experts as a demonstration of China's growing global reach.... Although Serbia has voted in favor of U.N. resolutions that condemn the bloody Russian attacks in Ukraine, it has refused to join international sanctions against its allies in Moscow or outright criticize the apparent atrocities committed by the Russian troops there."

In the course of his presidency..., Trump would come more to resemble Putin in political practice and predilection than he resembled any of his recent American presidential predecessors. -- Fiona Hill

She doesn't know the first thing she's talking about. If she didn't have the accent she would be nothing. -- Donald Trump, on Fiona Hill ~~~

Robert Draper in the New York Times Magazine interviews Fiona Hill, who has been an administration expert on Russia, off and on, since Dubya's administration. Trump saw Ukraine as an enemy and a plaything. He spoke with others, too, about Donald Trump's relationships with Russia & Ukraine. "'In real time, I was putting things together,' [Hill] said. 'The domestic political errands, the way Trump had privatized foreign policy for his own purposes. It was this narrow goal: his desire to stay in power, irrespective of what other people wanted.'... [Watching the January 6 insurrection on television, Hill said] a burst of horrific clarity overtook her. 'I saw the thread,' she told me. 'The thread connecting the Zelensky phone call to Jan. 6. And I remembered how, in 2020, Putin had changed Russia's Constitution to allow him to stay in power longer. This was Trump pulling a Putin.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: An interesting (and long) read throughout. What struck me, though, was how long it took most of these "experts" to figure out Trump's intention to hang on at all costs and by any means. I think most of saw this back when Trump started "joking" about a third term or a "presidency for life" as early as March 2018. This was Trump, not just saying the quiet part out loud but priming the pump. And a lot of Americans were read to rev the engine.

