Category: Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr

Stories of injustice and justice

After Trump ballot ruling, critics say Supreme Court is selectively invoking conservative originalist approach

NBC News

After Trump ballot ruling, critics say Supreme Court is selectively invoking conservative originalist approach

Lawrence Hurley – March 10, 2024

WASHINGTON — Two years ago, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch excoriated his conservative colleagues for ignoring history and the original understanding of the law in ruling for Oklahoma in a dispute over Native American tribal authority.

The 5-4 ruling against tribes “comes as if by oracle, without any sense of the history … and unattached to any colorable legal authority,” Gorsuch wrote in his dissenting opinion.

His complaint sounds a lot like the chorus of criticism from legal scholars on the left and right directed at the Supreme Court’s ruling last week that said states had no authority to kick former President Donal Trump off the presidential ballot.

For critics, it was just another example of how the conservative justices appear to selectively apply the legal methodology known as originalism, which focuses on the original meaning of the law at the time it was written.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, was unanimous in ruling that Section 3 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment cannot be enforced by states, but critics were quick to point out the absence of originalist arguments.

“What struck me is how much attention was devoted to questions of original meaning in the briefing and at oral argument and how cursory and frankly unpersuasive the discussion of the history was in the published opinion,” said Evan Bernick, a professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law.

J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former federal judge once considered as a potential Supreme Court nominee, said the decision was “a textbook example of judicial activism” that contained little originalist analysis.

“This is an abomination in every respect,” he added. “That’s just one of many respects.”

The ruling itself was unsigned and none of the conservative justices — including Gorsuch — wrote separately to explain their views.

This came as a disappointment to some self-professed originalists, who believe that Section 3 as written and understood at the time is self-executing, meaning that there is no requirement that legislation be enacted for it to be applied.

The legal argument that Trump could be barred from the ballot had been promoted in part by two conservative legal scholars, William Baude and Michael Paulsen, who wrote a law review article on the subject.

“In my view, the reasoning in the opinion is a disaster,” wrote Michael Rappaport, who leads the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism at the University of San Diego School of Law. He added that the ruling featured a “nonoriginalist, made-up argument.”

Rappaport argued in an email that the court is not an originalist court, but rather “one that sometimes decides things based on originalism.”

Defenders of the ruling have tended to focus on the outcome, which is aimed at preventing a cascade of similar actions throwing presidential candidates off the ballot in other states, rather than the methodology.

An adherence to originalism has long been favored in conservative legal circles, and Supreme Court nominees often claim to espouse it when appearing at their Senate confirmation hearings. But the conservative justices differ on the extent to which they apply it, if at all. Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas are probably the most outspoken proponents among the current justices.

“Suppose originalism does lead to a result you happen to dislike in this or that case. So what?” Gorsuch wrote in his 2019 book “A Republic if You Can Keep It.”

At a 2020 event, Thomas said he aims to ensure the law makes sense to the average American.

“I think we are obligated when we interpret the people’s Constitution to make sense of it and be plainspoken,” he said. “I don’t think it’s that complicated.”

Liberal critics of the conservative majority have long taken aim at the court for ignoring originalist arguments that might lead to liberal outcomes or selectively applying them to reach conservative results.

They point in part to the ruling in 2022 that restricted abortion rights by overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and last year’s ruling that struck down affirmative action programs in college admission as examples.

In an attempt to engage with originalists, lawyers presented arguments to counter the idea that abortion rights and race-conscious policies have no historical underpinnings in the law.

In both cases, “when text and history became inconvenient, a conservative majority was willing to scuttle” long-standing precedents, said Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.

The court’s 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights by finding for the first time that there is a right to bear arms outside the home has also attracted scrutiny for its analysis of the history of gun rights.

With tongue in cheek, Michael Smith, a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law, has taken the criticism to a new level in a soon-to-be-published law review article, “Is Originalism Bulls—?”

