The Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kherson area is continuing, but as Ukrainian forces advances into positions that Russia has fortified and reinforced, they’re running into an issue. It’s not that need to send them 1,000 new artillery, a million more rocket launchers, and whatever else is being demanded on social media today. It’s the problem every army has: advancing into a prepared defensive position is extremely difficult.

There are few reasons to admire Sen. Lindsey Graham. Actually, that’s not quite right. There are no reasons to admire Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Still, every now and then, just by accident, Graham gets something exactly right, and at the “Faith and Freedom Coalition” meeting held this week in Nashville, Graham managed to do something that might even seem amazing. In just two sentences, Graham deftly defined the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

The GOP colleagues of embattled Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming just don’t get it.

On Yom Kippur 2019, I survived a white nationalist mass shooting in Halle, Germany.

Halle, with its squat stone castle, spiked medieval church, and cobblestone market square, sits along the river Saale. During the second World War, prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp built combat aircraft at the Siebel plant, just miles away from where the neo-Nazi attacked us.

After the shooting, I became a co-plantiff in the trial against the shooter.

Microsoft entered a neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America, saying it would not get in the way of Activision Blizzard workers’ union rights if it acquires the video game company. This is believed to be the first such neutrality agreement in the tech industry, and it is a major one, affecting most of Activision Blizzard’s nearly 7,000 U.S. workers.

It has now been two full months since Russian forces completely withdrew from the areas around Kyiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv. In the process, Russia left behind an amazing collection of ruined vehicles, a maddening series of ruined villages, and sickening evidence of massive war crimes. 

In the time since what the media had treated as Russia’s unstoppable “convoys” turned around and rolled back to Belarus, Russia has made significant gains in eastern Ukraine.

Welcome back to another Friday! Remember how all of those children and all of those Black folks were murdered with legal high-powered weapons over the past couple of weeks? Remember how the Republican Party jumped past thoughts and prayers and into saying everything is political and something about how we didn’t ban planes after 9/11? Those Senate Republicans are now scuttling the compromised gun safety bill that they agreed to. Yes.

Among the various failings of the Mueller investigation into 2016 was the fact that the probe never managed to establish Donald Trump’s clear intent despite the damning web of connections between his campaign and the Kremlin.

The select committee investigating Jan. 6 has made avoiding that trap the central focus of its work.

A raft of MAGA Republicans advanced to win their primaries, fueled by the Big Lie that the 2020 election, voter fraud, and the nefarious deep state have ensured that all the elections are rigged. But as this AP report details, they are cynically silent about their own victories. The elections that absolutely couldn’t be trusted can apparently be trusted just this once, at least among the primary winners.

Companies around the planet are suing for big bucks under trade agreements in their fight against climate action and playing pretend with “net zero” pledges. Many national, state, and local administrations are pushing climate-addressing goals onto the back burner in the face of war, supply chain ailments, and high prices at the gas pump. These problems, of course, are all woven together.