Hunter

Republicanism is rapidly merging with all manner of domestic extremism, and a new study paints a grim picture of just where things stand. As the Supreme Court’s new conservative wing sets its sights on unraveling federal abortion protections, support for abortion rights remains steadfast among Americans not pushed into lifetime judicial positions by Republican nihilists. Republicans continue to support lowering taxes on the wealthy while ratcheting taxes up for the non-wealthy, but Sen.

In the news today: More movement in the probe of the Jan. 6 insurrection, with the Justice Department now asking for copies of what the House congressional committee has pried out of witnesses. Calls to expand the Supreme Court keep growing. Oh, and a professional anti-abortion activist told Congress under oath that our electrical grid was powered by burning fetuses. So yeah, it does seem like civilization is on its last legs here.

Today in encroaching fascism, the United States Supreme Court asserted that checking the wrong box on a form is sufficient reason for deportation.

After a domestic terrorist citing neo-Nazi and white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theories killed 10 Americans in a Buffalo supermarket, Republicans are reacting angrily today to widespread criticism over their promotion of those same conspiracies in their own advertisements and rhetoric.

Once again, the conspiracy theories promoted by Fox News and Republican elected officials have resulted in an act of racist domestic terrorism.

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik was catapulted to a top House Republican leadership position after Republicans purged Rep. Liz Cheney from the role as punishment for speaking out against Donald Trump’s violent attempted coup.

Every new document describing Trump adviser John Eastman’s efforts to erase the 2020 United States presidential election seems more outrageous than the last; the latest release is of an email to a Pennsylvania Republican advising state lawmakers to simply declare that a certain percentage of votes would be “discarded” to account for unproven Republican-claimed fraud.

The United States Senate leaped to unanimous action after the leak of Alito’s draft opinion erasing federal abortion rights. Not to protect those rights, mind you, or to do anything else to begin to repair a Supreme Court that has been so stacked with far-right ideologues that it no longer bears any resemblance to the social fabric of the nation itself; the Senate instead swiftly acted to allow Supreme Court justices to use court officers to protect their families as well.

As state Republican elected officials waste no time in their efforts to kill off not just abortion rights, but even the right to use contraception, attempts by strategy-minded Republicans to get their party to temper such extremism for the sake of upcoming midterm elections aren’t going very far. Republicans know what they want: a rollback of the entire civil rights era. The leaked Alito draft opinion rejecting Roe v.

A new Supreme Court leak appeared on Sunday, and this one is definitely from the conservative wing of the court. The Washington Post described its sources as “three conservatives close to the court” and “a person close to the court’s most conservative members.

There’s now another big leak from The United States Supreme Court, and this one’s being unapologetically linked to the court’s conservative wing. The Washington Post has a new story in which multiple sources describe how Chief Justice John Roberts was planning to further carve away at Roe v. Wade by giving the court’s approval to the Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks, but wanted to dodge overturning Roe completely.

With the leaked news that the Supreme Court has the votes to erase federal abortion rights, allowing states to push forward whatever new bans they might desire, Republican states are wasting no time in writing up even more extreme legislation. In Louisiana, that means a new bill criminalizing abortion and charging women who obtain abortions with murder. Republican senators continue the tradition of lying flat-out about their own declared policy stances.

The now-telegraphed likely end of federal abortion rights in the United States continues to send the Republican politicians who have plotted that end for decades scurrying for cover; abortion rights remain overwhelmingly popular in this country, despite decades of demonization efforts by far-right theocrats, and the party must now turn its ample hoax-crafting powers on inventing reasons the public should not blame them for the very outcome that Senate Republicans and state lawmakers have

The Supreme Court leak of the draft opinion meant to erase abortion rights in this country rocked Washington, D.C., and the rest of the country, but for two different reasons. Most of the public strongly supports abortion rights and public fury is already rising as Americans learn of the planned decision and its Alito-written justification; most Republican lawmakers are in an absolute froth over the opinion being leaked before the Supreme Court revealed it publicly.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a small congressional delegation to Ukraine on Saturday, the details of which were not publicized until she had again left the country. Pelosi, Rep. Adam Schiff and others met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in yet another show of support towards Ukrainians currently fighting for their nation’s continued existence.

