Glad Biden started w Ukraine and his words were fine, if brief considering the stakes. It’s his actions that have lagged, both in targeting the oligarchs and supporting Ukraine. Ukraine doesn’t have time and Putin is escalating by the hour.
My worry is that Putin doesn’t believe Biden. After a summit and a couple of calls, Putin clearly doesn’t think Biden is a serious threat. He thought the same about Europe, and is being proved wrong. I hope Biden does it too, but it remains to be seen.
Putin declared war on the US and the world order it represents long ago. Ukraine is the military target of that war now, but election interference, hacking, disinformation, etc are still warfare. US sacrifice & commitment are necessary and Biden should communicate that.
The GOP of old is long gone, but a reply not showing US political solidarity with the president in a global security crisis is still pathetic to see. Especially after years of Trump kissing up to Putin and blocking aid and slandering and extorting Ukraine.
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Graham's "overwhelming support" for this sanctions bill is becoming Trump’s "two more weeks" when it comes to action against Russia. Putin clearly doesn’t think they’ll really do anything—other than reduce aid to Ukraine, which they actually did.
Putin is the poker player, the bluffer with a weak hand but even weaker opponents who keep folding their winning cards. Trump, Macron, Starmer, Merz, so much talk. Western leaders have blustered and caved so many times that there is no longer any credible deterrence, only action.
Events taking shape in California can be an example for the nation to follow, or they can be the harbinger of a long, hot summer. Do protesters want change for the better or just to help Trump by trying to rule the ashes? Link below. 👇
My piece on the LA protests and how Trump's opponents can respond and join me + @UrielEpshtein today @ 5pm ET/2pm PT LIVE at The Next Move from @Renew_Democracy. Read + subscribe below. thenextmove.org/p/i-resisted-p…
I concur with the thought of MLK Jr that if they can’t attack your principles they will attack how you protest to defend them. The point of protest is discomfort, to shake the status quo when justice is unjust. But leaving the path of nonviolence only aids the oppressor.
Normalizing military in the streets, masked agents grabbing people, and everything being an emergency that only the president can deal with by force are all part of the authoritarian playbook. As I wrote months ago:
The Democrats seem to think they, and the country, can wait to see what happens in the 2026 midterms. That’s not how this works. There will be fake and real crises every day, each one a power grab, a breaking & bending of laws and norms, all in the name of national security.
Violence will increase and will be manufactured if insufficiently bad to justify the successive outrages against the Constitution. As I wrote in April, Trump and his gang are moving so fast they will cross the point at which they deem a coup to be less risky than losing power.
I summarized the Trump-Putin call before it happened, to recap: Trump didn't pressure Russia or ask for any concessions & Putin didn't offer any. Putin agreed to keep murdering Ukrainian civilians and Trump agreed to keep pressuring Ukraine to surrender so he can call it peace.
Trump proposed a ceasefire, Ukraine agreed. Putin told him to fuck off. Trump fucked off. Trump, Rubio and Vance all now saying the "punishment" for Russia for continuing the war it started will be for the United States to walk away & do nothing, i.e. what Putin wanted.
They are desperate to announce some sort of deal as an excuse to lift sanctions on Russia and open channels of oligarch money that will compete with the Middle East. But Ukrainians know that Russian occupation is death & the end of their nation.
Trump is putting the US presidency on the level of thugs and dictators and arguing that America should be no better than terror sponsors and genocidal invaders. Abandoning values & idealism isn’t pragmatic or realistic. It’s opportunistic capitulation to our worst selves.
I wrote about this strain of amoral isolationism in Winter Is Coming, invoking Soviet dissidents who saw its failures and pernicious effects clearly. Abandoning the hallowed goal of universal human rights and liberty isn’t effective even if you don’t care about good and evil.
MAGA and the techno-fascists racing to embrace amoral and immoral policies as practical or even pro-peace are spitting on the graves of the countless people who died fighting for freedom against tyranny, and the even greater number of victims of tyranny.
This is why Putin is so desperate to get Trump to push through a Ukrainian surrender deal that he can say makes him the big winner. Ukraine winning doesn't mean attacking Russia, only defending its territory. The US not helping Ukraine is bad, but just don't help Russia.
We said as much about the Russian democratic opposition to Putin nearly 20 years ago. Stopping him was a fight for Russians, but even if you weren't going to help us, stop helping him crush Russian civil society by pretending he wasn't a dictator. They did not stop.
Now, Trump wants to help Russia destroy Ukraine by lifting sanctions and rehabilitating Putin politically when he and the Russian economy are weak. Are the Republicans, and Americans generally, going to be complicit in this betrayal of a US ally and of US interests?