Michael Schmidt & Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of ... Donald J. Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so, people involved in the discussions said. The debate centers on whether making a referral -- a largely symbolic act -- would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department's expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it.... The shift in the committee's perspective on making a referral was prompted in part by a ruling two weeks ago by Judge David O. Carter of the Federal District Court for Central California ... found that it was 'more likely than not' that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had committed federal crimes.... [Some committee members and staff felt that] the judge's decision would carry far greater weight with Mr. Garland than any referral letter they could write...." See Patrick's comment in today's thread. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Cheney: We've Got the Goods on Trump. Christina Zhao of NBC News: "The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has enough evidence to refer ... Donald Trump for criminal charges, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Sunday. 'It's absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing -- what a number of people around him were doing -- that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway,' Cheney, the vice chair and one of two Republicans on the committee, said on CNN's 'State of the Union.'... 'I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election,' Cheney said. The committee has 'got a tremendous amount of testimony and documents that I think very, very clearly demonstrate the extent of the planning and the organization and the objective.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: Cheney "disputed [the New York Times] report which said the panel was split over whether to refer Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal charges regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, leading to the Capitol attack. 'There's not really a dispute on the committee,' the Wyoming representative Liz Cheney told CNN;s State of the Union.... Cheney said: 'We have not made a decision about referrals on the committee....' 'The committee is working in a really collaborative way to discuss these issues,' she said, adding: 'We'll continue to work together to do so. So I wouldn't characterise there as being a dispute on the committee ... and I'm confident that we will we will work to come to agreement on on all of the issues that we're facing.'"

~~~ MEANWHILE. House Team Trump Is in the Dark. Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "One by one, Republicans eviscerated the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, each one bemoaning the fact that the chief congressional security officials had not been subpoenaed to examine that day's security lapses. Not interviewing these key officials was proof, they suggested, that the committee was just out to score political points against Republicans. Finally, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) shut down that line of debate on Wednesday with some information these Republicans did not seem to know. 'We have in fact interviewed precisely the people they set up as a test for the validity of our investigation,' Raskin said. Those top security officials 'didn't need a subpoena' to testify..., Raskin said. 'They came voluntarily.'... Dozens of GOP lawmakers are left in the dark about what evidence the committee has collected involving their own contacts with Trump and his senior advisers in the run up to, and during, the attack on the Capitol." Why don't Republicans know what's going on? -- Because Kevin McCarthy decided not to put any semi-rational members on the committee & he iced out the two Republicans who are on the committee. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: This is an example of how dumb House Republicans are. Story after story has emphasized the hundreds of people the committee has interviewed without need for subpoenaes. Some specifically mention the committee's interviewing security personnel, like this CNN report from March 23, 2022 that ledes with, "More than 80 officials from law enforcement and federal agencies have testified to the House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, including members of the Secret Service, in what investigators believe will be the most extensive review yet of security failures that led to the US Capitol breach." Yet somehow it doesn't occur to anyone on this team of bozos that maybe, just maybe, top security officials were among those people who sat for interviews.

Bob Brigham of the Raw Story: "Donald Trump's once iron-clad grip on the Republican Party appears to have weakened as prominent conservatives are openly griping about his endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. But, um, some of the gripers are blaming Trump's staff, not Trump himself. "The ongoing need to blame everyone but Trump for Trump's own choices is striking given that Brooks, who Trump dumped, is one of those doing it," Maggie Haberman of the New York Times tweeted. (Also linked yesterday.)

Mysterious News, Ctd. Somebody Tipped Off the Fake Feds. Sarah Burris of the Raw Story: "Two men pretending to be Homeland Security agents were arrested this week after being caught and manipulating Secret Service agents and other law enforcement by giving them gifts, free apartments, and other things. Now it's being revealed that someone tipped the men off that they were about to be raided. According to the Daily Beast, federal prosecutor Matthew Graves wrote in a Sunday filing that investigators are still discovering more information about the efforts by the two men. It's still unknown why the men were manipulating the law enforcement and their ultimate end game.... The two men ... were observed trying to ditch incriminating items through a Secret Service agent who is assigned to protect the White House, the filing says. 'This ... suggests that [Arian] Taherzadeh and/or [Haider] Ali shipped the package to the USSS Uniformed Division Officer in an attempt to corruptly enlist him in secreting evidence,' the filing also said."

Faiz Siddiqui of the Washington Post: "Elon Musk is not joining Twitter's board after all, a reversal following last week's revelation that he had become Twitter's largest shareholder -- and had received a subsequent appointment to the panel. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted the news Sunday night, including a memo sent to his staff. 'Elon's appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning he will no longer be joining the board,' Agrawal wrote. 'I believe this is for the best.' The surprise move came less than a week after Twitter had said the outspoken Tesla CEO would become a board member, following his quietly amassing a 9.2 percent stake in the social media company. But Twitter employees and others agitated over the move, worrying Musk might wield outsize power to undo some moderation decisions that were made -- including banning ... Donald Trump."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: "The unemployment rate is at an encouragingly low point.... But if you ask regular Americans about the jobs climate, a surprising number of them seem to think the opposite is true. This lack of knowledge matters. Political fortunes rise and fall in part on the health of the job market.... In his last post before his tragic death last week, the media critic Eric Boehlert argued that journalists are purposely putting President Biden's accomplishments, including job growth, in a negative light; he asserted that the press is actually 'rooting against Biden.'... The public's lack of knowledge on jobs ought to sound an alarm bell for journalists.... [The media should] find some balance in the current economic coverage, which has pounded away relentlessly at soaring inflation but mentioned job growth or wage increases only in passing.... [They should] examine the knee-jerk media narrative, which goes like this: Biden's approval numbers are down, and that's because the economy is bad." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: As far as I can tell, the media generally cover the state of the jobs market only once a week, when the Labor Department reports jobs number, and the reporting is often done in a very pedestrian, formulaic fashion. What's more, even excellent jobs news often gets negative coverage: a lede will read something like, "... the number of Americans filing for unemployment last week was worse than expected"; the report goes on to state that (unnamed) analysts expected 300,000 people to apply for unemployment insurance, but 325,000 people applied. Who cares what unnamed analysts expected? In fact, these analysts could be purposely predicting super-rosy numbers so the reports look bad. I don't know.

Matt Schudel of the Washington Post: "Mimi Reinhard was being held at a Nazi concentration camp near Krakow, Poland, in 1944, but because she spoke flawless German and could take shorthand, she was allowed to work in the camp office. One of her jobs was to compile a list of Jewish prisoners working in factories owned by industrialist Oskar Schindler. Mrs. Reinhard, then known as Carmen Weitmann, typed the names of more than 1,000 Jewish people -- including her own and those of two friends -- to create what became known as 'Schindler's List.' She called herself a 'schreibkraft,' or typist.... As a result, she and more than 1,000 other Jews were saved from near-certain annihilation in the Nazi death camps of World War II. Mrs. Reinhard, who later became Schindler's secretary, has died in Israel at age 107." (Also linked yesterday.)

The Pandemic, Ctd.

Christina Zhao & Molly Roecker of NBC News: "Sixty-eight attendees have tested positive for Covid-19 after attending the Gridiron Dinner in Washington last weekend, including members of the Biden administration and reporters. Gridiron Club President Tom DeFrank said Saturday that the group had reported 67 cases out of the hundreds of people who attended. On Sunday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was also at the dinner, tested positive. This is the first that the Gridiron Dinner has taken place since 2019, before the pandemic." (Also linked yesterday.)

Beyond the Beltway

Texas. Giulia Heyward & Sophie Kasakove of the New York Times: "The murder charge against a woman in Texas in connection with a 'self-induced abortion' will be dismissed, a Texas district attorney announced Sunday. Gocha Allen Ramirez, the district attorney of Starr County, said in a statement that, after reviewing the case, he will file a motion on Monday to dismiss the indictment against the woman, Lizelle Herrera, 26. 'It is my hope that with the dismissal of this case it is made clear that Ms. Herrera did not commit a criminal act under the laws of the State of Texas,' Mr. Ramirez said." (Also linked yesterday.) The Texas Tribune's report is here.

Utah. Ed Scarce of Crooks & Liars: "... there were more proven instances of voter fraud among Salt Lake County Republicans than 'has been proven in Utah's entire 2020 election.' [From the (firewalled) Salt Lake Tribune:] 'For Salt Lake County Republicans, warnings of voter fraud came from inside the party on Saturday. The vote to nominate a GOP candidate for Salt Lake County Clerk was marred when a pair of delegates were caught attempting to vote more than once, with one extra vote making it into a ballot box at Saturday's county nominating convention.'" MB: In fairness to Republicans, perhaps one reason they're so "concerned" about voter fraud is that Republicans themselves are such cheaters. The vast majority of proven cases of intentional fraud during the 2020 election, as far as I recall, were Repubicans, not Democrats, voting twice, voting for their dead relatives, voting in places they don't live (Mark Meadows). It's about projection. (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond

France. John Leicester & Sylvie Corbet of the AP: "Incumbent Emmanuel Macron will face far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen in a winner-takes-all runoff for the French presidency, after they both advanced Sunday in the first round of voting in the country's election to set up another head-to-head clash of their sharply opposing visions for France. But while Macron won their last contest in 2017 by a landslide to become France's youngest-ever president, the same outcome this time is far from guaranteed. Macron, now 44, emerged ahead from Sunday's first round, but the runoff is essentially a new election and the next two weeks of campaigning to the April 24 second-round vote promise to be bruising and confrontational.... With most votes counted, Macron had just over 27% and Le Pen had just under 24%. Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon was third, missing out on the two-candidate runoff, with close to 22%.... ~~~

