A little good news

A long time coming, but Alexander Vindman's brother wins his whistleblower case and gets a promotion to Colonel to boot.

Let yourself be encouraged where you can

Early primaries could give you hope.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano appears to have blown up GOP plans in Pennsylvania.

A far-right election denier and a leading force in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, Mastriano is viewed by many Republican operatives as a liability in a critical swing state, likely headed for a thrashing in the suburbs in November. Some state Republicans are considering publicly supporting the Democratic nominee, Josh Shapiro, while the Republican Governors Association may not even put money into the race.

[...]

Everything about Pennsylvania’s swing state electorate suggests Mastriano is a dead man walking.

[...]

The most surprising thing about Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s demise on Tuesday was not that he lost, but that he admitted it.

  Politico

Trump is reportedly telling his preferred candidate, Mehmet Oz, to just claim victory. Which is what Trump did in 2020.

In North Carolina, Trump’s support pulled Bo Hines, a 26-year-old who came out of nowhere, to a House primary victory. The endorsement was a show of Trump’s force, but some Republicans view Hines as a vulnerable general election candidate, and the endorsement infuriated some local Republicans who have toiled in the party vineyards for years.

[...]

But that isn’t as important for Trump, politically, as burnishing his win-loss record and nurturing adherents to his own cause. Ultimately, the outcome in November doesn’t matter.

[...]

In Idaho, where Trump’s endorsed candidate in the gubernatorial race, Janice McGeachin, lost badly on Tuesday, Trump’s needless intervention did nothing other than fuel an intraparty civil war. Same story in Georgia, which holds its primary next week.

[...]

For Trump, the win-loss record in the primaries has become something close to an obsession. But it is designed to be a game that Trump cannot lose. As one Trump adviser said, even a primary loss is not a “loss-loss.” That’s because he’ll get another crack at it in November. He can always endorse a nominee then.

  Politico

He's been bragging about his win record in Ohio where all of his endorsed candidates won. But that was Ohio. And for most of those 22 races, he endorsed whoever was running ahead in polls or had no challengers just before the voting started. Obviously, so he could brag about his endorsement record.

[T]he Trump-backed effort to unseat incumbent Gov. Brad Little was a fairly good test of Trump-ism, its flop a demonstration of Trump’s limits. Trump’s vehicle in Idaho, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, was far from a perfect candidate. But she had some credibility by virtue of her office. And she knew how to make a splash, using her power to issue executive orders, including banning mask mandates, when Little traveled out of state.

It wasn’t enough. In a state where Trump beat Biden by 30 percentage points and carried all but three counties in 2020, Little was crushing McGeachin when the race was called.

And it’s just a warmup. Next week, in a much higher-profile contest in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp is widely expected to finish first in the primary, ahead of Trump-backed Sen. David Perdue.

[...]

Trump’s endorsement is still the most coveted currency in Republican primary politics. His preferred candidate in an open gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, Mastriano, won. But sitting governors have brands of their own and a familiarity with voters that may matter more than outside intervention — even from the former president. In a party dominated by Trump, it’s an office even Trump is having difficulty figuring out how to crack.

It could be that Trump endorsements for congressional seats works because people aren't as familiar with congressional aspirants as they are with their governors.

As for the Democrats, progressives raked in the wins in recent primaries.

John Fetterman was expected to win the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania for so long that it could be easy to overlook how big a win it was for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

And the evening got better after that.

In Oregon, first-time candidate Carrick Flynn, who had the support of the leadership-aligned House Majority PAC, conceded to Andrea Salinas, a progressive state lawmaker endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), in the open 6th Congressional District. In the state’s 5th District, moderate incumbent Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) was trailing progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner by a wide margin with 46 percent of the expected vote in.

[...]

In North Carolina, two progressives, Nida Allam and Erica Smith, went down in open seat House primaries. But even with those losses — and even if the results in Oregon and Pennsylvania turn — it will go down as a good night for the left.

