Paul Hennessy/ZUMA

The false narrative of rampant voter fraud defouling US elections has been around for decades. But fueled in large part by Donald Trump’s persistent lies about the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, the myth of voter fraud appears to continually be reaching an apotheosis, only to pass it.

Now, enter another dystopian turn: Election cops. The country’s first election police force is poised to make its debut in Governor Ron DeSantis’ Florida.

The state’s GOP-controlled legislature on Wednesday approved a bill that includes a measure to create the “Office of Election Crimes and Security,” which will hire election investigators that aren’t sworn officers of the law, in order to crack down on voter fraud at the ballot box. According to CNN, the squad will have the power to launch independent investigations “into allegations of election law violations or election irregularities in this state.” Voting organizations found in violation of Florida’s already stringent election laws will have their fine caps increased from $1,000 to a staggering $50,000.

Critics say the plan is a recipe for disaster that’s all but certain to intimidate voters and suppress the vote. But it’s also a curious one for DeSantis, considering his own praise for how the 2020 election was conducted. “The way Florida did it, I think inspires confidence, I think that’s how elections should be run,” the Florida Republican had said at the time. Only three instances of voter fraud were identified in the state—and two of the cases involved registered Republicans.

But as my colleague Ari Berman has reported, the exceedingly low instances of voter fraud haven’t stopped the GOP, let alone DeSantis, from adopting extreme voting measures around the country. Thanks to DeSantis, who is widely expected to run for president, we can now add an election police force to the list.

John Raoux/AP

Hey, I’m about to say a series of things that makes it feel like you have lived past the point of the world making sense—maybe even gives you the creeping concern democracy (or at the very least America) is, as Lou Reed sang, “done.” I apologize.

Anyway: The former president (the one from the violent attempted coup and leader of the ongoing effort to enshrine minority rule via legalese) went on a YouTube podcast called “Full Send,” which focuses on the UFC and masculinity, to talk about the war in Ukraine.

On the show—titled “Donald Trump on WW3, Talking to Putin and Joe Rogan!“—he said that the war would never have happened if he were still president. And then it segues into talking about how windmills are bad.

Here’s the clip:

OMG I’m dying!!! On a UFC podcast today, Trump is asked how he sees the war in Ukraine playing out and he launches into a riff about windmills! pic.twitter.com/S2nV6hLIbP

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 10, 2022

Yeah, it’s weird.

But to connect the dots (which Trump does not), Trump is basically getting at the idea of energy independence from Russia. Gas prices are spiking because of our reliance, and the world’s, on Russian fossil fuel. (It’s not helped by the United Arab Emirates seeming to collude with their fellow oil barons.) In response, many on the left have noted that this is a good example of how we need to switch to a greener economy—which is a compact way of saying it’d be nice if the entire economy did not rely on something causing climate change (which is in the process of wrecking the world) and that also empowers oligarch regimes (who are attempting to speed up that whole world ruination process).

The thing is, despite that tangential connection, and despite this being really weird—and kind of funny, I guess, if you don’t think too much about the fact that he could still be president—Donald Trump actually does this a lot. He is obsessed with windmills.

You know what he did in one of his speeches after he was impeached in 2019? He talked about windmills. “I never understood wind,” Trump said at the time. “I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody.” He went on to talk about how they kill birds. 

And it wasn’t the first time. Before that, in April 2019, Trump talked about how wind turbine noise “causes cancer.” (There is no evidence of this.) In 2019, the Washington Post ran down the longer history “of Donald Trump’s feud with his one true nemesis: Windmills.” (Nice photoshop here of him looking like Don Quixote.)

This is a consistent villain he will critique. Putin: not as consistent on the critiques. But a windmill? Donald Trump will talk shit about a windmill.

Starbucks Workers United members celebrate a victory after watching the union vote count in Mesa, Arizona, last month.Alexandra Buxbaum/AP

Starbucks workers at three more Buffalo-area stores voted to unionize on Wednesday afternoon. The votes were close. The union won by a 15-12 margin at two locations and a 8-7 margin at the third store.

