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.

I’ve been on a rampage against claims that Ukraine suffers from a massive artillery deficit (here, here, and here). Ukraine has a vested interest in pleading poverty, building urgency among the international community for more aid. But the evidence suggests Ukraine is holding its own. 

Mark made this map a few days ago, showing NASA FIRMS fire data from around the Severodonetsk area. Red dots are artillery fires in Russian territory, blue ones in Ukrainian territory.

It was a day of stunning developments in the House select committee hearings on the Jan. 6 coup attempt. A released email revealed that Trump lawyer John Eastman requested a presidential pardon after helping to spearhead the plan that would have had Vice President Mike Pence unilaterally throw out the electoral votes of several Biden-won states—a plan that witnesses told the committee was clearly criminal.

As with all writing, the secret to crafting an effective standup routine is to write what you know. Sadly, Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert doesn’t know much about anything, so she’s forced to hope that asking the infinitely compassionate, eternally beneficent God of the universe to kill the president is somehow funny.

I’ve taken time to enjoy some of the farm life over the last few months, at least off and on. We take time to care for horses, our chickens, and a few other animals. In more rural Kansas, the horses are at a point where thanks to the heat and high humidity, they need aggressive water planning as well as more frequent “spray downs” because trees that would traditionally provide cover aren’t doing as well in the last year.

by Jenn Fang

This article was originally published at Prism.

Based on the recent leak of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion draft, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to strike down Roe v. Wade this year and eliminate constitutional protections for abortion access. The effects will be catastrophic for many marginalized communities, including Asian Americans, whom public health and political opinion data often overlook and treat as a monolith.