Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA

Being on Twitter this past week has required a herculean supply of patience. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, no shortage of extremely dumb takes have graced the timeline, few more dumbfounding than the various people asking—because why not?—if we could just bomb Russia or shoot down its jets. Certainly the idea of a quick ending to a needless war sounds appealing—that is, if you somehow manage to forget that Russia is a nuclear power.

No one seems to have run these crucial facts by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who took to Twitter on Thursday night to argue this:

The only people who can fix this are the Russian people.

Easy to say, hard to do.

Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 4, 2022

Your eyes are not deceiving you. A US lawmaker is calling for regime change by tweet.

No one needs to defend Vladimir Putin—though some of Graham’s colleagues on the right have certainly tried—but the notion that Russia would be inherently safer or more stable with him out of the picture is too credulous by half. One need only look at the power vacuums that formed in countries where recent, US-backed interventions took out dictators (Iraq, Libya) to see what took their place (ISIS, a devastating civil war). 

On Friday, Graham went on Fox News to defend his comments. “The Russian people are not our enemy,” he said. “I’m convinced it’s a one-man problem surrounded by a few people.”  

Putin’s war has already led to needless death in Ukraine and devastation for his own people, whose economy is in tatters. But a Russia without Putin is no guarantee of peace or stability. No less a figure than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), fresh off of her appearance at a white nationalist conference, said Graham’s idea was “irresponsible, dangerous & unhinged.” She may not know the difference between gazpacho and the Gestapo, but Green is correct there. (If you can get Green, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to all agree your idea is bad, maybe rethink it!)

Graham and others arguing for a tidy, violent solution to Putin’s reign would do well to remember what became of Brutus and others like him—spoiler alert: it didn’t go well. Killing Caesar did not stop ancient Rome’s descent into one-man rule. Envisioning a better world is great. Making it happen is more difficult and, often, more unpredictable. Or, as Graham may have put it: “Easy to say, hard to do.” 

REI staff at its New York flagship decorated their green vests with pro-union buttons.Ron Adar/ZUMA

The rock-climbing, canyon-crossing, river-rafting workers at outdoor gear giant REI love a challenge—even when it comes from their bosses. Overcoming stiff corporate opposition and a slick anti-union campaign, staff at the company’s New York flagship store voted Wednesday to unionize by an overwhelming 7-to-1 margin.

REI SoHo, the nearly 40,000-square-foot Manhattan store, is the first of the company’s locations to unionize. Eighty-six percent of its 116 staff, from tech specialists to shipping and retail workers, voted to form a new local of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union—the same union that workers at Amazon’s huge Bessemer, Alabama, facility are now voting on whether to join. The REI vote follows an expensive, full-bore effort against the union, including an anti-union podcast that drew laughs online for “progressive” flourishes like an Indigenous land acknowledgement and executives’ recitation of pronouns. (REI CEO Eric Artz, who opened with the land acknowledgment, earned $3,284,590 in 2019.)

The REI workers filed their union petition in January, citing widespread concerns across the retail sector: They wanted more transparency about pandemic protections, benefits, full-time status, and better pay. Store staff members have told reporters that they’re paid $18.90 an hour, less than the borough’s living wage for a single adult without kids. “These are very basic things that REI has gotten away with not doing despite this facade of being a progressive, liberal company,” Kate Denend, who works at the store and supports the union, told Motherboard.

But throughout the day, REI employees—”green vests,” in company slang—were flooded with messages of support as they filed into a break room to vote. Their union drive, like the high-profile unionization efforts at Amazon and Starbucks, has benefited from a new wave of support for organized labor: Polls show that unions haven’t enjoyed this much public favor since the 1950s, and workers across the country have been launching increasingly ambitious union drives. While union membership is still trending downward overall—in the early 1980s, twice as many Americans were unionized as are now—retail unions, driven by young, energetic organizers, are spreading fast.

“We’re hopeful that REI meets us in good faith during negotiations for our first contract,” said REI worker and union organizer Claire Chang in a press release, calling the vote a chance for REI workers to take the company up on its motto—”a life outdoors is a life well lived”—by bargaining for pay and hours that would make it possible.

REI’s pushback came with a cost. Its public image and anti-union campaign couldn’t jibe. The company’s online forum, where co-op members meet and talk, is loaded with posts from irate customers, many threatening to withhold their business: “End the union busting activities or I will shop elsewhere, never to return and never to recommend.” “Many of us would PREFER to shop at a unionized store!” “Do better, REI.”

The company stressed its “co-operative values” in anti-union statements, especially during captive-audience meetings against unionization. It’s true that REI is the country’s largest consumer co-op—but that means consumers, not workers, get a share of ownership and accompanying benefits. (REI chose not to stress the “consumer” part.)

In an emailed statement, REI said that it “firmly believes that the decision of whether or not to be represented by a union is an important one, and we respect each employee’s right to choose or refuse union representation. We are, at our core, cooperative.”

Students walk on the UC Berkeley campus. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Hey, here’s a neat example of how housing works in progressive cities for you—and the costs of it.

In mid-February, 150,000 applicants to the University of California, Berkeley, received a letter warning them that “a recent court order” could force the university to slash its enrollment by 3,000 slots and reduce acceptances by 5,000, sending students and their parents throughout the country into a panic. 