His conclusion? “Yes. You’re welcome.”

Smith said in an interview he was hoping to draw attention to how the court can pick and choose what methodology to use in a particular case, which the justices can then say leads inevitably to a specific outcome.

“I think those proclamations are at best bulls—,” he said. “At worst, it could be an outright lie.”

A lonely radio nerd. A poet. Vladimir Putin’s crackdown sweeps up ordinary Russians

Associated Press

‘A lonely radio nerd. A poet. Vladimir Putin’s crackdown sweeps up ordinary Russians

Dasha Litvinova – March 8, 2024

FILE - Artyom Kamardin, left, and Yegor Shtovba, right, stand behind a glass in a cage in a courtroom in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023. Artyom Kamardin was given a 7-year prison sentence Thursday for reciting verses against Russia's war in Ukraine, a tough punishment that comes during a relentless Kremlin crackdown on dissent. Yegor Shtovba, who participated in the event and recited Kamardin's verses, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years on the same charges. (AP Photo, File)
Artyom Kamardin, left, and Yegor Shtovba, right, stand behind a glass in a cage in a courtroom in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023. Artyom Kamardin was given a 7-year prison sentence Thursday for reciting verses against Russia’s war in Ukraine, a tough punishment that comes during a relentless Kremlin crackdown on dissent. Yegor Shtovba, who participated in the event and recited Kamardin’s verses, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years on the same charges. (AP Photo, File)
Viktoria Petrova is escorted by police for a hearing in a court in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 3, 2023. Petrova was sentenced to involuntary treatment in a psychiatric facility after she condemned Russian officials for sending troops into Ukraine on social media. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown. (AP Photo)
Viktoria Petrova is escorted by police for a hearing in a court in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 3, 2023. Petrova was sentenced to involuntary treatment in a psychiatric facility after she condemned Russian officials for sending troops into Ukraine on social media. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown. (AP Photo)
FILE - Police officers detain a woman during a protest in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Ulan-Ude, the regional capital of Buryatia, a region near the Russia-Mongolia border, Russia, Wednesday, April 21, 2021. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
Police officers detain a woman during a protest in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Ulan-Ude, the regional capital of Buryatia, a region near the Russia-Mongolia border, Russia, Wednesday, April 21, 2021. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Police officers detains a demonstrator with a poster that reads: "Freedom for Alexei Navalny,” in Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow on Sunday, June 4, 2023. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
Police officers detains a demonstrator with a poster that reads: “Freedom for Alexei Navalny,” in Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow on Sunday, June 4, 2023. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Police detain a man who wants to lay flowers paying last respects to Alexei Navalny at a large boulder from the Solovetsky islands, where the first camp of the Gulag political prison system was established, in St. Petersburg, Russia on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
Police detain a man who wants to lay flowers paying last respects to Alexei Navalny at a large boulder from the Solovetsky islands, where the first camp of the Gulag political prison system was established, in St. Petersburg, Russia on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Riot police detain a demonstrator during a protest against mobilization in Moscow on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
Riot police detain a demonstrator during a protest against mobilization in Moscow on Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Police detain people protesting Russia's attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, March. 1, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
Police detain people protesting Russia’s attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, March. 1, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Russian policemen detain a demonstrator protesting mobilization in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)
 Russian policemen detain a demonstrator protesting mobilization in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022. In the last two years, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in an unprecedented government crackdown, together with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists. (AP Photo, File)

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A lonely man jailed for criticizing the government on his ham radio. A poet assaulted by police after he recited a poem objecting to Russia’s war in Ukraine. A low-profile woman committed to a psychiatric facility for condemning the invasion on social media.

President Vladimir Putin’s 24 years in power are almost certain to be extended six more by this month’s presidential election. That leadership has transformed Russia. A country that tolerated some dissent is now one that ruthlessly suppresses it.