Starbucks Workers United, an SEIU affiliate, has now won six of the seven elections that have been held since December. In total, workers at 126 Starbucks locations across dozens of states have petitioned for union representation.

After using progressive branding to become a $100 billion company, Starbucks has resorted to an aggressive union-busting campaigns to try to prevent its workers from organizing. In the lead up to Wednesday’s vote workers at the Depew, New York location said the company used aggressive tactics: scheduling pro-union workers for opening and closing shifts during the same week and subjecting employees to frequent surveillance from out-of-state managers. 

Starbucks has taken their union busting campaign to a new level for the next 3 Buffalo stores preparing for a union election. They changed their strategy from playing the ‘nice guy’ to waging psychological warfare on partners. Here’s what’s going on at the Depew location:

— SBWorkersUnited (@SBWorkersUnited) December 14, 2021

The three Buffalo-area locations asked the National Labor Relations Board to hold union elections four months ago. Like at other locations, Starbucks responded by using lawyers from Littler Mendelson, a firm well known for its union-busting work, to delay the elections as the company tried to undermine support for unionization. That led to the votes at the three Buffalo-area locations being impounded last month. They were finally counted on Wednesday. 

Colin Cochran, a barista at the Walden & Anderson store in Buffalo, said in a statement that Starbucks closed the location for two months and hired more than 20 new workers after workers petitioned for union representation. “They upended our store in every way, scared and divided partners, and demonized those of us who believe that we deserve better,” Cochran added. “And we still won.”

As I wrote last month, describing the expansion of the union drive to the company’s flagship stores, the pandemic and the initial victories at another Buffalo-area Starbucks locations in early December have been turning points for many of the company’s workers.

[Melissa Slabaugh’s] perspective shifted during the pandemic, when the Seattle Roastery ran on skeleton crews as colleagues got sick with Covid-19 and managers refused to reduce the store’s hours. She internalized how degrading it could be to hold one of the supposedly low-skilled positions that lead to being treated as dispensable. Then there’s the perennial frustration of working as a bartender at a place where customers are not allowed to tip via credit card. Sam LaGow was similarly excited to join the New York Roastery after a few years at a Starbucks off Union Square. The labor shortages and other stresses of working in food service during a pandemic got to him, too.

But for both, the idea of forming a union seemed impossible. Buffalo changed that. LaGow started seeing how unions could protect service workers, not just people in industries like construction. Slabaugh realized unions weren’t reserved for people like her mom, a teacher. Their colleagues, who skew young and left, were quickly coming to the same conclusion.

Wilfredo Lee/AP

The Florida state Senate voted Tuesday to approve a bill that would ban discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade classrooms. The bill, having already passed in the state House of Representatives, now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it into law.

Most of the bill is innocuous fluff, outlining parents’ rights to access their students’ medical records. This buries the offending bit, which reads:

Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

DeSantis has been very upset that people are calling the bill “Don’t Say Gay.” But how else would you describe the effect of the above clause?

The bill also specifies how parents may bring a lawsuit against the school district if they believe their rights have been violated. Critics fear that the vagueness of the phrase “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” could lead to superfluous lawsuits while creating uncertainty for students and teachers of all grade levels about how much discussion of LGBTQ issues the law permits.

Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ press secretary, has been tweeting her defense of the bill non-stop. This weekend, she caused an uproar among liberals when she referred to the legislation as the “Anti-Grooming Bill,” implying that discussions of gender identity or sexual orientation with kids were tantamount to child abuse. “If you’re against the anti-Grooming bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4- to 8-year-old children,” she wrote. “Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the rules.” (Please read my colleague Ali Breland’s fantastic essay on why right-wingers are obsessed with pedophilia.)