“We want to assure you that we are pursuing every possible option for avoiding what would be a dire situation for prospective students and our campus,” wrote Olufemi Ogundele, assistant vice chancellor and director of undergraduate admissions at UC Berkeley. 

Ogundele’s letter was referencing an August 2021 order mandating that Berkeley cap its enrollment at 2020 levels. In February 2022, an appeals court upheld the ruling, and shortly after Berkeley announced that it planned to appeal to the state Supreme Court. 

Today, however, the California Supreme Court refused to strike down the lower court’s ruling in a 4–2 decision, virtually guaranteeing that the university will have to make good on its warnings. As a result, 5,000 students who would otherwise have been admitted will receive rejection letters in the Spring. 

The decision is the result of a protracted legal battle between residents of Berkeley and the university that has played out over the last few years. In a move that the Atlantic has deemed the “apotheosis” of NIMBYism, a neighborhood group called Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods filed a lawsuit challenging the university’s plan to build new housing and academic space for Berkeley faculty and graduate students. In arguments, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods invoked the California Environmental Quality Act, a law often used by homeowners to block new housing and homeless shelters and–ironically–stymie developments that would help the state reduce its carbon footprint. 

Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods claims (with some justification) that Berkeley has continued to increase the number of students without building more dorms, displacing people in the broader community and driving up rents. However, the organization is also resistant to what is widely regarded to be the best solution— namely building more places for people to live. Instead, Phil Bokovoy, the president of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, has advocated that Berkeley build a “satellite campus” in another town, far away from his backyard. 

If the university continues to add students, he told Slate, “We’ll end up like Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur—dense Asian cities where there’s no transportation network. Nobody’s talking about that.”

Ukrainians and other war escapees rest in a school sports hall temporary transformed into a shelter due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Dominika Zarzycka/AP

It’s only been a week since Russian tanks and soldiers poured across the border into Ukraine, but the conflict has already seen 1 million refugees flee Ukraine, the United Nations refugee agency said. 

“I have worked in refugee emergencies for almost 40 years, and rarely have I seen an exodus as rapid as this one,” UN High Commissioner Filippo Grandi wrote in a statement. “Unless there is an immediate end to the conflict, millions more are likely to be forced to flee Ukraine.”

If the count from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is accurate, that would be more than 2 percent of Ukraine’s population, and the agency only expects the number to swell as the ferocity of the conflict continues to escalate. The UNHCR estimates that more than 117,000 people have fled the country per day from the second day of the invasion onward. By comparison, the height of the Syrian civil war took about a month to produce 1 million refugees, with the total number eventually reaching a record 5.7 million.

According to the UNHCR, more than half of the refugees have fled into Poland, with Hungary so far having accepted the second-largest number of Ukrainians during the conflict. These numbers are striking. Both the Polish and Hungarian governments have in recent years demonized refugees and adopted policies explicitly designed to punish migrants.

Shortly after the Russian invasion, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has previously faced international condemnation for spearheading legislation hostile to migrants, seemed to soften his hardline anti-immigrant position, saying in a statement that his country was “prepared to take care of” Ukrainians. 

Polish citizens have likewise rallied to feed and house Ukrainians who have streamed across the border over the last week—a sharp contrast to 2021 when Polish border guards beat predominantly Syrian and Iraqi refugees that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had expelled from his country, a dozen of whom eventually died in the forests crisscrossing the Poland-Belarus border. 

Grandi praised the “heartwarming” international response and the willingness of neighbor states to harbor those fleeing the conflict. But he also added that the only solution to the growing crisis was an immediate ceasefire.

“But nothing—nothing—can replace the need for the guns to be silenced; for dialogue and diplomacy to succeed. Peace is the only way to halt this tragedy.”

JT/STAR MAX/IPx/AP

Joshua James, an Oath Keeper who stormed the Capitol on January 6, pleaded guilty Wednesday to seditious conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

James, who is is one of 11 people charged with seditious conspiracy, is the first to plead guilty and cooperate with investigators. That’s bad news for his codefendants, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

James was part of an Oath Keepers security detail that guarded Roger Stone on January 5 and the morning of January 6. On the afternoon of January 6, Jones and another Oath Keeper raced to the Capitol in a golf cart. There, they tussled with police officers and joined the riot in the Capitol.

A charging document alleges that Michael Simmons, whom Rhodes called the group’s “team leader” in DC, exchanged eight calls with James between 1:59 p.m. and 2:33 p.m on January 6.

James also pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding. He could face up to nine years in prison.

A mountain lion in a tree in Yellowstone in January, 2022.Jacob W. Frank/NPS/Planet Pix/Zuma

Puma. Cougar. Mountain lion. There are many names for the big cats that roam the Americas, rarely attacking humans.

But there’s only one name that springs to mind for Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte: Asshole.

You might remember Gianforte as the former Republican congressman who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault for body-slamming a Guardian reporter in 2017—a crime for which former President Trump dubbed him “my kind of guy.” Recently, Gianforte has been getting his ya-yas out through a different sort of violence: trophy hunting.

In December 2021, when a Yellowstone mountain lion made the mistake of venturing off national park lands, Gianforte and a group of friends used hunting dogs to chase the cat up a tree, where Gianforte shot and killed it, the Washington Post reports. The 5-year-old mountain lion, one of about 34 to 42 that live in Yellowstone year-round, had been monitored by park staff with a GPS collar.

