Month: February 2022

This story is pretty amazing. Zelensky personally turned the tide on the serious sanctions with a personal appeal that left the leaders of Europe in tears:

As the leaders of the European Union gathered for an emergency summit on Thursday night, momentum was already moving toward imposing tough new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

But a handful of key leaders — notably including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — were reluctant to proceed with some of the harshest proposals. Scholz told reporters on the way into the meeting in Brussels that he wanted to focus on implementing sanctions that had already been approved before enacting new ones.

After a perfunctory debate, the presidents and prime ministers quickly approved sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and some of Russia’s biggest banks. Talk of barring Russia from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, however, stalled amid skepticism on the part of Scholz and the leaders of Austria, Italy and Cyprus, according to officials familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.

Then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dialed into the meeting via teleconference with a bracing appeal that left some of the world-weary politicians with watery eyes. In just five minutes, Zelensky — speaking from the battlefield of Kyiv — pleaded with European leaders for an honest assessment of his country’s ambition to join the E.U. and for genuine help in its fight with the Russian invaders. Food, ammunition, fuel, sanctions — Ukraine needed its European neighbors to step up with all of it.

[…]

“It was extremely, extremely emotional,” said a European official briefed on the call. “He was essentially saying: ‘Look, we are here dying for European ideals.”

Before disconnecting the video call, Zelensky told the gathering matter-of-factly that it might be the last time they saw him alive, according to a senior E.U. official who was present.

Just that quickly, the Ukrainian president’s personal appeal overwhelmed European leaders’ resistance to imposing measures that could drive the Russian economy into a state of near collapse. The result has been a rapid-fire series of developments boosting Ukraine’s fight to hold off the Russian military and shattering long-standing limits on European assertiveness in national security affairs.

The actions culminated on Saturday, when the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union announced they would bar several major Russian banks from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, crack down on Russian oligarchs, and prevent the Russian central bank from bailing out the domestic economy. The unprecedented movesled Russians to crowd ATMs in a desperate bid to withdraw cash and sparked a furious response from Putin, who called them “illegitimate” and ordered his nuclear forces to a higher state of alert.

Surprised by the unusually rapid European decision, the White House scrambled over the weekend to catch up in drafting its own related measures, according to one American and one European official.The latest sanctions mean the Western allies are effectively waging financial war against Russia, matching Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine with attacks on the foundation of a $1.5 trillion economy.

We’ve become very cynical about politics, both domestically and internationally. It’s understandable. But this shows that there is still a bit of idealism and inspiration left in our sclerotic world order. It needs change, but not at the barrel of a gun.

I have been wondering what the immediate consequences of these sanctions on the Russian banking system might be and this article offers some ideas:

Earlier today, Russia’s central bank announced that the country’s currency, the ruble, was fully liquid. Normally, central banks do not need to reassure currency holders this way. We take it for granted that we can access our savings in the bank, use our credit cards and get cash from the ATM.

But these are not normal times in Russia. Having launched an invasion of Ukraine just a few days ago, Russia faces some of the strongest financial sanctions that any country has faced in modern history.

Russia is about to plunge into financial turmoil

Many of Russia’s central bank assets are currently unusable because of E.U. and U.S. actions. Additionally, many of Russia’s major banks will soon no longer be able to use SWIFT to settle payments. Meanwhile, the ruble’s value is collapsing in local markets. Although markets are not open at the moment, reports indicate that its value has declined from roughly 70 to the dollar to 150 to the dollar in after-hours trading.

All of this is making the financial system look shaky to Russian citizens. They responded today by withdrawing hard currency from ATMs across the country. Because it is Sunday, banks aren’t even open for regular service, so we won’t know until Monday exactly how seriously Russians will react to the financial turmoil.

Indonesia offers some lessons about what might happen

What happens when a regime like Vladimir Putin’s in Russia faces bank runs and currency collapse?

Political scientists have studied the political consequences of financial crises. In my 2009 book on the Asian financial crisis, I wrote about what happened to Indonesian dictator Suharto when it became clear that Indonesia’s banks were insolvent and the currency was in free-fall. Suharto’s struggles in 1998 suggest that Putin may face real economic difficulties in the coming days.