Along with opposition politicians, independent journalists and human rights activists, ordinary Russians have been increasingly swept up in a crackdown reminiscent of the Soviet era. Some human rights advocates compare the scale of the clampdown to the repression from the 1960s to the 1980s, when dissidents were prosecuted for “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

THREE YEARS IN PRISON FOR A RADIO AMATEUR

Vladimir Rumyantsev led a lonely life. The 63-year-old worked stoking the furnace at a wood-processing plant in Vologda, a city about 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of Moscow. He had no family apart from an estranged brother.

To entertain himself, he bought a couple of radio transmitters online and started broadcasting audiobooks and radio plays that he had liked, along with YouTube videos and podcasts by journalists critical of the Kremlin and the war in Ukraine. He also shared posts on his social network page in which independent media and bloggers talked about Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

Rumyantsev did not intend to reach a radio audience. According to his lawyer, Sergei Tikhonov, he listened on headphones in his own apartment.

In a letter from behind bars published by Russia’s prominent rights group OVD-Info, Rumyantsev said “tinkering with and improving” radios has been his hobby since Soviet times, and he decided to set up self-broadcasting as an alternative to Russia’s state TV, which was increasingly airing “patriotic hysteria.” To him, it seemed a better technological solution than Bluetooth speakers because the radio could reach everywhere in his apartment, he said in the letter.

But his social media activity eventually put him on the authorities’ radar, and they discovered his radio frequency. In July 2022, police arrested Rumyantsev, accusing him of “spreading knowingly false information” about the Russian army — a criminal charge authorities introduced shortly after invading Ukraine.

Rumyantsev rejected the charges and insisted on his constitutional right to freely collect and disseminate information, Tikhonov says. The law under which Rumyantsev was charged effectively criminalized any expression about the war that deviated from the Kremlin’s official narrative. In December 2022, he was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.

Tikhonov visits Rumyantsev every so often in a penal colony about 200 kilometers away (125 miles) from Vologda and described him as “calm and resilient,” even though incarceration has taken its toll on his health.

He said Rumyantsev deliberately chose to speak out against the war and refuses to apply for parole as “it is unacceptable for him to admit guilt, even as a formality.”

Russian media reported on the case against Rumyantsev when he was in pretrial detention, and he started getting many letters of support, Tikhonov said. Some supporters put money in his prison account, while others have sent supplies — mostly food, but also books and personal hygiene items, according to the lawyer.

“In addition to making the man’s life easier, this (gave him) an understanding that he is not alone and there are many people who share the same values,” Tikhonov said.

ARREST AND VIOLENCE AFTER A POETRY RECITAL

Artyom Kamardin worked as an engineer, but poetry is his passion.

He was a regular at monthly recitals in the center of Moscow, near the monument to Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The recitals continued even after Russia invaded Ukraine. One was billed as an “anti-mobilization” recital several days after Putin announced a partial call-up into the army in September 2022.

Kamardin, 33, recited a poem condemning Russia-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine. The next day, police with a search warrant burst into the apartment he shared with his wife Alexandra Popova and another friend, and took the poet into custody.

Police beat Kamardin, Popova and their flatmate, and raped the poet, both his wife and his lawyer said. All three filed a formal complaint with the authorities, and the allegations were eventually investigated. The authorities concluded that police acted “within the law,” the Russian news outlet Sota reported, citing the lawyer without providing further details.

For the couple, the experience was so traumatic that they “still can’t openly talk to each other” about what happened, Popova said in an interview with The Associated Press.

In addition to Kamardin, police swept up two other poets who didn’t know him, nor each other. They charged all three with making calls undermining national security and inciting hatred. All three were convicted and sentenced to prison terms.

Kamardin got the longest — seven years.

“No one should be in prison for words, for poetry,” Popova said. She said she believes that her husband’s poem “insulted someone so much that they decided to scourge a defiant poet.”

The couple got married while Kamardin was in pretrial detention.