This is just the latest in a series of Republican-backed “culture war” bills that seek to legislate problems that don’t exist. While health care consistently ranks among the top issues for Florida’s aging populace, DeSantis & co. continue stoking the flames of issues that matter only to Twitter addicts, to no one’s benefit.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and his partner in crime, Gov. Ron DeSantisJoe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel/TNS/Zuma

Contrary to both good sense and the CDC’s advice, the Florida Department of Health plans to be the first to recommend against vaccinating healthy children for Covid.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who has promoted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin while remaining publicly skeptical of Covid vaccines, made the announcement at a roundtable discussion with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis this afternoon.

“We’re kind of scraping at the bottom of the barrel, particularly with healthy kids, in terms of actually being able to quantify with any accuracy and any confidence the even potential of benefit,” he said. In reality, the Pfizer vaccine has been found to be 91 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infections in children 5 and older.

Children have always been at lower risk of hospitalization and death from Covid than adults, but the arguments against vaccinating them amount to little more than fear (ironically for Ladapo) of an extremely rare inflammation of the heart more likely to be caused by the coronavirus itself. Plus, kids can likely still carry the virus and spread it to adults. More than a harsh rebuke of established scientific knowledge, Florida’s decision is, like the state’s Don’t Say Gay bill, a politics of grievance paraded as one of common sense. Science will always have doubts. But using those quirks to advocate for policies that harm others doesn’t make sense. That is, unless the only data you care about comes in the form of polls.

Evan Vucci/AP

In his forthcoming memoir recounting his time in the Trump White House, Bill Barr is clearly eager to shed the image of a doggedly loyal attorney general. “Off the rails” is how Barr describes his former boss in the book, a disparagement that made headlines last month. Trump’s persistent election lies are “bullshit,” Barr told NPR in a recent interview promoting his book release. Even the title of Barr’s memoir, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of An Attorney General, gestures at seething frustration.

Barr’s resistance to Trump’s lies about a stolen election, which sparked his resignation in December 2020, is indeed notable; his new interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, in which Barr repeated his condemnation of Trump’s ongoing election fraud claims, has already produced a three-page letter from the former president. (You can read Trump’s response, full of petty insults for Barr, here.) 

But it’s difficult to square these new gestures of defiance with Barr’s stubborn defenses of some of his most notorious actions as Trump’s top lawyer. He’s still the person who released a four-page letter summarizing then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. He helped bring back the federal death penalty, dabbled in voter suppression, and lied. And he seems largely fine with that record, even proud.

In the interview with Holt that aired Sunday, Barr said he “totally” rejected criticisms about the 2019 letter. The next day on the “Today Show,” Barr also said that he had mostly been content with the Trump presidency—that is until the 2020 election. He went on to defend his decision to fire Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office was overseeing multiple Trump-related investigations.

“I hadn’t really thought much of him,” Barr said, effectively shrugging off the outrage that Berman’s firing had prompted. Barr also declined, on multiple occasions, to say that Trump was legally responsible for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol or the apparent mishandling of classified information.

But perhaps the most damning moment of Barr’s current media tour came Monday when the former attorney general said that it would be “inconceivable” for him to vote for a Democrat even if Trump, a man he now publicly describes as unhinged, was the Republican nominee. “Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party, it’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee,” he told Guthrie.

So there you have it. There’s not much love lost between Barr and Trump—especially if the alternative is a Democrat. Add him to the long list of former Trump appointees trying to cash in on their unreliable narratives.

In this May 15, 2015 courtroom sketch, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, center, stands with his defense attorneys at the Moakley Federal court house in the penalty phase of his trial in Boston.Jane Flavell Collins/AP

In a 6-3 party-line ruling, the Supreme Court today restored the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the notorious terrorist who planned and carried out the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon with his brother Tamerlan.

In one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism since 9/11, the Tsarnaev brothers placed two pressure cooker bombs near the marathon finish line, which detonated, killing three people and injuring 260 more. In the days following, the brothers murdered an MIT police officer and engaged in a firefight with law enforcement in Watertown, Massachusetts, during which Tamerlan Tsarnaev sustained injuries that led to his death. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was later apprehended during a massive manhunt that effectively shut down the greater Boston area. 