The mountain lion hunt was apparently legal, but that doesn’t mean it was entirely benign. Here’s a bit from WaPo report, emphasis mine:

Hope that makes him feel like a man.

Gianforte has run afoul of hunting laws in the past. In February 2021, he killed a collared Yellowstone wolf without having taken a mandatory trapping class first. At the time, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks gave him a written warning.

Win McNamee/Getty

Amidst war, a boring sounding thing like the Fed raising interest rates could go mostly ignored outside of the financial press. But it really shouldn’t be. This seemingly anodyne action could have a profound effect on your life, not to mention the next few elections.

According to remarks prepared to be delivered before the House Committee on Financial Services on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will finally tip and say the central bank is going to raise interest rates this month for the first time since 2018. The hope is that by raising them up from near zero, where they currently sit, the Fed can move to tame inflation; after years of vast deflation, prices have risen rapidly in the past year. The idea is that higher interest rates can turn down the heat on the economy, without turning it down too much.

But such an action is a risky gambit, and could mean a less robust economic recovery. That would be true even without a war and sanctions, which create insecurity around supply chains. 

As President Joe Biden extolled in his State of the Union last night, the economy’s state after the Covid shock has been remarkable. It has led to a tight labor market, worker power, and a vast bounce back, especially for low-wage workers, unlike anything we’ve seen in recent history. (For context, in some ways, we’re just now seeing a serious recovery from the 2008 crisis). But Biden has had trouble touting this victory as inflation has risen. Polls have shown that people are angered by inflation. (Polls also show that most of us don’t really understand much about it.) Inflation might be unpopular, but so is a crap economy. Is there a middle road?

Since President Donald Trump left office, there has been a vast, technocratic (even academic) battle that has resurfaced for how to deal with inflation and whether it should be chiefly the province of the Fed. This debate can be confusing; the Fed works in a coded language of wonkery, finance, and assumptive economics. And I am not Margot Robbie in The Big Short, but just follow me for one second on some basics; all this brochure manual language is the stuff of your life, like it or not.

The Fed is an independent body with a dual mandate: maximum employment and keeping inflation in check. The bank wants to create monetary policy (what Congress does is fiscal policy) that gets as many people in jobs as possible and holds “stable prices.” The Fed determines the total amount of money in circulation (and kind of more, but that’s what you need to know for this), which gives the chair of the Fed massive control of the economy in an unelected position.

For years, people thought that the best way to stop inflation was through monetary policy, as set by the Fed. During the great inflation crisis of the 1970s, a neoliberal consensus formed around this point, especially after President Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chair. Volcker raised interest rates—taking on the theories of Milton Friedman—and the economy went ker-fucking-plunk. Carter lost reelection and Volcker had a recession named after him.

Still, Volcker kept his job, and Ronald Reagan rode into town on the fuller theories of Friedman. As I’ve written before, this presented the class struggles of inflation as if they were just a math problem to be solved. This was class war as calculus. Coded into this broader struggle against inflation was the decimation of worker wages and the tearing apart of unions. Fiscal stimulus, and its debt, were the enemy. When Reagan said “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” he was talking about the “economic ills“—namely, inflation.

Economists on the left have tried to disrupt this thinking by approaching inflation as something to be solved by price controls or other policies. It would be nice to think we can solve inflation not just by, you know, causing a recession—especially since we’re in a much different economic place now than we were when Carter was in the White House. 

We will have to wait and see if Powell’s latest move portends a return of austerity across the board. The Fed has signaled it will raise rates for months. Still, it could just be a step, not a full scale assault on inflation by raising rates. So, it’s worth paying attention to what happens next. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it can have tangible effects on your life: “People lost their jobs and never got them back,” economist Dean Baker told The Week in 2018 of the Volcker recession. “People lost their houses, lost their families.”

Carolyn Kaster/AP

A weird thing happened in the hours after I published a story about Steve Bannon’s podcast and its relentless anti-China crusade. He seemed to…really like it?

On Gettr, the social media platform bankrolled by Bannon’s patron, Guo Wengui, he wrote, “Mother Jones Magazine assessment is WarRoom: Pandemic is the gathering place for anti-Communist, anti-CCP fighters — damn right!!!!” 

He also told Guo the story was the “best article ever written about me,” according to messages obtained by my colleague Dan Friedman, who wrote an extensive profile of Guo last week. 

Such a positive reaction is a bit odd given that I described Bannon’s podcast, War Room, as a clearinghouse for conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, coronavirus vaccines, and China. As I wrote, “Bannon can take any subject—from George Floyd’s murder to Trump’s 2020 election loss—and turn it into a galaxy-brain plot, with China as the source of all ills.”

As the mainstream discourse about China in the United States has turned more pessimistic and combative (due in no small part to China’s worsening authoritarianism), Bannon stands alone as a hawk among hawks. Later in the piece, I mention how even relatively hawkish Republicans like Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) fail to win his seal of approval even when arguing for similar policies toward Taiwan and other issues. “I don’t think in my experience I’ve found someone who is further right when it comes to being a China hawk than Bannon,” Justin Horowitz, a Media Matters for America researcher, told me.