Like Putin, Suharto bolstered his dictatorial regime through close ties to an elite group of wealthy elites (known in Indonesian as “konglomerat”). Like Putin’s oligarchs, these superwealthy elites oversaw highly diversified business empires that blurred the lines between public and private authority. And they, too, owed their wealth to Suharto’s patronage and favoritism.

Also like Putin in 2022, Suharto in 1998 was viewed by many Indonesians and foreign observers as erratic. He was prone to quick decisions and quick reversals, and seemingly blind to the consequences of his actions, such as reneging on an IMF bailout to protect his youngest son’s monopoly on cloves.

Of course, Indonesia had not invaded any neighboring countries in recent years, so the specific drivers of Indonesia’s crisis in 1998 were different from Russia’s emerging crisis in 2022. But the financial fallout may be quite similar.

Putin’s big financial challenge is to convince people that there is no reason to worry about their money — they will be able to access it when they need it. That confidence will forestall the risk of runs on Russian banks. But just talking about financial stability can make people nervous. If everyone wants access to their savings by withdrawing money from ATMs, banks may not be able to cope. People’s individual strategies to keep themselves safe can bring about a banking crisis in which everyone suffers.

Putin doesn’t have many options

Putin’s options for how to address this problem are limited, as were Suharto’s. His choices boil down to the following: print lots of money on demand to cover all withdrawals; raise interest rates really high; or implement currency controls of some sort.

The first option generates inflation. It also does not really help to address the core problem: High inflation will give people with rubles an incentive to convert those rubles into dollars, gold or something else with a more stable value. That would push the value of the ruble even lower.

The second option seeks to keep money in banks (and rubles in Russia) by offering much more attractive returns for people holding ruble savings. But this is unattractive for many other reasons. With luck, it may eliminate inflation, but it may also put a sharp halt on spending and investment within Russia. It may avoid financial crisis, at the cost of a full-blown recession.

The third option would seem to be the most attractive. Indeed, this is an option that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad followed during Malaysia’s economic crisis in 1998. But it was very unpopular among Malaysia’s most wealthy elites, who were no longer able to move their savings and investments across borders. Moreover, in Russia today, such controls would have to be paired with controls on bank withdrawals to shore up the domestic financial system itself. Russia’s central bank is proclaiming that its financial system is liquid precisely to avoid having to do this.

I argue in my 2009 book that Indonesia’s oligarchs stymied Suharto when he attempted to implement the same solution in early 1998. They only supported Suharto as long as they could move their money abroad if needed — a powerful check on Suharto’s power to behave in ways they didn’t like. When the political situation turned sour in Indonesia, the oligarchs left with their money almost overnight.

Foreign sanctions may mean that Putin doesn’t have to worry as much about oligarchs fleeing abroad with their cash. Tough sanctions on his closest oligarch supporters mean that they can’t spend their money abroad anyway. Even so, currency controls and withdrawal bans would probably cause a full-blown financial crisis overnight.

It is hard to see how Russia’s domestic financial turmoil will end. The next 24 hours will be some of the most grimly interesting financial politics that Russia has seen since its two most recent financial crises, one of which (in 1998) ultimately paved the way for Putin’s rise to power.

In the meantime, however, Ukraine’s supporters in the international community may be thinking about how to leverage the threat of Russia’s financial collapse to their benefit. Giving oligarchs an exit option might provide the leverage they want to restrain Putin’s aggressive and destructive international behavior, by showing him its domestic consequences.

Sanctions are very cruel and usually end up hurting the average people who have little say in the decisions that brought their country to this point. But sometimes it’s the only choice short of violence to try to influence their leaders to back down from an aggressive decision in defiance of international law.

Here’s hoping that this hits those oligarchs and possible some of Putin’s inner circle of advisers in such a way that they can apply pressure from within. I don’t know if it will work but at this moment we have to hope that he either comes to his senses or there is some kind of palace coup.

Trump’s speech at CPAC last night was received with great joy and excitement. He said bullshit and muttered “fuck” which made them giddy with delight. And they affirmed their love with the straw poll:

 Former President Donald Trump easily won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering this weekend in Florida.