Tsarnaev received the death penalty in 2015. Five years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld his conviction but ruled that he should not have been sentenced to death, citing concerns that the trial judge had not taken adequate steps to ensure that jurors had not been swayed by pretrial coverage of the case. In addition, the appeals court ruled that the trial judge should not have excluded evidence linking Tamerlan Tsarnaev to a triple murder that took place before the bombings, saying that it could have helped shore up Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s argument that his brother had dominated him into carrying out the attack. This ruling was in turn appealed to the Supreme Court. 

In a strange twist, the Supreme Court’s conservative members today sided with the Biden Department of Justice. The department argued for the restoration of Tsarnaev’s original death sentence, over the objections of the court’s liberal justices, and despite assurances from the president about a change in policy on executions.

Joe Biden, who personally opposes capital punishment, had previously vowed to “eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.” In addition, the Justice Department’s decision to take up the case from Trump lawyers seems to contradict a moratorium on death penalty cases that the department announced last year. 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett also seemed to change her stated opposition to the death penalty by filing a concurrence supporting Tsarnaev’s execution. When Barrett was a law clerk, she coauthored an article published in the Marquette Law Review arguing that orthodox Catholic judges (such as herself) should recuse themselves from death penalty cases rather than put themselves in the position of potentially having to violate the teachings of their church. As a justice, Barrett has previously voted to allow federal executions to proceed, but her vote today was additionally striking because it helped reinstate a death sentence that had previously been overturned. 

Migrant family wearing face masks crosses the border into El Paso, Texas.Christian Chavez/AP

Cities across the country may have been winding down pandemic restrictions in response to a downward trend in Covid cases, but the Biden administration has continued to enforce an obscure Trump-era public health order, known as Title 42, to summarily expel migrants and asylum seekers arriving at the US-Mexico border. But on Friday, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that even though the government has the authority to return migrants under the provision invoked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in March 2020, it can’t send migrant families to countries where they could face harm.

“From a public-health perspective, based on the limited record before us, it’s far from clear that the CDC’s order serves any purpose,” Judge Justin Walker wrote in a 32-page decision on behalf of a three-judge panel, two of whom were appointed by then-president Donald Trump. Title 42, the ruling further states, “looks in certain respects like a relic from an era with no vaccines, scarce testing, few therapeutics, and little certainty.” 

The Biden administration has fiercely defended the policy in court, despite opposition from immigrant rights groups and public health experts, and the fact that ports of entry have been open for tourists and travelers. As my colleague Fernanda Echavarri wrote in January, the Department of Justice has argued that the policy is necessary to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in crowded detention settings, which would pose a risk to migrants and border patrol agents alike. 

However, ACLU lead attorney Lee Gelernt, who represents the refuge-seeking migrant families suing the US government, argued that the people affected by Title 42 expulsions make up only 0.01 percent of the traffic coming in from Mexico—and that the other 99.9 percent is able to come and go between the two countries even as the pandemic continues. All ports of entry have been opened for travelers and tourists, and air travel between the two countries continues unrestricted. So, it’s hard not to ask: What makes this small percentage more of a risk to US residents than travelers with visas and US passports? 

During fiscal year 2021, the Biden administration conducted more than one million expulsions under Title 42, which denies migrants the right to request asylum. Unaccompanied minors and some families have been exempted. The policy also pushes migrants to take more risks by undertaking repeated attempts at crossing the border through ever more dangerous routes, increasing the rates of rescues conducted by CBP and of migrant deaths, as my previous reporting for Mother Jones has shown. 

“Today’s decision is a win for immigrants and confirms what we have been fighting for,” Tami Goodlette, director of litigation at the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), said in a statement, “that the expulsion of immigrants under Title 42 is inhumane, immoral, and illegal and it must end.” The group asks the Biden administration not to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. 

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.