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Although most news coverage has been on other matters lately, the war initiated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, and Ukraine has been making remarkable progress. The Ukrainian military launched a surprise attack on two Russian airfields in occupied Ukraine using a long-range missile system secretly supplied in the last few weeks by the United States. The strike damaged runways, destroyed nine Russian helicopters, and killed a number of Russian soldiers. In addition to the new missile system, M1 Abrams battle tanks promised by the U.S. have arrived in Ukraine. Although Putin had initially expected to overtake Ukraine in a matter of days, the Russian army has been largely unsuccessful and the Ukrainian goal of dividing the Russian invaders in two (much as the U.S. did to the Confederacy) has been partially achieved. At the same time, Ukrainian attacks have pushed Russia’s Black Sea fleet out of its main base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
You may not have heard much about Ukraine's success because news coverage has mostly focused on the Hamas terror attacks against Israel, and on Israel's response. It's all a tragic and complicated story, far too tragic and far too complicated to summarize here, but the big news is that following President Biden's trip this week to Israel and request to Congress for $105 billion in financial aid for both Ukraine and Israel, Hamas released two American hostages, a woman and her daughter, today. This is far, far, far from the end of this story, but the release of two hostages, any two hostages, American or not, is a positive development. I'm sure the story will get bloodier and more tragic as it progresses.
Congress may be unable to deliver on Biden's request for international aid for a while because the House is currently without a speaker. Far-right MAGA ultra-conservative Jim Jordan, the 2020 election denier and former coach of the sex-scandal plagued Ohio State wrestling team, campaigned for the role but lost the congressional vote three times. Eash time, fewer Republicans voted for him than the time before, and today a secret ballot among House Republicans reportedly decided to find some other candidate. Jordan was wildly inappropriate for the Speaker position, but after the wildly inappropriate "president" Trump, anything seemed possible. In the best possible interpretation of the Jordan defeat, the Republican Party may be starting to rethink its loyalty to Trump and MAGA extremism.
And speaking of the twice-impeached, multiply indicted former "president," a judge in one of the many criminal cases against him imposed a gag order on Trump this week to stop him from defaming the prosecution and members of the court. Today, the judge acted on the gag order, and fined Trump for leaving a social media post on his campaign website that libeled one of the judge's clerks. The judge stopped short of holding Trump in contempt, but warned that he still could face harsher punishments, even jail time, if he ran afoul of the order again.
And in the separate RICO case against the president and his associates, one of his co-conspirators, the bat-shit crazy Sidney Powell, the lawyer who claimed that the long-ago-deceased Hugo Chavez somehow caused voting machines to report false results in 2020, pleaded guilty to the charges against her in exchange for future testimony. She had unparalleled access to Trump and his schemes prior to January 6, and it's widely assumed that her testimony will be extremely damaging to Trump's defense and to the other co-conspirators. Sure enough and right on schedule, today another defendant, the lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, pleaded guilty in the same case. The dominos will likely keep falling as each leaves the sinking ship after the others, all trying to avoid jail time in exchange for ratting out the others, until only the big cheese is left with no one left at whom to point a finger. Poor Donnie.
And the Michigan football team is under NCAA investigation for allegedly stealing signals from opposing teams.
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