The next two national elections will probably decide the fate of the American republic. And that means specifically whether our country continues to operate as a democracy dedicated to the preservation and expansion of human rights, or whether it descends into a quasi-fascist autocracy, seeking to limit and curtail those same rights and freedoms under the thumb of white, evangelical-oriented, right-wing minority rule.

Ukrainian officials say Russia is responsible for an explosion Friday morning in the Olenivka penal colony in the occupied Donetsk province that killed at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war. If Russia is proven responsible it would represent one of the worst war crimes committed by Russian forces since the Feb. 24 invasion.

The Senate dance of determining what Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin will vote for took another turn yesterday with an announcement that he’d agreed to support … well, something. The idea of the Senate doing any something at all, however, led Senate Republicans to take out their anger on a previously popular bill that would provide expanded medical care for poisoned war veterans. Yes, that’s how Republicanism works now.

On Tuesday night, Chris Cuomo made one of his first on-air appearances anywhere since being fired from CNN last December over his role in helping his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fend off accusations of sexual harassment. Cuomo’s appearance came on NewsNation, the fledgling news channel that replaced WGN America.

To this day, it remains utterly gobsmacking that Donald Trump got even one vote for president of the United States, much less tens of millions. He had no relevant experience in politics or, from the looks of it, business. And as humans go, he was a pretty below-average tapeworm.

And yet, somehow, the wheel of cosmically unlikely events slid right past “Zombie Gandhi gnaws your nips off” and landed squarely on “Donald Trump is president.

Ukraine has launched long-range artillery or HIMARS rockets into the Antonivskyi Bridge east of Kherson for a third night in a row, causing additional damage and closing the bridge to any kind of vehicular traffic. At Darivka, east of Kherson, the bridge across the Inhulets River that connects the city to traffic coming across the Kakhovka Bridge is also down, and the pontoon bridge which Russia had constructed there appears to be completely gone.

There is a direct pipeline of former federal immigration officials who have then gone to work for the private prison profiteers that make big bucks from jailing immigrants for the federal government. This includes officials from the previous administration, who, for their intentional anti-immigrant abuses, should be societal pariahs.