Trump, who’s repeatedly flirted with making another presidential run in 2024 to try and return to the White House, captured 59% of ballots cast in the anonymous online straw poll, according to results announced by CPAC on Sunday afternoon.

The former president, who remains the most popular and influential politician in the Republican Party as he continues to play a kingmaker’s role in GOP primaries, won 55% support a year ago in the CPAC Orlando straw poll. Trump jumped to 70% support in the 2024 straw poll conducted last July at CPAC in Dallas.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came in a distant second, at 28%, up from his 21% standing in both CPAC straw polls from last year. No one else among the 19 candidates listed on the ballot cracked 2%.

Trump’s strong performance comes on the unscientific survey as no surprise. CPAC, long the largest and most influential gathering of conservatives, has become a Trump-fest since his 2016 presidential election victory.

DeSantis, a first-term governor who soared in popularity among conservatives nationwide for his resistance to lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic, easily topped a second 2024 ballot question – without Trump on the hypothetical ballot.

Remember, this was in Florida where there are a lot of DeSantis fans so Trumps popularity in the base is undoubtedly higher nationally.

It’s not everyone, by any means. Even among the activists there are resisters. But there’s nobody out there who can consolidate the rest of the Party, not even Trump 2.0, Ron DeSantis.

Trump is the guy and last night he pretty much made it official. Barring unforeseen circumstances, he’s running.

There have been many stories over the past few years about the vast wealth hidden in offshore banks around the world by the Russian oligarchs. I confess that a lot of this is a bit beyond my ken, but it’s obvious that I need to understand it a little bit better than I have up until now. I found this thread to be quite helpful, with lots of links and succinct explanations:

What has the last decade of tax haven leaks revealed about Russian offshore wealth?

A comprehensive thread:

Before we begin, it must be said that Russian elites are not alone in hiding wealth offshore. Offshore wealth is a prevalent, global phenomenon, estimated in the magnitude of 10% of global GDP – per @annette_als @gabriel_zucman and N. Johannesen:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272718300082?via%3Dihub

But Russian offshore wealth does have particular features – in scale and nature.

For one, Russian elites hide significant larger proportions of their wealth offshore than large Western states.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272718300082?via%3Dihub

Russians also “go offshore” in distinct ways: They use Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands heavily to structure investments (more on that later). Famously Russian money flows into London property at massive scales – an acute problem now:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-53484344

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The last decade has seen an explosion of “tax haven leaks” – waves of documents from whistleblowers and hacks showing the hitherto unknown features and proportions of Russian (and other) offshore wealth.

Let’s see what they have revealed:

In 2013, the #OffshoreLeaks revealed widespread use of British Virgin Island shell companies to conceal investments among Russian elites close to Putin incl. directors of Gazprom and Oboronprom, the Russian defence company.

Famously, these leaks showed a BVI-based firm had set up shell companies linked to the alleged murder of Sergei Magnitsky, a whistleblower exposing corruption by Russian government officials.

The prevalence of the British Virgin Islands here is not random. As research by e.g. @javiergb_com, @fichtner_jan and co. has shown, Russian offshore investments typically flow through Cyprus and the BVI.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06322-9

In 2015, the #SwissLeaks spotlighted a large tax evasion scheme supported by HSBC in Switzerland, whose clients included 740 Russians holding more €1.8bn in the bank.

These clients included Vladimir Antonov, a Russian millionaire later convicted of fraud and embezzlement.

In 2016, the #PanamaPapers revealed an unprecedented scale of secretive offshore entities created by Mossack Fonseca, a corporate service provider in Panama.

The #PanamaPapers showed how offshore shell companies are used to dodge financial sanctions: Mossack Fonseca set up opaque structures for 30 sanctioned entities at the time, including Yuri Kovalchuk, Putin’s “personal banker” and head of Bank Rossiya

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/panama-papers-money-hidden-offshore

The records also showed secretive offshore structures via Switzerland helped funnel $1bn from state-controlled banks to fund yachts, ski resorts and weddings for Putin’s inner circle.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/panama-papers-money-hidden-offshore

The leaks also showed how Putin’s close friend, Sergei Roldugin – a cellist – also happened to own major stakes in large Russian firms. The leaks showed he “moved $2 billion through a web of offshore entities.”

https://www.economist.com/international/2016/04/09/a-torrential-leak

Putin, by way, said Roldugin had merely used his money on “acquiring musical instruments from abroad and bringing them to Russia.”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses-panama-papers-as-an-attempt-to-destabilise-russia

There were many more stories of cronyism, private enrichment aided by secretive offshore companies.