~~~ "The election outcome will have wide international influence as Europe struggles to contain the havoc wreaked by Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Macron has strongly backed European Union sanctions on Russia while Le Pen has worried about their impact on French living standards. Macron also is a firm supporter of NATO and of close collaboration among the European Union's 27 members.... [As one Macron voter noted, Le Pen's] long-standing hostility to the EU could see her try to take France out of the bloc, even though she has dropped that from her manifesto." The Washington Post's story is here. The New York Times story is here.

News Lede

Another Saturday Night in Drunk-Shooting America. AP: "A shooting inside a crowded Cedar Rapids nightclub left a man and a woman dead and 10 people wounded early Sunday, authorities said. Cedar Rapids Police Chief Wayne Jerman said investigators believe two men fired more than a dozen shots inside the Taboo Nightclub and Lounge just before 1:30 a.m. Sunday. He said officers who were just outside the club because of an earlier incident rushed inside just as 100-150 people streamed out of the bar and found the victims." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: If I were young & looking for a good time on a Saturday night, I definitely would not seek out fun in an American nightclub or bar.

April 10, 2022

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

From the New York Times' live updates of the French presidential election, also linked earlier today: "President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France's presidential elections, according to projections based on preliminary ballot counts published by French polling agencies on Sunday at the close of voting. The projections, which may still shift but are generally a good indicator of the outcome, showed Mr. Macron leading with about 28.5 percent of the vote, and Ms. Le Pen in second place with 24.2 percent, after a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration."