[...]

Next week comes another big test for the left — and one where internal polling suggests progressives are in a strong position. That’s in Texas, where supporters of Jessica Cisneros are rallying around the revelation of a Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, in an effort to unseat Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), an anti-abortion Democrat.

This kind of thing makes you wonder about Democratic leaders and pundits claiming that progressives are bringing down the party, and that's why Joe Biden is losing support. I keep wondering if they haven't got it backwards: maybe Democrats are souring on Joe because he's not progressive enough.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

So sad, Mad

Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a freshman Republican who's been beset by scandal since taking office last year, has been ousted in a heated primary in North Carolina's 11th Congressional District, according to a race call from The Associated Press.

Cawthorn lost to state Sen. Chuck Edwards, who had received the backing of some Republicans who had tired of Cawthorn's controversies.

[...]

The result is a stunning defeat for Cawthorn, who is a fervent supporter of former President Donald Trump — and who had Trump's endorsement.

  NPR

So now is he free to name names about those orgies and drug use he claimed?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Finland and Sweden apply to join NATO

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has European nations rethinking their situation.

Nato ambassadors are expected to discuss the applications on Wednesday and could give the green light to opening formal talks with the pair on their requests, but Turkey has raised objections that could delay or even derail the process.

[...]

Finland shares an 810-mile (1,300km) border with Russia and has maintained strict policies of neutrality then non-alignment since the end of the second world war, viewing Nato membership as a provocation of Moscow. Sweden has stayed out of military alliances and has not fought a war for more than 200 years.

[...]

All 30 Nato members need to approve the enlargement, which must then be ratified by their parliaments, taking up to a year. The alliance has said it wants to move as fast as possible given the potential Russian threat over Finland and Sweden’s heads.

[...]

Ankara has said its objections are rooted in what it describes as Sweden and Finland’s support for members of Kurdish militant groups, and their decisions in 2019 to impose arms export embargos on Ankara over Turkey’s military operations in Syria.

[...]

Many analysts believe the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who faces elections next year, is seeking concessions for domestic political advantage and unlikely ultimately to veto the applications.

  Guardian

Turkey and Hungary seem likely candidates for expulsion from NATO, but the organization never formally provided for such a move.

Within NATO, concerns over the behaviour of individual allies are [...] resolved primarily through diplomatic means, political pressure, and by taking a long-term view. As Jorge Benitez of the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington put it, NATO leaders tend to “wait out the misbehaving national leaders until a government consistent with alliance values eventually returns to power.”

  Just Security

Which, when a country finds itself ruled by a strongman/dictator, could be never.

The annex to the Washington Paper of September 1948, which contained the first outline of the future agreement, noted the following:

The question of including a provision for disqualification under certain circumstances of any of the signatories from enjoying the benefits of the Treaty requires further consideration.

In the eyes of the Canadian government, the circumstances that might justify the disqualification of a party had to include the “coming into power of a communist-dominated government” in that state (Commentary on the Washington Paper, Dec. 6, 1948). To deal with such an eventuality, Canada proposed a draft provision entitling the North Atlantic Council to suspend or expel a member state from the privileges of membership (Draft North Atlantic Treaty, Dec. 17, 1948).

[...]

The general feeling among the other negotiating parties was that it would be a mistake to include any provision in the treaty that would raise questions about the voting procedure in the Council.

[...]

The idea to incorporate some kind of suspension and expulsion mechanism into the North Atlantic Treaty was therefore dropped.

[...]

[M]aintaining and furthering the principles on which the Alliance is based — democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law — forms part of the object and purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty. This, in turn, suggests that a failure to comply with these principles may amount to a material breach of the treaty within the meaning of Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Pursuant to Article 60, a material breach consists of:

(a) a repudiation of the treaty not sanctioned by the present Convention; or

(b) the violation of a provision essential to the accomplishment of the object or purpose of the treaty.