INVOLUNTARY TREATMENT IN A PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL FOR WAR CRITICISM

Unlike dozens of other Russians convicted over speaking out against the war in Ukraine and handed prison terms, St. Petersburg resident Viktoria Petrova is spending her days in a psychiatric facility. In December, she was sentenced to six months of involuntary treatment over a social media post condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Her lawyer has said that doctors can keep Petrova there for as long as they want and extend the term indefinitely once the six months run out. So the ruling “can’t be considered good news,” Anastasia Pilipenko wrote in her blog on the messaging app Telegram.

Petrova was arrested in May 2022 and placed in pretrial detention over a post on Russian social network VK, in which she criticized Russian officials for what the Kremlin insists on calling “a special military operation” in Ukraine, the lawyer told Russian independent news site Mediazona.

In her Telegram blog, Pilipenko has described Petrova, 30, as “an ordinary girl” who “merely shared her thoughts on social media.”

“Ordinary life, ordinary gym, a cat. Ordinary job at an unremarkable office,” the lawyer wrote.

The court ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Petrova after other inmates of her pretrial detention center reported that she kept up her “antiwar propaganda,” Pilipenko said in an interview with a local news outlet. These evaluations are common but in a rare turn, Petrova was declared mentally incompetent.

The lawyer argued that it wasn’t true and her client’s words have been misconstrued, but to no avail — Petrova was committed to a psychiatric facility.

In November, Pilipenko reported abuse by facility staff, saying that they forced a strip search of the woman by male workers, pushed her around, strapped her to the hospital bed and injected her with medication that left her unable to to speak for two days.

“This should not happen to ‘political (prisoners),’ criminals, mentally ill people, healthy people — anyone,” Pilipenko wrote on Telegram. The facility didn’t comment on the allegations, but shortly after she spoke out about it, Pilipenko wrote, the abuse stopped.

Trump’s vaccine rhetoric sends chills through public health circles

The Hill

Trump’s vaccine rhetoric sends chills through public health circles

Nathaniel Weixel – March 9, 2024

Public health advocates are watching in growing alarm as former President Trump increasingly embraces the anti-vaccine movement.

“I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” Trump said in a recent campaign rally in Richmond, Va.

It’s a line Trump has repeated, and his campaign said he is only referring to school COVID-19 vaccine mandates — but that hasn’t eased fears that the GOP leader could accelerate already worrying trends of declining child vaccination.

Trump “is an important voice. He has a big platform. And he uses that platform, in this case, to do harm. Because he’s implying by saying that we shouldn’t mandate vaccines, vaccines are in some ways ineffective or unsafe,” said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The ironic part, Offit noted, is that the Trump administration kickstarted Operation Warp Speed, which helped drug companies use a relatively new technology to make two very effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has performed a complicated tap dance regarding COVID vaccines. He simultaneously wants to take credit for their speedy development but has also criticized their use and knocked his now former rivals for being too pro-vaccine.

In a post on Truth Social reacting to Biden’s State of the Union speech on Thursday, Trump again claimed credit for the COVID-19 shots.

“You’re welcome, Joe, nine month approval time vs. 12 years that it would have taken you!”

Every state and the District of Columbia requires children to get vaccinated against certain diseases before they start school, including measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox. A plan to withhold federal funding would have widespread impact.

“Like most states, Virginia requires MMR vaccine, chickenpox vaccine, polio, etc. So Trump would take millions in federal funds away from all Virginia public schools,” former GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock (Va.) wrote in response to his campaign threat on X, formerly Twitter.

Since the public health emergency ended last May, no state requires students to get the COVID-19 vaccine, while 21 states have laws specifically banning schools from requiring COVID-19 shots.

Trump’s campaign says his comments only apply to states that mandate COVID-19 vaccines — making it essentially an empty threat.

“If you actually listen to the entire section, and also if you’ve been following his speeches for the past year, he’s talking about COVID vaccines in addition to masks in the same breath. This isn’t anything new,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email.