“In almost every instance, the result is the same: money and power moves in the direction of the network, to companies and people allied to Putin.”

This is not inconsequential – these secretive offshore funds are used for a variety of more or less nefarious purposes, including funding Russian-friendly political parties in Europe, as @EBHarrington notes

https://twitter.com/EBHarrington/status/1496947098444517380

https://euobserver.com/foreign/137631

Then came the #ParadisePapers in 2017, which documented client affairs of Appleby, a respected offshore legal service provider.

The leaks showed ties between US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

The leaks also revealed massive Russian state investments in Facebook and Twitter, including via the state-owned VTB Bank (recently sanctioned again) and Alisher Usmanov.

The Paradise Papers also revealed Appleby helped Arkady Rotenberg, Russian billionaire and Putin friend, skirt US and EU sanctions by buying private jets through offshore companies.

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/wirtschaft/putin-s-friend-arkady-rotenberg-e691249/

The 2017 #PandoraPapers again centered Russian offshore wealth, including the secretive purchase of lavish Monaco property for Svetlana Krivonogikh, Putin’s alleged lover, once more aided by opaque BVI offshore company:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-reveal-hidden-wealth-vladimir-putin-inner-circle

Moores Rowland, a BVI-linked advisory firm, was found using offshore companies and trust structures to conceal Russian elites’ ownership of yachts and property, while allowing those same Putin allies to remain in control of their assets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/putin-monaco-luxury-apartment/

Like earlier leaks, the documents also showed direct links to Western political parties, including a total of £1.8m donated to the UK Conservative party by the wife of a former Russian minister

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-58711151

The question now is whether the world wants to keep relying on waves of leaks to provide transparency around offshore wealth and oligarch assets?

Yesterday’s joint transatlantic statement provides optimism:

Prior crises have fostered radical new political ideas, including significant global tax transparency measures, which make it more difficult to hide wealth in tax havens.

Whether this crisis offers a springboard for political change, remains to be seen.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625802

Originally tweeted by Rasmus Corlin Christensen (@phdskat) on February 27, 2022.

The WSJ has the first report on what he’s saying. And it’s as self-serving as you might imagine:

Former Attorney General William Barr writes in a new book that former President Donald Trump has “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,” and that it is time for Republicans to focus on rising new leaders in the party.

The release of the former attorney general’s 600-page book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” is coming as Mr. Trump, who remains the GOP’s dominant figure, contemplates another presidential run. Mr. Barr writes that he was convinced that Mr. Trump could have won re-election in 2020 if he had “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.”

“The election was not ‘stolen,’ ” Mr. Barr writes. “Trump lost it.” Mr. Barr urges conservatives to look to “an impressive array of younger candidates” who share Mr. Trump’s agenda but not his “erratic personal behavior.” He didn’t mention any of those candidates by name.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Barr’s book. Last summer the former president called his former attorney general “a disappointment in every sense of the word.”

Mr. Barr’s memoir adds to a growing list of books by senior Trump administration officials and journalists about the former president. It is scheduled for release March 8 by the William Morrow imprint of HarperCollins. Both HarperCollins and The Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.

The recollections and conclusions by Mr. Barr are notable because he was one of Mr. Trump’s most powerful cabinet secretaries and was once such a close ally that Democrats accused him of acting more like the president’s defense attorney than an apolitical law-enforcement official.

Mr. Barr, a respected figure in Washington conservative circles, returned to head the Justice Department in February 2019 after Mr. Trump ousted his first attorney general, former Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican. Mr. Barr served in the same post at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration and was a corporate lawyer in between.

During much of Mr. Barr’s time in the Trump administration, some said he protected the president at the expense of the Justice Department’s independence, especially over his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mr. Barr issued his own summary of Mr. Mueller’s investigative report depicting the results in a way that Mr. Mueller and others described as misleading or overly favorable to Mr. Trump. He also worked in the ensuing months to undermine some of the prosecutions spawned by the Mueller investigation. An example was his decision to drop the criminal case against Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser.