Bannon loves having this reputation. He’s crowed in the podcast about being labeled a “Superhawk” in Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin’s book, Chaos Under Heaven, which covers the Trump administration’s China policy. “We’re the anti-CCP group right here. I’ve been doing this for years,” he said in one episode. “It’s one of the focal points of my life.”  

To Bannon, nothing is more of a compliment than being described as nearly unhinged in his obsession with China. Alongside Guo, he has pushed for regime change in China (while mocking “neocons” who argue for the same elsewhere) and even co-founded a government-in-exile that awaits the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party. This “New Federal State of China” has not actually done much besides spread conspiracy theories, but it remains a signature part of Bannon and Guo’s propaganda.

Guo himself is a curious figure in all of this. Despite being a focal part of Bannon’s anti-China crusade, he has targeted other China hawks and was accused in multiple lawsuits of being a Chinese agent posing as a CCP critic. (These claims are unproven and Guo strenuously disputes them.) 

Whatever Bannon’s reasons for opposing China, he has made it the focal point of the MAGA movement’s next act. As I argued in the piece, it is impossible to understand where this movement is going without seeing China at the center of it. 

Bannon doesn’t care about being seen as a warmonger, conspiracist, or white nationalist. He just wants to be seen as the tip of the spear challenging China. Even if that means praising an article in Mother Jones.

Jonas Roosens/ZUMA

As Russia’s brutal invasion into Ukraine stretched into its sixth day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday delivered an emotional address to the European Parliament, urging leaders to swiftly support Ukraine’s full ascension to the European Union.

“Prove that you are with us,” Zelenskyy said in a video speech. “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.”

“The EU will be much stronger with us,” he continued, as an interpreter choked up translating the remarks into English.

The powerful speech came as Russian forces appeared to be increasingly targeting civilians, prompting Zelenskyy earlier on Tuesday to accuse Russia of war crimes. “This is terror against Ukraine,” he said in a Facebook video after Russia bombed Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. “There were no military targets in the square, nor are they in those residential districts of Kharkiv which come under rocket artillery fire.”

Translator chokes up as Zelensky addresses the European Parliament: "Nobody is going to break us. We are strong. We are Ukrainians. We have a desire to see our children alive. I think it's a fair one." pic.twitter.com/AqOzmMPuFx

— Zach Basu (@zacharybasu) March 1, 2022

Meanwhile, diplomats in Geneva on Tuesday staged a walkout to protest Russia’s Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s address to the UN Human Rights Council. 

This morning in the UN Human Rights Council more than 140 diplomats refused to listen to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s futile attempt to justify unacceptable military aggression. Watch them leave the Council Chamber. pic.twitter.com/Syox5sTvaD

— Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger (@tichy_e) March 1, 2022

Speaking in a video address, Lavrov claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine had been working to acquire nuclear weapons—one of the many false claims Moscow has used to justify its invasion.

On the fourth day of the attack of Russian military troops on Ukraine, Ukrainian citizens and anti-war demonstrators gathered on Beyazit Square in Istanbul to protest against Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hakan Akgun / SOPA Images/Sipa USA/AP

On Sunday, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, announced that in addition to barring all Russian aircraft in European airspace, the European Union is going to crack down on “the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU”—namely its state-run media outlets Russia Today and Sputnik. The EU, Leyen said, would develop tools to “ban the toxic and harmful disinformation” spreading through Europe, which in the days since the invasion of Ukraine has included false claims from Putin that Ukraine’s government has committed genocide against its own people. Ukraine has dismissed those claims as untrue in a suit filed Sunday to the International Criminal Court and called on the United Nation’s highest court to order a stop to Russia’s invasion.  

Second, we will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU.
 
The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, and their subsidiaries,
will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war.
 
We are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe. pic.twitter.com/7RcPEn6E14

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 27, 2022

Both RT and Sputnik air in the United States, too. Will Biden follow suit and crack down on pro-Russia disinformation? If he does, US cable companies will also need to scrutinize media outlets like Fox News, whose shows —Tucker Carlson’s in particular—have parroted pro-Russia talking points. Russian media outlets are even using Carlson’s commentary to criticize Democrats and the Biden administration’s approach to sanctioning Russia over its infiltration of Ukraine. (Carlson eventually backpedaled a bit from his Putin defense.)

Congress could follow the calls of Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and put pressure on social media companies like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok to impose further content restrictions to curtail the spread of propaganda and disinformation on their platforms. Politico reported last week that “debunked posts have been racking up millions of likes, comments and shares on Facebook and Twitter” and elsewhere.

It may be difficult to bar all disinformation from the Kremlin-backed media agencies: Pro-Russia propaganda has spilled through the secure messaging platform, Telegram, which has prompted Ukraine’s government anti-disinformation body to call the spread of pro-Russia channels “information terrorism.” But as Russia continues to wage its war on Ukraine, it’s crucial to reinforce that Putin’s pursuit of “the demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine, a country led by a Jewish president, is its own false flag. 

Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York performs Prayer for Ukraine on Saturday Night Live on February 26.Saturday Night Live/YouTube

Each day since Thursday, in the wee morning hours, air sirens shatter any semblance of quiet on the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine. Missiles rip through the air, and explosions mark a new day as Russian troops, at the behest of President Vladimir Putin, invade and attempt to remove its government leadership.