Experts say the politicization of vaccines has led to an increase in hesitancy and is sparking more outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles.

There have been measles outbreaks in 15 states this year, most recently in Florida, where state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo did not recommend parents vaccinate their children or keep unvaccinated students home from school as a precaution.

Instead, he sent a letter to parents advising them to make their own decisions about school attendance.

Ladapo was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2021 and has since aligned himself with anti-vaccine sentiments, primarily about the COVID-19 shots.

Ladapo told people not to get the most recent shot and has drawn sharp rebukes from the medical community — as well as federal health agencies — for claims that the shots alter human DNA, can potentially cause cancer, and are generally unsafe.

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said he worries that Trump is signaling he will empower more people like Ladapo if he wins reelection.

“I worry about any administration that doesn’t follow good evidence and good science, that they will put more and more people like them in their administration,” Benjamin said.

“We know that Trump had some extraordinarily competent people [in his first term]. But we also know that he had some extraordinarily incompetent people, and that in many situations, some of the really incompetent people carried the day because they aligned with his philosophy,” Benjamin added.

Robert Blendon, a professor emeritus of health politics at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the experience in Florida and the comments from Trump are part of a much broader Republican backlash against public health expertise and government mandates that can be traced to anti-COVID policies.

“It isn’t that he’s just going after these anti-vaccine votes,” Blendon said of Trump.

Trust in public health authorities has dropped precipitously among Republicans since 2021, and Blendon said Trump is a symbol of that. The anti-vaccine movement has never been associated with one particular political party, whereas the public health backlash is strongly Republican-centric.

“That’s made it very, very powerful,” Blendon said. “There are Republicans in the House and Senate, who when they’re not investigating public health, want to cut back the budget … so it has caught on within the Republican base very widely.”

Whether it’s anti-vaccine specifically or anti-public health more broadly, the sentiment is growing.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of kindergartners whose parents opted them out of school-required vaccinations rose to the highest level yet during the 2022-2023 school year.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic who is running for president as an independent, has gained a major platform to spread misinformation and widely debunked claims about vaccines.

He has falsely claimed vaccines cause autism, falsely declared the coronavirus shot is the world’s deadliest vaccine and questioned the safety of shots’ ingredients.

Offit, the vaccine expert, said he thinks public health officials could have done a better messaging job on the COVID-19 shots, and that by mandating vaccines they “inadvertently leaned into a Libertarian left hook.”

Still, Offit said he is concerned about the increasing anti-science rhetoric from politicians like Trump.

“I feel like we’re on the edge of a precipice here … you have the most contagious of the vaccine preventable diseases coming back to some extent, and with Donald Trump basically casting aspersions on vaccines, that’s only going to worsen.”

Orbán meeting offers preview of Trump’s 2nd-term strongman idealizations

CNN

Orbán meeting offers preview of Trump’s 2nd-term strongman idealizations

Analysis by Stephen Collinson – March 8, 2024

Szilard Koszticsak/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/File

Victor Orban is taking his blueprint on dismantling democracy to Mar-a-Lago.

The Hungarian prime minister first won power through a democratic election, then proceeded to weaken the institutions of that democracy by eroding the legal system, firing civil servants, politicizing business, attacking the press and intimidating opposition parties and demagoguing migration.

Former President Donald Trump has left no doubt that he’d try something similar in the United States if he wins a second term – so the presumptive GOP nominee will presumably be eager to compare notes when he hosts Orbán in Florida on Friday.

The prime minister isn’t meeting Biden administration officials. (A Biden administration official told CNN’s Betsy Klein that no invitation for a meeting between the current US president and Hungarian leader was extended.) Instead, he’s choosing to meet the man he hopes will again be US president next year. The two men have a long history of mutual admiration. The fact that one of Trump’s first moves since becoming presumptive GOP nominee this week is to meet a European autocrat speaks volumes.