Mr. Barr has said that he intervened to correct what he saw as overreach by the prosecutors and flaws in the department’s approach to those cases, a stance he maintains in his book.

“Predictably our motion to dismiss the charges led to an election-year media onslaught, flogging the old theme that I was doing this as a favor to Trump,” Mr. Barr writes. “But I concluded the handling of the Flynn matter by the FBI had been an abuse of power that no responsible AG could let stand.”

Mr. Barr also describes times when he was privately frustrated by Mr. Trump’s aggressive style and constant comments on the Justice Department’s work.

He provides the details of a contentious meeting on Dec. 1 in the Oval Office hours after Mr. Barr said publicly that there wasn’t evidence of widespread voter fraud in the presidential election that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory, contradicting Mr. Trump’s claims.

“This is killing me—killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me,” Mr. Trump shouted at Mr. Barr, according to the book. “He stopped for a moment and then said, ‘You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.’ ”

Mr. Barr writes that he reminded Mr. Trump that he had “sacrificed a lot personally to come in to help you when I thought you were being wronged,” but that the Justice Department had not been able to verify any of his legal team’s assertions about mass voter fraud.

Mr. Trump then launched into a list of other grievances he had with his attorney general: that the federal prosecutor Mr. Barr ordered to review the origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Russia probe that preceded the Mueller report hadn’t released his findings before the 2020 election, and that Mr. Barr declined to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey after a department watchdog rebuked him for sharing memos that contained sensitive information about his interactions with Mr. Trump, a complaint brought up repeatedly by the president.

Mr. Barr countered by offering to submit his resignation, according to the book. “Accepted!” Mr. Trump yelled, banging his palm on the table. “Leave and don’t go back to your office. You are done right now. Go home!” White House lawyers persuaded Mr. Trump not to follow through with Mr. Barr’s ouster.

Mr. Barr resigned a few weeks later, bringing a tumultuous end to his time in office.

After the election, Mr. Barr said that Mr. Trump “lost his grip” and that his false claims of voter fraud led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters trying to thwart the certification of Mr. Biden’s November, 2020, victory.

“The absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill,” Mr. Barr writes.

That’s good. It’s better to have Republicans arguing against Trump’s restoration than for him. Huzzah. Better late than never.

But for all of his alleged heroics in this story, he actually makes a damning admission. He says he “sacrificed a lot personally to come in to help you when I thought you were being wronged” by which he clearly means the Russia investigation. Setting aside the fact that he came into the office with a preconceived belief in its legitimacy, there was a Special Counsel running that investigation which was done explicitly to take it out of the realm of normal political influence. And here he is openly admitting that he took the job in order to protect the president — and he did! He acted as the president’s lawyer over and over again. He was the worst Attorney General in history and that includes Ed Meese, which I didn’t think was possible.

There is no excuse for Bill Barr. He swallowed the Fox News poison and jumped at the chance to help that orange monster evade responsibility. He knew Trump was inept and unfit but he thought it was worth it to advance his own agenda. In the end he finally just jumped ship like the rat he was when he realized it had all gone way too far.

This is a State Senator from Arizona who is running for congress:

Ok. So she’s just a fringe nut, right? No big deal, they don’t represent the GOP. Well, sort of. Here’s how the Republican Governor sees it:

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona is being excoriated for saying that a firebrand GOP state senator who has ties to white nationalists and promotes debunked election claims is better than having a Democrat in office.

Ducey made the remarks about GOP state Rep. Wendy Rogers on Thursday following a local event in the state announcing state-funded scholarships for children in the foster care system, The Arizona Republic reported. 

“What I need as a governor are governing majorities so that I can pass dollars into our social safety net, so we can provide programs like this that will help children from all over our state,” Ducey said,  focusing on the senator’s importance to his legislative agenda when pressed by reporters. “That’s what I’ve wanted to do, is move my agenda forward. I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. And she is still better than her opponent, Felicia French.”

In 2020, Rogers defeated French, a Democrat and retired Army colonel, in a state senate district anchored in northern Arizona.