So what stood out during Saturday Night Live’s ode to Ukraine last night—its first show after a hiatus—was silence. Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong walked onto the stage of Studio 8H and paused before introducing the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York, a troupe that started back in the 1940s to “preserve and cultivate the rich musical heritage of Ukraine,” according to Ukrainian Weekly. 

“Prayer for Ukraine” performed by Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York pic.twitter.com/5pi2l1Olpx

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 27, 2022

They sang the religious hymn, “Prayer for Ukraine,” composed by Mykola Lysenko in 1885. Their collective voices tore through the quiet on Saturday night and, in Ukrainian, they asked for a blessing of freedom and protection. After, the cameras panned to an arrangement of candles that spelled “Kyiv,” the center of an invasion currently unfolding and a place that, as of now, remains under Ukrainian control. 

Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks on February 25 in Kyiv, the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Abaca via ZUMA

After a night of fighting in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a video Saturday morning reassuring the besieged nation that Russia has not taken the capital yet. “We are going to defend our nation. Because our weapons are our truth,” Zelenskyy says in the video, as he stands in front of the official presidential residence. “That’s our truth because this is our land, our country, our children. And we will defend all this.”

Не вірте фейкам. pic.twitter.com/wiLqmCuz1p

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 26, 2022

A former comedian who once played the president on television, Zelenskyy has deftly used his communication skills and social media savvy to rally Ukrainians while also battling Russian disinformation for an international audience. No other country has joined the war in Ukraine’s defense, but the Russian invasion on Thursday morning following weeks of saber-rattling has resulted in nearly universal international censure, as well as increased economic sanctions on Russia. Foreign aid is critical to Ukraine. President Joe Biden is working with Congress to secure an additional $6.4 billion in aid for Ukraine.

On Friday, Zelenskyy confronted Russian rumors that he had fled Kyiv by posting a video of himself in front of the presidential building. “We are here,” he said, appearing to hold the camera himself, surrounded by top advisers. “We are in Kyiv. We are protecting Ukraine.”

⚡️Ukraine’s Zelensky posts a new video of himself and his team outside the presidential administration in Kyiv’s government quarter after rumors in Russian media that he’d fled. “We are here. We are in Kyiv. We are defending Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/bgHyrsbVFs

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 25, 2022

On February 24, on the eve of the invasion, Zelenskyy, wearing a somber suit and speaking in Russian, addressed the Russian people directly in a formal speech he hoped would break through Russia’s censored media ecosystem and reach ordinary citizens across the border. In the moving speech, he pled with the Russian people to stand up against their country’s push for war. Of course, his eloquence and impressive messaging skills also reached a wider international audience. 

president zelensky’s speech to the russian people as an innocent nation faces slaughter. #mustwatch pic.twitter.com/asnlY7pbj5

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) February 25, 2022

Within a matter of days, Zelenskyy has traded in his business suit and is now seen wearing military gear. His videos have clearly not stopped a war that Russian President Vladimir Putin is intent on waging—with Zelenskyy himself reportedly as the Russian leader’s top target—but they are also helping to maintain formidable Ukrainian resistance and galvanize public opinion. Ukraine has handed out tens of thousands of weapons to its citizens in order to fight Russian troops, and its radio has broadcasted instructions for making Molotov cocktails. As of Saturday, Kyiv remained under Ukrainian control. Zelenskyy said in a televised address that the country is “successfully repelling” Russia’s attacks on the city. 

Goodbye to all that. Mostly.Michael Ho Wai Lee/SOPA Images/Zuma

If you are among the 70 percent of Americans who live in an area with low or medium Covid risk, you can finally ditch your mask, according to new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday. And don’t feel like you need to keep your social distance, either.

The new guidance for determining Covid risk considers not just the number of cases in a community, but also the number of new Covid hospital admissions, and the percentage of beds they occupy. The announcement signals a shift in the public health agency’s approach to the virus away from lowering overall cases and toward protecting the hospital system. New York and California already lifted indoor mask mandates earlier this month, paving the way for other localities to follow suit. A new CDC map, to be updated weekly, tells people which level of risk their community falls under.

“With widespread population immunity, the overall risk of severe disease is now generally lower,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a call with reporters today. “We want to give people a break from things like masking when our levels are low, and then have the ability to reach for them again should things get worse in the future.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Al Drago/AP

On Thursday, Steve Bannon, the former Trump administration official and 2020 election results denier, turned his podcast into a litany of grievances against President Joe Biden, the Clintons, and the other usual targets. Then he called for impeachment and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Any regular listener to Bannon’s War Room podcast has grown used to these kind of rants. Already he has called for Biden to be impeached over his handling of the “southern border” and for his failure to press China more forcefully to reveal the origin of the coronavirus.

On Thursday, Bannon identified the Ukraine crisis as additional grounds for impeachment: the Ukraine crisis. Figuring out the “how” and “why” of it all was a bit harder.

“I don’t care how much Media Matters and Mediaite and MSNBC don’t like to hear it, ok, he’s getting impeached,” Bannon said near the start of his show. “You do understand we’re going to win 40 or 50 or 60 seats? He’s getting impeached. We’re impeaching him.”

And those reasons?

