In Trump's Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP

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For the West, Ukraine is a good cause but not central to its grand strategy. For Putin, it is a key Russian national interest. Russia is next door and has deep ties to the country. Ukrainians have said that Russian spies are active in every part of the country, including the government. Putin can find many ways to keep Ukraine crippled, weak and dysfunctional. Trenin speculates that, if Moscow’s negotiations with NATO were to fail, Russia might recognize the two eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, where separatists have proclaimed “people’s republics.” 

But why is Putin doing this now? Partly, he sees NATO creating a de facto alliance with Kyiv. At the same time, Putin must be aware that this is a moment of Russian strength. At a time when there is a growing energy crisis around the world, Russia has consolidated its position as an energy superpower.

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With his massive Build Back Better plan stalled in the Senate, President Biden said on Wednesday that Democrats would break up the $1.75 trillion spending package into pieces to try to pass its most important aspects.  

“It’s clear to me that we're going to have to probably break it up,” Biden said at a White House press conference marking his first year in office. “I think that we can get — I’ve been talking to a number of my colleagues on the Hill — I think it’s clear that we would be able to get the $500-plus billion for energy and the environment issues that are there.”

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The Supreme Court rejected a request today from abortion providers in Texas that a federal judge be allowed to take prompt action on their challenge to a state law that bans most abortions after six weeks. The practical effect of the order, the three liberal justices wrote in dissent, was to let the law stay in place indefinitely.

“This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women in Texas, who have a right to control their own bodies,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent.

The majority gave no reasons for its ruling, which followed a decision last month allowing the providers to sue at least some state officials to try to block or limit the law. That victory was an empty one, the dissenting justices wrote on Thursday, because the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, refused to return the case to the trial judge and instead sent it on a legal detour to a state court.

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The SCOTUS ruling last week shutting down the Biden administration’s effort to enlist large employers in its vaccination campaign, experts said, would trigger a new wave of uncertainty about how companies keep workers safe from Covid-19.

Now Starbucks, with 9,000 U.S. coffee shops and 200,000 workers, has become one of the first major retailers to backtrack on vaccine plans since the ruling.

Also, more than 1,700 people have signed a petition calling on administrators at Stanford University to repeal their COVID-19 booster vaccine mandate for students. The petition, created last week by 23-year-old PhD student Monte Fischer, quickly gained the attention of students, alumni and professors opposed to the university’s Dec. 16 order, which requires that all students provide proof of a booster dose by the end of the month, exempting only those with approved religious or medical exemptions. “We are not anti-booster or anti-vaccination,” Fischer wrote in the petition. “We are pro-bodily autonomy, and support the rights of Stanford students to evaluate the data and make their own medical choices.”

The Berkeley-based concert production company behind Outside Lands said it is working in partnership with Bay Properties, Inc. — the owners of the theater — to implement a series of renovations within the historic space in the coming months, making improvements to the theater’s sound system, lighting, production, heating, ventilation and air conditioning as well as upgrades to its signature vertical neon sign. A new screen and expanded backstage area are also in the works.

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SCOTUS is allowing the release of congressional records 

 In a rebuff to former President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court is allowing the release of presidential documents sought by the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

Following the high court’s action, there is no legal impediment to turning over the documents, which are held by the National Archives and Records Administration. They include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes dealing with Jan. 6 from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Alone among the justices, Clarence Thomas said he would have granted Trump’s request to keep the documents on hold.

Trump’s attorneys had asked the high court to reverse rulings by the federal appeals court in Washington and block the release of the records even after President Joe Biden waived executive privilege over them.

In an unsigned opinion, the court acknowledged there are “serious and substantial concerns” over whether a former president can win a court order to prevent disclosure of certain records from his time in office in a situation like this one.

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Marking the end of his first year in office with a long, wide-ranging formal press conference, President Biden said it had been "a year of challenges, but also a year of enormous progress," citing statistics on vaccinations, job creation and cuts to child poverty.

"Still for all this progress, I know there's a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country," Biden said during lengthy opening remarks, referencing the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about inflation.

He acknowledged that his administration could have been quicker to boost testing for the virus. "Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes. But we're doing more now," he said.

And while he emphasized that the nation had endured "two years of physical, emotional, psychological weight" of the pandemic, he said America still had a bright future.

"Some people call this a new normal. I call it a job not-yet-finished," Biden said.

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Seeking to head off a potential assault on Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will meet with Russia’s foreign minister on Friday as the two sides explore whether there is still a diplomatic path to avoiding a conflict in Eastern Europe.

The talks will try to break a deadlock that was thrown into sharp relief last week when a series of three negotiating sessions between Russia and the West ended in an impasse. The thorniest issue was Russia’s demand that NATO pledge not to expand eastward, a condition that the United States and Western Europe have rejected.

The White House said on Tuesday that Mr. Blinken would “urge Russia to take immediate steps to de-escalate.”

“We’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point want an attack in Ukraine,” said the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, “and what Secretary Blinken is going to do is highlight very clearly that there is a diplomatic path forward.”

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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas 

Tuesday to Rudy Giuliani and three other allies of former President Donald Trump involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The committee said Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Boris Epshteyn "publicly promoted unsupported claims about the 2020 election and participated in attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of election results." 

"The four individuals we’ve subpoenaed today advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn the election results, or were in direct contact with the former President about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes," Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in a statement. 

Giuliani, Ellis and Powell were some of the most visible advocates of the former president's stolen election lies, and appeared together at a news conference at Republican National Committee headquarters in November 2020 baselessly alleging that Trump had been the victim of "centralized" voter fraud. Powell was later publicly removed from the legal team, but continued filing legal challenges to the election.

 

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