Ducey’s comments came just before Rogers was preparing to speak at an America First Political Action Conference in Florida on Friday. One of the event’s organizers is Nick Fuentes, who has a history of making racist and antisemitic remarks.

At the February 25 event, Rogers praised Fuentes, called those in attendance “patriots” and said she fantasized about hanging her “enemies,” which included calling for more gallows to be constructed, The Arizona Mirror reported.

“I’ve said we need to build more gallows. If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country,” she said.

There were politicians in a certain European country in the mid-20th century who thought they could work with people like Rogers and, after all, they were better than the liberal Democrats or the Communists, right? That didn’t work out very well.

It is no coincidence that Hedrick Smith reposted this 3-month-old video this morning. The Pulitzer Prize-winning, former New York Times Moscow bureau chief published his best-selling “The Russians“ in 1976. Russians answering to a dictator in Moscow are attempting to crush a democratic government in Ukraine this morning. Its existence in the former Soviet republic is a threat to Vladimir Putin’s iron grip on the Russian state. More than economic sanctions. More than NATO.

Free and fair elections pose a similar threat to those who reject democracy in our country.

From Smith’s YouTube post:

Heading toward elections in 2022, it’s Code Red for American democracy with Republican strategists in key states moving to take partisan control of the vote count, threatening what has historically been an impartial nonpartisan process.

The media highlights the clash between Trump’s unproven charges of a stolen election in 2020 and Democratic protests that Republican legislatures in 17 states are suppressing the next vote with new restrictions on mail voting, early voting, and voter registration. But the greatest threat to our democracy and the popular vote comes from a stealth maneuver by GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin to inject partisan politics into certifying the vote, overriding established procedures and crippling or firing independent-minded election officials.

Hopes seem slim for bipartisan action by Congress to prevent another ugly showdown over the Electoral vote in 2024. But privately some Republican senators agree with Democrats that Congress must act to avoid a repeat of last January 6th that took American democracy to the brink of a breakdown.

This AP article, made me begin looking for a comprehensive, updated list of tactics being deployed by Republicans to rig U.S. elections. Every other day there seems to be a new one or a new twist on an old one. The list is already long. Here is another:

Repeatedly stymied by local courts in their efforts to draw maps that make it easier for their party to win elections, Republicans are trying to neutralize the ability of state supreme courts to interfere in the politically-charged redistricting process.

After setbacks in North Carolina and Pennsylvania’s supreme courts this week, GOP officials said the party needs to invest more in winning races for seats on those bodies. Republicans were particularly incensed in North Carolina, where the Democratic majority on the state court blocked a map drawn by the GOP-controlled state legislature as being illegally tilted toward one party, and on Wednesday approved one with three fewer Republican-dominated House seats.

N.C. Republicans have appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Speaking of Code Red, this popped up while I was preparing this:

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Reports from Ukraine this morning indicate that while Russians press the fight on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, resistance is solidifying among the Ukrainian military and ordinary citizens. For its defense, men between 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving the country. For the first time in their lives, ordinary men and women are learning to handle and fieldstrip a Kalashnikov. The Ukrainian defence minister reports that 25,000 guns have been distributed just in the Kyiv region. Others vow to man barricades with pistols and hammers if necessary.

In the fog of war, it is wise to maintain skepticism of damage and casualty reports from both sides. USA Today devoted an entire thread to debunking videos of explosions circulating online that have nothing to do with Ukraine. Part of the war is psychological. Ukrainiain accounts of Russian armor and aircraft destroyed are unconfirmed. Outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainians clearly are trying to keep spirits up, especially fighting spirit.

‘Can I tow you back to Russia?’ 

The Guardian reported one nonviolent encounter between a Ukrainian driver and a Russian military vehicle:

A Ukrainian citizen confronted Russian soldiers after their armoured vehicle broke down on a country road in the Sumy region, close to the border with Russia.

After spotting the hapless soldiers, the driver pulled alongside them, and asked: ‘Can I tow you back to Russia?’ 

There are reports that after armored columns pass Ukrainians are tearing up roads so Russian fuel resupply truck cannot get to them.