Bob Brigham of the Raw Story: "Donald Trump's once iron-clad grip on the Republican Party appears to have weakened as prominent conservatives are openly griping about his endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. But, um, some of the gripers are blaming Trump's staff, not Trump himself. "The ongoing need to blame everyone but Trump for Trump's own choices is striking given that Brooks, who Trump dumped, is one of those doing it," Maggie Haberman of the New York Times tweeted.

Texas. Giulia Heyward & Sophie Kasakove of the New York Times: "The murder charge against a woman in Texas in connection with a 'self-induced abortion' will be dismissed, a Texas district attorney announced Sunday. Gocha Allen Ramirez, the district attorney of Starr County, said in a statement that, after reviewing the case, he will file a motion on Monday to dismiss the indictment against the woman, Lizelle Herrera, 26. 'It is my hope that with the dismissal of this case it is made clear that Ms. Herrera did not commit a criminal act under the laws of the State of Texas,' Mr. Ramirez said."

Utah. Ed Scarce of Crooks & Liars: "... there were more proven instances of voter fraud among Salt Lake County Republicans than 'has been proven in Utah's entire 2020 election.' [From the (firewalled) Salt Lake Tribune:] 'For Salt Lake County Republicans, warnings of voter fraud came from inside the party on Saturday. The vote to nominate a GOP candidate for Salt Lake County Clerk was marred when a pair of delegates were caught attempting to vote more than once, with one extra vote making it into a ballot box at Saturday's county nominating convention.'" MB: In fairness to Republicans, perhaps one reason they're so "concerned" about voter fraud is that Republicans themselves are such cheaters. The vast majority of proven cases of intentional fraud during the 2020 election, as far as I recall, were Republicans, not Democrats, voting twice, voting for their dead relatives, voting in places they don't live (Mark Meadows). It's about projection.

Christina Zhao & Molly Roecker of NBC News: "Sixty-eight attendees have tested positive for Covid-19 after attending the Gridiron Dinner in Washington last weekend, including members of the Biden administration and reporters. Gridiron Club President Tom DeFrank said Saturday that the group had reported 67 cases out of the hundreds of people who attended. On Sunday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was also at the dinner, tested positive. This is the first that the Gridiron Dinner has taken place since 2019, before the pandemic."

Matt Schudel of the Washington Post: "Mimi Reinhard was being held at a Nazi concentration camp near Krakow, Poland, in 1944, but because she spoke flawless German and could take shorthand, she was allowed to work in the camp office. One of her jobs was to compile a list of Jewish prisoners working in factories owned by industrialist Oskar Schindler. Mrs. Reinhard, then known as Carmen Weitmann, typed the names of more than 1,000 Jewish people -- including her own and those of two friends -- to create what became known as 'Schindler's List.' She called herself a 'schreibkraft,' or typist.... As a result, she and more than 1,000 other Jews were saved from near-certain annihilation in the Nazi death camps of World War II. Mrs. Reinhard, who later became Schindler's secretary, has died in Israel at age 107."

Michael Schmidt & Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of ... Donald J. Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so, people involved in the discussions said. The debate centers on whether making a referral -- a largely symbolic act -- would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department's expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it.... The shift in the committee's perspective on making a referral was prompted in part by a ruling two weeks ago by Judge David O. Carter of the Federal District Court for Central California ... found that it was 'more likely than not' that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had committed federal crimes.... [Some committee members and staff felt that] the judge's decision would carry far greater weight with Mr. Garland than any referral letter they could write...." See Patrick's comment in today's thread. ~~~

~~~ MEANWHILE. House Team Trump Is in the Dark. Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "One by one, Republicans eviscerated the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, each one bemoaning the fact that the chief congressional security officials had not been subpoenaed to examine that day's security lapses. Not interviewing these key officials was proof, they suggested, that the committee was just out to score political points against Republicans. Finally, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) shut down that line of debate on Wednesday with some information these Republicans did not seem to know. 'We have in fact interviewed precisely the people they set up as a test for the validity of our investigation,' Raskin said. Those top security officials 'didn't need a subpoena' to testify..., Raskin said. 'They came voluntarily.'... Dozens of GOP lawmakers are left in the dark about what evidence the committee has collected involving their own contacts with Trump and his senior advisers in the run up to, and during, the attack on the Capitol." And why don't Republicans know what's going on? -- Because Kevin McCarthy decided not to put any semi-rational members on the committee & he iced out the two Republicans who are on the committee. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: This is an example of how dumb House Republicans are. Story after story has emphasized the hundreds of people the committee has interviewed without need for subpoenaes. Yet somehow it doesn't occur to anyone on this team of bozos that security officials were among those hundreds of people who sat for interviews.