To constitute a material breach pursuant to sub-paragraph (a), the violation of the principles underlying the treaty would have to be so extensive in scope, so severe and so persistent as to effectively “disavow” or repudiate the treaty

[...]

Should the conditions for the existence of a material breach be satisfied, NATO’s member states would be entitled, by unanimous agreement, to suspend the operation of the treaty in whole or in part or to terminate it either in their relations with the defaulting state or among them all (Article 60(2) of the Vienna Convention). For these purposes, a unanimous decision of the North Atlantic Council, excluding the defaulting state, would suffice.

In the meantime, countries like Turkey and Hungary, with their "soft" dictatorships, remain in the alliance and can veto any future admissions.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Turkey later blocked a vote by Nato ambassadors on opening talks immediately, suggesting the first stage of the accession process may take longer than the two weeks the alliance planned.

[...]

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told MPs from his AK party the alliance must respect Turkey’s reservations. “Nato expansion is only meaningful for us in proportion to the respect that will be shown to our sensitivities,” he said.

[...]

“So you won’t give us back terrorists, but you ask us for Nato membership? Nato is an entity for security, an organisation for security. Therefore, we cannot say ‘Yes’ to this security organisation being deprived of security,” he added.

[...]

Turkey accuses Sweden and Finland of harbouring members of Kurdish militant groups it considers terrorist organisations, and also objects to their decisions in 2019 to ban arms exports to Ankara over Turkey’s military operations in Syria.

[...]

Other Turkish officials, including Erdoğan’s spokesperson, have been less outspoken, saying Turkey has not shut the door to Sweden and Finland joining Nato but wants negotiations and a pledge to clamp down on what it sees as terrorist activities.

[...]

Analysts believe Erdoğan, who faces elections next year, is largely seeking concessions to score domestic political points and is ultimately unlikely to veto the two Nordic applications.

  Guardian

UPDATE 5/19:

I wasn't expecting that.

Jan 6 Committee to give transcripts to DOJ

This New York Times story confirms my thoughts that Garland's DOJ wasn't ignoring people behind the coup attempt as some people were complaining, but rather focusing on the many, many cases they have to get through from arrests of the insurrectionists themselves, and not wasting time and resources doing the same work of the January 6 Committee. 

The Justice Department has asked the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack for transcripts of interviews it is conducting, which have included discussions with associates of former President Donald J. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

[...]

A subpoena reviewed by The New York Times indicates that the Justice Department is exploring the actions taken by rally planners.

Prosecutors have begun asking for records about people who organized or spoke at several pro-Trump rallies after the 2020 election as well as anyone who provided security at those events, and about those who were deemed to be “V.I.P. attendees.”

They are also seeking information about any members of the executive and legislative branches who may have taken part in planning or executing the rallies, or tried to “obstruct, influence, impede or delay” the certification of the election, as the subpoena put it.

[...]

The move, coming as Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appears to be ramping up the pace of his painstaking investigation into the Capitol riot, is the clearest sign yet of a wide-ranging inquiry at the Justice Department.

The House committee has interviewed more than 1,000 people so far, and the transcripts could be used as evidence in potential criminal cases, to pursue new leads or as a baseline text for new interviews conducted by federal law enforcement officials.

[...]

[TheDOJ] did not indicate the number of transcripts they were requesting or whether any interviews were of particular interest. In their letter, they made a broad request, asking that the panel “provide to us transcripts of these interviews, and of any additional interviews you conduct in the future.”

[...]

Generally, investigators working on the two inquiries have not been sharing information, except for at times communicating to ensure that a witness is not scheduled to appear before different investigators at the same time, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiries.

Thus far, the Justice Department’s investigation has focused more on lower-level activists who stormed the Capitol than on the planners of the attack.

[...]