The New York Times offers this:

• • Fighting drew closer to the center of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, according to videos and photographs analyzed by The New York Times. The footage showed Ukrainians firing rockets toward Russian troops, as well as some Russian military vehicles burning and others being ransacked by Ukrainian troops.

  • As Ukraine’s armed forces targeted Russian supply lines, the Kremlin’s offensive seemed likely to intensify, as U.S. officials said that most of the more than 150,000 Russian troops who had massed around Ukraine were now engaged in the fighting.

  • Mr. Zelensky rejected the Kremlin’s offer to hold talks in Belarus, saying the country was not neutral territory because Russia had carried out part of its invasion from there.

  • The Biden administration and key European allies announced on Saturday that they would remove certain Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system, essentially barring them from international transactions.

John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, offered warfighting pointers for Ukrainian defenders (via Twitter) on Saturday. Training in how to kill enemy soldiers is not something I ever expected to see on Twitter or on Hullabaloo, but here we are, via The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr:

Yeesh. Spencer is still posting. Eight rules, etc.

Russian troops are moving into Karkiv.

I can’t help wondering if our fringe-right, fantasy revolutionary league is watching and taking notes for when they launch their Second Civl War against the United States. Ukrainians are showing them how it’s done. Terrific.

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

The Washington Post reported on the current divisions in the GOP. I thought this was most interesting:

Tony Fabrizio, a prominent Republican pollster who has done surveys for Trump and a range of Senate and gubernatorial candidates, said there have been sharp changes in the party’s outlook on foreign policy in recent years. “China is clearly seen as the bigger threat,” said Fabrizio, who was Trump’s main pollster in 2016 and 2020. “And the party is split down the middle with roughly half being isolationists, which is a significant shift from 15 years ago.”

A recent Quinnipiac poll found Republicans evenly divided over Biden’s decision to send troops to bolster NATO allies in Eastern Europe, with 47 percent opposed and 43 percent backing the move — a split Fabrizio said he has found in his own polling this week. He said his polling showed even less Republican support for military support, and that Republicans viewed China as more of an “enemy” than Russia…

In the White House, Trump was resistant to criticism of Putin because he “thought the guy had valid points and was generally right about the things he would rail on,” said a former senior administration official who regularly discussed Putin with Trump. “He was always saying that Putin has his points, I understand him, we have a good relationship. I think he believed it. Putin played to his vanities and did it superbly. The same thing with Kim and even Xi,” this official said, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump was not alone in expressing admiration for Putin this week. Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s onetime chief strategist, and Erik Prince, the former head of military contractor Blackwater, emphasized in a Thursday discussion aired on Bannon’s show that Putin had taken a hard line on social issues. “Putin ain’t woke,” Bannon said. Fox News host Tucker Carlson told viewers they should ask themselves, “Why do I hate Putin so much?”

True isolationism is one thing. But note that for all their shrugging over Russia, with its strongman leader, they still see China as an enemy and I would bet they’d be thrilled to back any war with a country run by someone who doesn’t look like them. (And even then — after all, just last week they seemed to be ready to invade Canada.)

I will never buy that these right wingers are truly isolationist. They have no principles. They like authoritarian dictators, they always have — as long as they’re white.

As for Trump, that paragraph is exactly that. They flattered him and because he is such a vain narcissistic fool, he bought it. They were more than content to let him strut around and bluster his nonsense. He was doing their work for them,

Republicans are known for projecting their their own flaws and criminal behavior on to others and “vote fraud” is no exception:

At first, Nelia Estevez didn’t believe that her voter registration could have been changed without her knowledge to reflect a new political party. Voting was sacrosanct to the 69-year-old Cuban immigrant, and she was certain of her party affiliation, she told a Miami Herald reporter who visited.

“I’ve been a Democrat since the day I became a citizen,” Estevez said as she rifled through old mail from the elections department, each letter carefully labeled by year and stowed in a plastic tub. She pulled out card after card showing the same thing — Democrat — until she found the most recent letter, and there it was: “Republican Party of Florida.” “They changed me!” she cried. “Who would do this?”

Records kept by the Miami-Dade elections department provided an answer: canvassers from the Republican Party of Florida. They submitted the form that changed Estevez from Democrat to Republican on Dec. 22, 2021. Later, Republican canvassers submitted a second form, again marking her down as a Republican, records show.