~~~~~~~~~~

The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "Ukrainian officials and their allies warned that Russian forces will likely target civilian areas in the east as Russia appointed a new battlefield commander accused of using scorched earth tactics in Syria. The general, Aleksandr V. Dvornikov, oversaw forces accused of bombing residential neighborhoods to break support for groups opposed to Syria's leader, Bashar al-Assad. Similar assaults have been reported in Ukraine in recent days.... Britain's defense intelligence service said Saturday that Russia's pullback from Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, revealed 'evidence of the disproportionate targeting of non-combatants.' And there are no signs Russian forces will change tactics." ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Sunday are here: "Officials in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine this weekend urged residents to evacuate immediately, as shelling intensified amid Russia's shift to the country's east. Luhansk's governor, Serhiy Haidai, on Saturday said there were 'far fewer people' willing to evacuate after a missile strike on a railway station killed at least 52 people and injured 98. The shift east, away from Ukraine's largest cities, could prove challenging for Ukrainian troops and advantageous for Russian troops, who Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted last week are more skilled at fighting in rural terrain.... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the international community to push harder against Moscow, specifically in refusing to buy Russian oil -- something the United States has done but Europe has resisted. In an address Saturday night, he said Russian oil and gas were the 'two sources of Russian self-confidence, and their sense of impunity.'" ~~~

     ~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Sunday are here.

Guardian & Agencies: "Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Russia is targeting all of Europe with its aggression and that stopping the invasion of Ukraine is essential for the security of all democracies.... In his late-night address to Ukrainians on Saturday, the Ukrainian president said Russian aggression 'was not intended to be limited to Ukraine alone' and the 'entire European project is a target for Russia.... That is why it is not just the moral duty of all democracies, all the forces of Europe, to support Ukraine's desire for peace,' he said. 'This is, in fact, a strategy of defence for every civilised state.'"

Luke Harding & Clea Skopeliti of the Guardian: U.K. Prime Minister "Boris Johnson is meeting the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy during an unannounced visit to Kyiv, Ukrainian officials have said. A picture posted on Twitter by the embassy of Ukraine to the UK showed the two leaders sitting across a table in the capital, with their respective flags in the background.... 'The prime minister has travelled to Ukraine to meet President Zelenskiy in person, in a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people,' [a No. 10] spokesperson said. 'They will discuss the UK's long-term support to Ukraine and the PM will set out a new package of financial and military aid.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Bethan McKernan & Toby Helm of the Guardian: "Boris Johnson made a surprise trip to Kyiv yesterday to meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, pledging a major new infusion of British arms and financial aid to help counter the expected deadly new phase in Russia's military offensive. After the meeting, the prime minister said: 'Ukraine has defied the odds and pushed back Russian forces from the gates of Kyiv, achieving the greatest feat of arms of the 21st century. It is because of president Zelenskiy's resolute leadership and the invincible heroism and courage of the Ukrainian people that Putin's monstrous aims are being thwarted.... We are stepping up our own military and economic support and convening a global alliance to bring this tragedy to an end, and ensure Ukraine survives and thrives as a free and sovereign nation.'"

Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "Slovakia's decision to provide Ukraine with a Soviet-era S-300 air defense unit, a move made with the blessing of the United States, represents a new phase in the war, as allied countries look to help the Ukrainian military hold off an expected offensive from a newly concentrated Russian force and better prepare for a potentially long conflict.... Now the allied governments have shown a willingness to send heavier weaponry more suited to the coming battle in Donbas, including tanks and longer-range defensive weapons such as the S-300s, a Russian-made surface-to-air system used mainly to attack enemy aircraft.... Kyiv's commanders now need better air defense systems and longer-range weapons than they currently have to defend the bulk of the Ukrainian army in the country's east. So far, the Biden administration has not been willing to provide weapons that would allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russia, though some experts say that damaging Russian military airfields would improve Ukraine's chances of withstanding a renewed offensive." ~~~

     ~~~ Liz Sly & Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: "The wide open spaces will make it harder for the Ukrainians to run guerrilla operations as they did in the forests of the north and west and play to Russia's ability to muster large mechanized formations of tanks and armored vehicles. But much will depend on whether the Russians can rectify the mistakes they made in the first phase of their invasion, ranging from the failure of supply lines, logistical challenges and poor planning to using insufficient manpower for the size of the area they were attempting to seize, analysts say."