Number one on the southern border, number two on this fiasco right now in the Ukraine. And we’re going to get into every detail of every penny his family stole out of there from the Ukrainian people, from the kleptocrats in Ukraine that were his partners. We’re going to get to every penny—to the fifth decimal place—of everything that the Clintons and Biden and these corrupt Democrats have skimmed off the top.

Ah, ok. So Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine, the impetus for a right-wing conspiracy theory that Joe Biden used his influence as vice president to help Hunter financially, is what Bannon is talking about? Sort of? 

At a certain point, Bannon seems to be speaking to Biden directly and just listing out conspiracies, bullet-point style. He even, out of nowhere, name-drops Clinton Cash, an error-ridden book about the Clinton’s (admittedly eyebrow-raising) business dealings:

Putin called your bluff. He says you’ve turned Ukraine into a ‘colony,’ a ‘Clinton colony.’ Clinton Cash. They stole as much money as they could out of Haiti, out of sub-Saharan Africa, and then they’re in Ukraine, stealing it with both hands.

This is the usual shtick. Bannon does this all the time. After commending Putin’s toughness earlier in the week and predicting that the attack on Ukraine will drive up inflation, Bannon has consistently focused on Hunter Biden and the Clintons.

Here’s more of that:

Is Hunter Biden over there with his business partners? Is he sitting there with the Ukrainian flag? Where is Hunter? Is he in his art gallery? Is he with more strippers? Is he smoking more crack?

During the first week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that is where the level of discourse was on War Room. 

Vitaliy Belousov/Sputnik

Hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, antiwar protests broke out across Russia. 

In the center of Moscow, “dozens” of protesters were arrested, one Russian newspaper reported. Andrew Roth, a journalist for the Guardian, saw one protester, who had held up a sign reading “Fuck war,” being immediately detained: 

He was detained within second of holding up that sign. Arrests are getting a lot rougher. pic.twitter.com/UtaaZHKekT

— Andrew Roth (@Andrew__Roth) February 24, 2022

In St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, a reporter from the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, a rare independent voice within the Russian press, said nearly 200 protesters were chanting “No to war!” as police shouted them down with a microphone and began detaining people. 

Возле Гостиного двора в Петербурге собралось, по оценкам корра «Новой», около двухсот человек. Толпа скандирует «Нет войне!». Полиция в мегафон предупреждает о недопустимости массовых акций в период коронавирусных ограничений. Несколько десятков человек задержаны. Видео: «Новая» pic.twitter.com/lsOkKTWFvd

— Новая Газета (@novaya_gazeta) February 24, 2022

The invasion had been heavily foreshadowed in recent days as the United States and other Western countries cited intelligence that said Putin was planning to invade. But to Russian citizens, the sudden, violent escalation was shocking. Even those supportive of Putin’s two-decade rule were struggling to piece together how this had happened.

As Anton Troianovski, a New York Times reporter in Moscow, put it on Thursday:

On the country’s internet, still mostly uncensored, Russians saw their vaunted military sow carnage in a country in which millions of them had relatives and friends.

Many of them had bought into the Kremlin’s narrative that theirs was a peace-loving country, and Mr. Putin a careful and calculating leader. After all, many Russians still believe, it was Mr. Putin who lifted their country out of the poverty and chaos of the 1990s and made it into a place with a decent standard of living and worthy of international respect.

Nowhere was that cognitive dissonance more clear than in the reaction of Russian elites and celebrities, who broke protocol in their sharp condemnation of the invasion. Max Seddon, the Financial Times’ bureau chief in Moscow, cited several examples: 

Maxim Galkin, singer and husband of Alla Pugacheva, Russia’s biggest celebrity:

“I’ve been talking to friends and relatives from Ukraine since early morning! I can’t find the words to say what I feel! How can this be possible! There can be no justification for war! No to war!” pic.twitter.com/Qk7qUcNR9i

— max seddon (@maxseddon) February 24, 2022

The Moscow director of a theater and cultural center had an even blunter reaction. After submitting her resignation on Thursday, Elena Kovalskaya posted to Facebook, “It’s impossible to work for a murderer and collect a salary from him.”

Elena Kovalskaya, the director of Moscow’s Vsevolod Meyerhold State Theater and Cultural Center, has announced her resignation in protest against the invasion of Ukraine. “It’s impossible to work for a murderer and collect a salary from him,” she writes. pic.twitter.com/RhG4wjRww7

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) February 24, 2022

In a speech on Thursday, Putin falsely characterized the Russian military’s actions as a defensive “special military operation” and urged the Russian people to “maintain social cohesion” in the days ahead.

In Moscow and St. Petersburg, and in the few news outlets courageous enough to defy Putin’s censorship regime, the Russian people made clear how they feel about those words.

“The invasion of Ukraine was started on behalf of Russian citizens but against our will,” declared an editorial in Meduza, an independent outlet in Latvia that reports on Russia. “The shame that comes with it will be with us forever.”

Residents of Chuhuiv stand in an apartment that has been severely damaged by a Russian bombardment.Justin Yau/AP

Early on Thursday morning, Russia attacked Ukraine in what has been described by officials as a “full-scale war.”

Explosions were seen across the country, even in the capital city of Kyiv—where a cacophony of gunfire and sirens backgrounded the fleeing of residents. Photos show the debris of buildings struck by rockets across the massive country, reports the Washington Post. “We are facing a war and horror,” 64-year-old Liudmila Gireyeva of Kyiv told the Associated Press. “What could be worse?”