Estevez doesn’t even remember speaking with any of them. In all, 22 voters at Vernon Ashley Plaza, the public housing complex in Hialeah where Estevez lives, told reporters their party affiliation had also been changed without their knowledge or consent last year. All of them became Republicans. All of the paperwork was submitted by Republican Party canvassers, records show.

The pattern was repeated in low-income housing complexes throughout Hialeah and Little Havana, a Herald investigation found. A team of reporters visited eight locations where voter registration data showed unusually high numbers of voters switching from one party to another last year. The reporters knocked on every door where someone’s party affiliation had changed.

Four out of every five voters who spoke to the Herald — 141 in total — said that their party affiliation had been changed without their knowledge. In all but six cases, records show they were registered as Republicans by canvassers from the Republican Party of Florida. (Four of the others had recently moved and their registrations were sent through the DMV. And the remaining two were registered as Republicans, but by Democratic Party canvassers, records show.)

Remember this one?

A judge on Tuesday sentenced a Las Vegas man to probation on a charge he voted twice in the 2020 election by mailing in his deceased wife’s ballot.

The I-Team was first to report that Donald “Kirk” Hartle, 55, was facing two charges relating to last year’s election. In court Tuesday, Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election. […]

Rosemarie Hartle’s ballot was one of two cited by Nevada Republicans and national party leaders as evidence of voter fraud in Nevada.

“‘Disbelief’ and ‘sickening’… that’s how Kirk Hartle feels about someone voting in his deceased wife’s name,” a tweet from the Nevada GOP, posted Nov. 10, 2020, said. “How did the forged signature pass Clark County’s signature verification machine? And this isn’t the only case of a deceased person voting in NV.”

Meanwhile, the authorities have been harassing this poor woman and lying about it:

A Memphis judge has ordered a new trial for Pamela Moses, a woman who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote. The case attracted national attention following a Guardian report, because of the severity of the sentence. Moses said she had no idea she was ineligible.

Moses has been in prison since December, when her bond was revoked. On Thursday, the Guardian revealed new evidence in the case that was not produced at trial. Moses was released from custody on Friday, according to Claiborne Ferguson, her attorney.

Moses was convicted last year for submitting a document in 2019 indicating she was eligible to vote. Prosecutors said she knew that this was false, because just months before a judge issued an order telling Moses she was still on probation for a 2015 felony. In Tennessee, people on felony probation cannot vote.

When she turned in the form, Moses believed that the probation for her 2015 felony had expired, and a probation officer signed a certificate indicating that this was the case and that she was eligible. Prosecutors said Moses deceived the officer into signing the certificate.

But evidence obtained by the Guardian this week showed that corrections officials investigated the error immediately and determined that the probation officer – identified as Manager Billington – was negligent and made an error while Moses waited in the lobby of his office. “Manager Billington advised that he thought he did due diligence in making his decision,” Joe Williams, an administrator in the department of corrections, wrote in an email to Lisa Helton, a top department official. “Manager Billington failed to adequately investigate the status of this case. He failed to review all of the official documents available through the Shelby county justice portal.”

Ferguson, Moses’ attorney, said he had never seen the document before the Guardian showed it to him on Wednesday.

W Mark Ward, the judge who oversaw the case and sentenced Moses, cited the prosecution’s failure to disclose the letter, even if it was inadvertent, as one of the reasons he was ordering a new trial. “The document does contain information that was not addressed in the direct and cross-examinations of Billington and contained the identity of an additional possible witness for the defense,” he said.

The ruling was an abrupt reversal for Ward, who yelled at Moses’ lawyer during the sentencing hearing and said she tricked the probation officer.

“This ruling is an extraordinary development. It is very rare for a judge to reverse himself like this, and it’s telling that he sentenced her so severely and summarily discounted her position before the case made national news,” said Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, a criminal justice nonprofit.

The district attorney’s office, Spickler said, “has long had a reputation for failing to disclose material evidence that could benefit the accused. This is yet another shocking example of that.”

This woman has been in jail over this since December.

It’s to easy to just say that anything Republicans accuse others of doing is a clear indication of what they are doing themselves. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a useful clue.