Cara Anna of the AP reports on a walk-through of Bucha, Ukraine, "part of an ongoing investigation from The Associated Press and Frontline that includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience and an upcoming documentary." Very hard to read.

I Had a Dream: ~~~

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. No, There Will Not Be a Better Fox "News." Sarah Ellison & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "In a speech in Sydney celebrating a new initiative at a conservative think tank, Lachlan Murdoch -- now 50 and the co-chairman of the family's News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, and chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation -- took swipes at the 'elites' whom he believes disdain traditional values. He also blasted governments for imposing mandates and business shutdowns to control the pandemic and alleged conspiratorially that 'practically all the media suppressed the discovery of Hunter Biden's laptop.' It was a monologue that could have fit in seamlessly with the lineup of right-wing commentary served up every night by Fox News's prime time opinion hosts.... And he echoed the culture-war battles raging on cable news over school curriculums by painting a dire picture of what he sees happening in Australia." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'm just noticing that SNL joke journalism is more accurate than Fox "News" fake journalism.

Beyond the Beltway

Pennsylvania Senate Race. Craven Phonies Stick Together. Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Wading into a tight Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania..., Donald J. Trump endorsed Mehmet Oz on Saturday, throwing his weight behind the former star of 'The Dr. Oz Show,' who has been attacked by rivals as a closet liberal. Dr. Oz's celebrity appears to have been a deciding factor for the former president, whose own political career was grounded in reality television." Politico's story is here.

Puerto Rico. Coral Marcos of the New York Times: "Power has been restored to 90 percent of Puerto Rico, according to the island's power operator, though more than 200,000 residents remained without electricity on Saturday, three days after the outage began.... But ... many customers across the island who saw their power get turned back on were still experiencing service disruptions.... The outage, which started on Wednesday after a fire at one of Luma's largest power plants, is only the latest in a series of problems with the island's energy grid that has persisted for years."

Texas. Pablo De La Rosa, et al., of Texas Public Radio: "Police in Starr County on the Texas-Mexico border have arrested and charged a woman with murder for allegedly performing what they called a 'self-induced abortion.' The Starr County Sheriff's Office arrested 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera on Thursday. TPR confirmed Friday night that Herrera was in the custody of the Starr County Sheriff's Office with bond set at $500,000. By Saturday night, Herrera was released from custody." Saturday at 8:30 pm ET this was a developing story. According to an AP story, "It's unclear whether Lizelle Herrera is accused of having an abortion or whether she helped someone else get an abortion."

Virginia. Michael Luciano of Mediaite: "A Republican official in Virginia is refusing to step down after a racist Facebook post he apparently authored last year surfaced recently. The post attributed to Hampton, Virginia Electoral Board Chair David Dietrich was added to the platform in February 2021 and is just coming into public view for some reason. The post appeared to be prompted by an effort by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, to expunge White supremacists and other far-right elements in the United States military. Dietrich specifically mentioned Austin, who is Black, and claimed the measure was in fact a plot 'to remove conservative, freedom-loving Americans from the roles.' He added, 'These so-called "leaders" are so vile and racist, there's no way to describe them other than in terms their own people understand. They are nothing more than dirty, stinking ni***rs....'"

Way Beyond

France. The New York Times is live-updating developments Sunday in France's presidential race. The first round of voting is today.

Pakistan. Christina Goldbaum & Salman Masood of the New York Times: "Imran Khan, the former international cricket star turned politician who oversaw a new era of Pakistan's foreign policy that distanced the country from the United States, was removed as prime minister early on Sunday after losing a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The vote, coming amid soaring inflation and a rift between Mr. Khan's government and the military, capped a political crisis that has embroiled the country for weeks and came down to the wire in a parliamentary session that dragged into the early morning hours. Pakistan remains in a state of turmoil as it heads into an early election season in the coming months. The recent crisis has charged the country's already polarized political climate and has exacerbated tensions between civilian institutions and the country's powerful military establishment." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) A BBC News story is here.