The situation on the ground remains as it was; few Russian gains, but continued Russian atrocities.

Your day probably hasn’t been weird enough, so let’s fix that right now with a quote from an ex-President of These United States.

“I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit,” said Donald J. Trump, previously in charge of this nation’s nuclear arsenal.

The situation on the ground in Ukraine continues to see only small changes, with Russian forces continuing to stage small attacks as Ukrainian defenders publicize equipment captures behind Russia’s frontlines. Russian state television continues to be apoplectic in their fury over … the rest of the world existing, for the most part.

The “major” Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine continues, producing minor Russian territorial gains as a “senior U.S. defense official” warns that Russia is still continuing to add to its forces in the region. 42 towns were captured by Russia on Thursday, according to Ukrainian officials.

Despite that, Ukraine’s government sounds the most optimistic of the two.

With the ubiquity of smartphones, the on-the-ground details of Russia’s war against Ukraine have been more closely documented than any war. The footage is omnipresent, even allowing independent observers to make detailed catalogs of destroyed equipment. The movement of Russian troops is being tracked by satellite, as well as by pinging electronic devices they have stolen and taken with them. We can hear individual conversations between Russian soldiers and their families.

After a day filled with mostly rumor and confusion, we finally know a bit more about how the newest of Russia’s major offensives is unfolding. It is a major attack; it is not the sort of highly coordinated and overwhelming campaign that Russia still insists it could pull off but which outside experts now believe is beyond the nation’s command competence. But it is a major threat, and Russia has been able to take some new ground already.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today publicly announced that Russia’s long-expected Donbas offensive has now begun, with Russia boosting offensive operations throughout eastern Ukraine. What precisely that means is not yet clear; while Russian missile and artillery strikes have escalated in the past few days, the details on Russian ground assaults aren’t yet known.

In a Kyiv interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again vowed that Ukraine wouldn’t be negotiating away territory in exchange for a Russian end to the war. Zelenskyy dismissed the idea not out of bluster, but for a more fundamental reason: There’s no evidence that Russia would abide by any such agreement.

“I don’t trust the Russian military and Russian leadership.

Russia’s state-owned news agency has now confirmed that the Russian warship Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, has sunk. The heavily damaged ship reportedly sank during an attempt to tow it back to port. Russia is being less forthcoming about the fate of the crew, thought to number over 500, the number claimed to have been successfully evacuated is far less.

Today has seen little evident movement in Ukraine—literally—as spring rains fall on much of the region, kicking off “mud season” in the flat farmlands of eastern Ukraine. Behind those frontlines, both Russian attackers and Ukrainian defense forces are continuing to frantically rush whatever equipment they can to the Donbas in preparation for what may be the decisive campaign of the war.

Over the weekend, U.S. intelligence analysts warned that Russia was massing forces for a large offensive out of now-captured Izyum all the way to Dnipro, a distance of over 200 kilometers. U.S. intelligence has been on point throughout the war, but to outside observers the move seems utterly implausible.

As Russia continues to mass troops in Ukraine’s east, U.S. military leaders are warning that they expect Russia to launch a “major” offensive from the captured city of Izyum in coming days. What we don’t know, however, is what such an offensive will truly look like.

On one hand, Russia is massing “hundreds” of vehicles in new convoys headed towards Izyum in preparation for such an offensive.

The number of refugees who have fled Ukraine after Russia’s invasion has now topped 4.5 million, according to the United Nations, and is expected to grow even more as Ukrainian officials to advise civilians in Luhansk and Donetsk to leave those regions before new Russian attacks.

Getting out, however, remains dangerous. The death toll from a Russian missile strike on a Kramatorsk train platform crowded with evacuating civilians has now risen to 57.

Russia continues to shift already-battered forces toward Eastern Ukraine and has made new moves around Kherson, but there’s still no clear picture of what Russia’s actual next plans might be.

The atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha have resulted in world fury. They may not, however, be an outlier.