At least 16 Trump allies have signaled they will not fully cooperate with the committee. Faced with such resistance, investigators on the panel have taken a page out of organized crime prosecutions and have quietly turned at least six lower-level Trump administration staff members into witnesses who have provided information about their bosses’ activities.

[...]

The committee also has tried to obtain testimony from Republican members of Congress, and it issued subpoenas to five lawmakers last week. Those members have denigrated the panel’s work but have declined to say whether they would participate in the interviews, which are scheduled for the end of May.

  NYTimes

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 5/21:  "Not so fast."

Russian state TV reporter not long for this world

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ukrainian soldiers surrender at Azovstal

This is very sad, but the loss of Mariupol just might allow Putin to claim mission accomplished, declare a victory, and end the invasion. 

The fate of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who have ended weeks of resistance at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol remains unclear, after the fighters surrendered and were transferred to Russian-controlled territory.

[...]

Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, promised the fighters who surrendered would be treated “in accordance with international standards”, but this was immediately undermined by statements from two Russian officials. Leonid Slutsky, a Russian MP who took part in negotiations with Ukraine earlier in the war, suggested Russia should lift its moratorium on the death penalty for fighters from the Azov regiment, one of the main forces defending the steelworks, calling them “animals in human form”.

[...]

Sandra Krotevych, the sister of Azov’s chief of staff, Bohdan Krotevych, said she had been in contact with her brother at 5am on Tuesday and he was still on the territory of Azovstal, but since then she had not heard from him. In recent weeks, she said, as the supplies hoarded in the steelworks began to dwindle and Russian strikes on the plant continued, the soldiers had been eating only once a day and had been drinking water from pipes and other unclean sources.

[...]

Russia’s defence ministry said 265 Ukrainian fighters surrendered at the plant, including 51 seriously injured soldiers who would be transferred to hospitals in Novoazovsk in Russian-controlled territory in east Ukraine.

[...]

For weeks, hundreds of troops have been holed up in a warren of tunnels and bunkers underneath the steelworks, as Russian forces took control of the rest of the city after turning much of it into an uninhabitable wasteland. Many of those stuck at Azovstal had serious injuries, with limited medical care and dwindling supplies.

In the last few weeks, civilians who had also taken cover in the plant were rescued after a deal was brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross to allow them to leave for Ukrainian-controlled territory.Zelenskiy sounded a more cautious note. “The work of bringing the boys home continues, and this work needs delicacy – and time,” he said.

Details of the agreement that led to the evacuation remain unclear, and a flurry of hardline statements from Russian officials suggested an exchange could still be some way off.

  Guardian

 UPDATE 5/18:

Meanwhile in Ukraine

And Russia is losing its commercial connection to the west:

Aramco would have you believe

Amin H Nasser, president and chief executive of Aramco, said the company was helping to meet world demand for reliable and affordable energy against a backdrop of “increased volatility”.

[...]

OPEC+, the producers group which includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Russia, agreed this month to a modest increase in its monthly oil output target, but has said it is not possible for other producers to replace Russian exports of more than 7m barrels a day.

[...]

Profits have risen despite many groups taking a hit from exiting investments in Russia as Brent crude prices have soared by almost 70% to $107.91 (£87.99) a barrel in March compared with a year before. BP said this month its profits more than doubled to $6.2bn (£5bn) in the first three months of the year. Shell has reported a record quarterly profit of $9.1bn (£7.3bn) for the first three months of the year.

[...]

Energy companies such as BP and Shell have posted their highest profits in at least a decade as a result of rising commodities prices fuelled by the unwinding of Covid-19 restrictions around the world and sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

[...]

Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, has disclosed an 82% rise in quarterly profits to a new record of $39.5bn (£32.2bn).

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Coming soon

Lawsuits challenging LGBTQ rights aimed at making their way to the Supreme Court to overturn said rights.

Alito is out there letting people know which lawsuits to bring.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: Dahlia Lithwick and Joyce Vance on the Alito abortion draft and what it means for the future.