For weeks, there have been dire warnings of the potential conflict. On Monday, after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared two eastern regions of Ukraine “independent”—resulting in swift sanctions from the United States and other western countries—the move seemed imminent. It was part of the way Putin has attempted to justify the invasion. Russia has explained this war in the language of self-defense; Russian officials say it was “necessary measures to protect [the country’s] interests” in response to the West and NATO who “broke their promises” on expansion. The West has said the actions are simply an invasion—full stop—of a sovereign nation, hiding behind flimsy rationale for aggression. “We woke up in a different world today,” a German official explained.

US President Joe Biden promised more actions beyond the already announced sanctions, including a “united response” from NATO to “hold Russia accountable.”

BIDEN: "The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces." pic.twitter.com/3UAQP2vQal

— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) February 24, 2022

It’s unclear what this response will ultimately entail. France, another member of the alliance, has left open the possibility of some sort of military push; the country’s foreign minister said in a statement it “would further reinforce its support to Ukraine, under all its forms.”

Ukraine, for now, has promised it will defend itself. “Ukraine is moving into all-out defense mode,” its foreign minister told the press. The country has asked for recruits for its military.

Citizens are fleeing, in panic. Across the border in Poland, thousands of US troops have begun to set up refugee stations.

Within the United States, there have been a series of responses, often distanced from the horrors of war. Many are concerned that gas prices, already high, will soar. On the right, Fox News hosted Donald Trump, who chit-chatted his way through the invasion, going beyond just calling Biden “weak” to blaming the current administration for the invasion (all just a few days after praising Putin’s neo-imperial aggression as “genius“).

Graeme Jennings/CNP/Zuma

No one, not even the president or the Environmental Protection Agency, is going to get in the way of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s fleet of gas-powered mail trucks.

Despite the EPA’s objections, DeJoy’s Postal Service has finalized a $6 billion contract with Oshkosh Defense for 165,000 new, state-of-the-art mail trucks—90 percent of which would be gas-powered vehicles earning 8.6 miles per gallon. This goes against a Biden initiative to make federal vehicles electric. And it also goes against logic. Gas-powered vehicles are fueling climate change, which is intensifying wildfires and increasing the frequency and severity of tropical storms. Electric mail trucks wouldn’t solve the climate crisis, but they’d be a step in the right direction.

“As we have reiterated throughout this process, our commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our fragile financial condition,” DeJoy said in a statement released today. “As our financial position improves with the ongoing implementation of our 10-year plan, Delivering for America, we will continue to pursue the acquisition of additional BEV as additional funding—from either internal or congressional sources—becomes available.”

As I wrote earlier this month, President Biden has suggested that federal agencies phase out the use of gas-powered trucks, but he has no power to compel the USPS, an independent agency, to do so. The biggest problem with DeJoy’s acquisition of gas-powered trucks—aside from contributing to climate change—is that it ran afoul of procedure. DeJoy failed to initiate a mandatory environmental review until after awarding the contract to Oshkosh Defense. When the Postal Service did ultimately conduct an environmental review, the EPA contended that it was deeply flawed.

Even as DeJoy moves forward with his plan to purchase new trucks, the insufficiency of the environmental review could be enough to invalidate the contract in court, Bloomberg suggests. Up next: the inevitable lawsuits from environmental groups.

The new gas-powered trucks could cause $900 million in climate damages, according to the EPA, while electrifying the fleet could save the agency billions in the long term. But as Patricio Portillo of the Natural Resources Defense Council said today, “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor financial good sense will stop the leaders of the US Postal Service from trying to buy dirty, polluting delivery trucks.”

AP

As Russia seems poised to invade Ukraine, Republicans have taken to criticizing President Biden’s foreign policy in variegated pouts. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board bemoaned a “complacent West.” Sen. Lindsey Graham decried Biden for “NOT seizing the moment.” A growing chorus of whataboutism from J.D. Vance and Lauren Boebert has argued that Biden cares more about securing the Ukrainian border than he does the US-Mexico border.

But nothing has quite topped the meme—emboldened by the body language experts at the House Republicans’ Twitter account—that Biden has shown “weakness on the world stage” by walking out of a room.

This is what weakness on the world stage looks like. pic.twitter.com/0Krq48gbIy

— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) February 22, 2022

How dare Biden—after announcing sanctions—walk out of a room with such weakness, using his legs.

This is a weird apotheosis of the growing “weakness” theory and adds to the wildest thing to have emerged in the right’s poo-pooing of Biden’s foreign policy: the assertion that none of this could have happened under Donald Trump because Vladimir Putin was too intimidated by his American counterpart. Here was the editor of the National Review as well as Marco Rubio making the case earlier this week:

The sheer unpredictably of Trump, his anger at being defied or disrespected, his willingness to take the occasional big risk (the Soleimani strike), all had to make Putin frightened or wary of him in a way that he simply isn’t of Joe Biden https://t.co/NVhAGneN62

— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) February 22, 2022

Weakness always invites aggression

And weakness in response to aggression always invites others to be aggressive as well

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 21, 2022

Lowry’s logic conveniently omits the many occasions of Trump lavishing praise on Putin, downplaying Russian interference, and the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine sanctions against Moscow. But its fallacy was only further exposed after Trump on Tuesday commended Putin’s moves in Ukraine as “very savvy” and “genius.” 

