On Wednesday, as Ukraine marked its independence day, Vladimir Putin put his signature to an order officially increasing the number of slots in the Russian army to over 2 million. While that sounds impressive, it was clearly a declaration with only symbolic value, as the total number of people in the Russian army is currently well below 1 million. There are plenty of empty helmets to fill—assuming Russia can find the helmets.

Earlier this month, Gov. Ron DeSantis held one of his patented one-way press conferences, where he channels Donald Trump’s blunt bullying style and declares he’s doing great things. It was during this press conference that he announced that his Gestapo-style election’s enforcement apparatus was already hard at work excising bad actors from the voter rolls.

Blake Masters is feeling the heat on abortion. The Arizona Republican Senate nominee is frantically backing away from his very well-documented positions and trying to portray Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly as the extreme one. 

Masters has dramatically scrubbed his campaign website’s abortion policy page, as if someone wasn’t going to be right there with screenshots of the stuff he took out. NBC News has the goods.

If you thought the House Select Committee Investigating Jan. 6 was thorough, keep your eye on the Georgia special grand jury investigating the interference in the 2020 presidential election—Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is not playing around.

The special grand jury convened by Willis has asked for testimony from a slew of top Donald Trump associates, from his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to Sen.

Everyone’s heard it and plenty of us have said it: Democrats need stronger messaging. Team Blue doesn’t often talk the same talk as those across the aisle and under that burning dumpster next to the manure pile. And while that’s not a bad thing—Republican rhetoric has led to appalling acts of violence, terrorism, and a whole-ass insurrection, after all—a bit of a stronger tone is sometimes warranted.

This is one of those times.

Yesterday was Independence Day in Ukraine, which Russia appears to have celebrated mostly in the same way it has celebrated every day for months: with a reported 98 towns shelled, missiles falling in Ukrainian cities (including at least 65 civilian casualties at a train station in Chaplyne, 100 miles from the front), and with many, many failed attempts to capture Ukrainian towns and villages.

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced his plan to relieve some of the student debt causing a trillion-dollar economic crisis for tens of millions of Americans—mostly the young, women, and people of color. The plan calls for canceling up to $10,000 in debt for student borrowers who make less than $125,000 a year and $20,000 in relief for Pell Grant recipients with similar incomes.

It’s been more than three years since former Attorney General William Barr issued his infamous “summary” of the report created by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The arrests this week of five Florida militiamen who called themselves the “B Squad” for their violent actions on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol serve as a helpful reminder that the Justice Department is still in the process of bringing the insurrectionists who attacked American democracy that day—now over 860 and counting—to justice.