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius,'” Trump giddily told a right-wing podcast just hours after Biden announced tough new sanctions against the Kremlin. “Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine—Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.”

Trump then parroted Russian propaganda talking points, calling Putin a “peacekeeper” for moving into eastern Ukraine.

So far, the right has been overwhelmingly quiet on Trump’s effusive new praise of a foreign adversary. That silence is damning for sure, but perhaps not as damning as how one Fox News guest tried to spin the remarks last night:

Guest claims Trump is pretending to be subservient to Putin to troll the media pic.twitter.com/jEIJaNSKZe

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 23, 2022

Of course, all of this is yet another entry into the right-wing complaints that Biden is too weak. Fox News has been all over that narrative for weeks. But will Republicans stick with Trump in light of his latest public admiration for Putin? We’ll see what mealymouthed excuses they come up with next, but at least Tucker Carlson has been forthcoming with his off-the-rails argument that Putin, because he hasn’t called you a racist, is better than a Democrat.

So, that’s the deal. You can be a racist, a plutocrat, and a jerk. But, please god, don’t walk out of a room.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a December 2021 press conference in support of his party's "Stop W.O.K.E. Act."Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/TNS/Zuma

Ron DeSantis is taking his war on masks to a new—and possibly unconstitutional—level.

Last year, Florida’s Republican governor issued an executive order banning mask mandates in schools. Now, he’s backing a proposal to withhold $200 million in education funds from 12 counties that kept requiring masks, and divert their money to 55 school districts that complied.

The proposal, part of a Florida House of Representatives budget bill sponsored by casino-mogul-turned GOP state legislator Randy Fine, is pegged to the salaries of staff making over $100,000 in the targeted districts, although it wouldn’t directly slash those administrators’ salaries. The bill’s highest-profile opponent? Ron DeSantis. Less than two weeks ago, DeSantis rejected the proposal, objecting that it would “penalize a teacher or student because of the action” of their school board. But the governor just reversed course, tweeting his thanks to Fine for “heeding my call to protect students and teachers” from penalties aimed at “politicians and bureaucrats who defied Florida law by force masking kids.” While the state Senate hasn’t yet worked the salary cuts into its proposed budget, DeSantis’ approval helps pave the way for the suggestion to become law. (The Florida Department of Education has already cut some pro-mask districts’ funding in the amount of their school boards’ pay.)

pic.twitter.com/tuTF1OOrfh

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 15, 2022

If Fine’s plan comes to fruition, it’s likely to face substantial legal challenges. As The Guardian points out, the provision is misguided—even on its own terms—in punishing administrators who enforced mask mandates, not just the school board members who set them. And while Fine has insisted that “these school districts broke the law,” it’s not clear that they did: The school districts all dropped their mandates once the issue was settled in court. In fact, the budget provision itself might violate Florida’s state constitution, which prohibits the state legislature from “passing a general law of local application to impose fines.”

No matter how it pans out, a plan to cut school budgets in a state already firmly in the bottom 10 for per-pupil educational spending is not a good look.

Closed and locked gates at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium on the first day of the Major League Baseball lockout, December 2, 2021./Image of Sports/Newscom/ZUMA

Since December, Major League Baseball players have been locked out of their training facilities, thanks to a disagreement between their union and team owners. With the off-season coming to an end, the dispute is now guaranteed to postpone the start of spring training—and could potentially delay Opening Day.

This season’s lockout is the MLB Players Association’s first work stoppage since the 1994 season, when a labor dispute ended the season early and canceled the World Series. This time, players are demanding better pay for younger players (who are often underpaid relative to their contributions), changes to the free agency framework, and a major increase in the competitive balance tax, which sets a ceiling on teams’ total payroll and serves as an unofficial salary cap. All this inside baseball amounts to a guarantee that spring training, originally scheduled for February 26, won’t start until March 5 at the earliest.

In 1994, players launched a mid-season strike over a salary cap demanded by team owners, who argued that runaway salaries were threatening the league’s financial solvency. That strike was ended by none other than then-federal district court judge Sonia Sotomayor, who ruled that team owners couldn’t get around the strike by hiring non-union replacement players (otherwise known as scabs). Sotomayor’s ruling once again bound players and owners to the terms of their previous collective bargaining agreement, and players voted to return to work. Baseball remains the only major sport in the US to lack a salary cap.

The 1994-95 strike was a financial and public relations disaster—just think of all the money lost by canceling the World Series—and players and owners have tried to play nice, or at least keep up the pretense, ever since. Owners say that this year’s lockout, the first since 1990, was an attempt to spur negotiations and reach an agreement by the time teams are set to play ball.

Meanwhile, as players and owners engage in serious, complicated negotiations, New York’s much-maligned ex-mayor Bill de Blasio is proving that it’s never too late for him to make a mockery of himself online:

Here’s my message to @MLB and @MLBPA: STOP IT! Everybody CHILL! Spring Training should be starting RIGHT NOW. Americans have been through so much with COVID and we need the joy back in our lives. For the good of your country, put aside differences and PLAY BALL!

— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) February 20, 2022