Trump sees Orbán as the kind of strongman – unencumbered by legal and political restraints – that he’d like to be. Orbán also frequently genuflects to Russian President Vladimir Putin  – just like the former US president. Orbán supports Trump’s vow to end the war in Ukraine if he’s elected within 24 hours – a process that could happen only on Putin’s terms and reward his illegal invasion. Their relationship is also helped by the Hungarian leader’s frequent praise for Trump. He knows the way to the ex-president’s heart. At a rally in New Hampshire in January, Trump diverted from his regular stump speech to laud Orbán in a way that offered a chilling glimpse into his own intentions. “Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong. It’s good to have a strong man at the head of a country,” Trump reflected.

Orbán’s far-right populism, fierce anti-immigration rhetoric, Christian nationalism and hostility to LGBTQ rights has made him a popular ideological model for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” followers. He has spoken in the past at the Conservative Political Action Conference – an annual gathering of pro-Trump forces – and Hungary will host another edition of CPAC’s overseas conferences next month.

In many ways, Orbán pioneered a demagogic style of leadership that is identical to that of Trump long before the ex-reality star and property mogul went into politics. His country is a member of NATO and the European Union but, like Trump, he has often taken steps that cut against the interests of the western democracies. He has, for instance, long feuded with the EU over his anti-immigration policies and slowed the entry of Sweden into NATO, which finally took place this week.

Ahead of his meeting with the former president, Orbán endorsed Trump’s views on Ukraine, in what will have been music to Putin’s ears and will have added to alarm in Kyiv about what a second Trump term would mean. “It is not gambling but actually betting on the only sensible chance, that we in Hungary bet on the return of President Trump,” Orbán told an economic forum on Monday, Reuters reported. “The only chance of the world for a relatively fast peace deal is political change in the United States and this is linked to who is the president.”

Trump’s antipathy to sending more US aid to Ukraine had prompted House Republicans to block President Joe Biden’s latest $60 billion package and has led frontline soldiers fighting Russia to ration bullets. Trump is not even president, but he’s already influencing US policy in ways that help Putin.

Biden used the early portion of his State of the Union address on Thursday night to castigate Trump over his hostility to NATO allies and affinity with the Russian leader. “My predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, ‘Do whatever the hell you want,’” Biden said, referring to a comment by Trump to the effect that if NATO states didn’t make military spending targets he wouldn’t defend them. “A former American president actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It’s unacceptable.”

Biden, who is anchoring his reelection bid on a warning that Trump would destroy US democracy in a second term, was quick to seize on Orbán’s visit to Florida. In a statement, Biden’s campaign rebuked Trump for meeting “Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán, notorious for eroding his own country’s democracy and cozying up to Vladimir Putin (sound familiar?)”

The juxtaposition of Biden using his State of the Union address on Thursday to vow to fight to preserve American and global democracy and Trump’s red carpet welcome for Orbán eloquently encapsulates the political and geopolitical crossroads that America’s presidential election represents.

Much of Europe is already recoiling in horror over the possibility of a second term for Trump. But in Budapest, at least, he’s seen as a kindred spirit and his return would be greeted with great satisfaction.

Trump praises ‘fantastic’ Viktor Orbán while hosting Hungarian autocrat at Mar-a-Lago for meeting and concert

CNN

Trump praises ‘fantastic’ Viktor Orbán while hosting Hungarian autocrat at Mar-a-Lago for meeting and concert

Kristen Holmes and Andrew Millman – March 9, 2024

Emin Sansar/Anadolu/Getty Images

Donald Trump heaped praise on Viktor Orbán while hosting the Hungarian prime minister at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night.

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered for a concert at the Florida resort, as shown in a series of videos posted to Orbán’s Instagram account.

Trump added that the European autocrat is “a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and … he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

Trump called the visit “an honor” and seemed to reference the pair staying in contact after he left White House in 2021, saying they “kept in touch.”

The meeting and subsequent admiration underscore Trump’s history of embracing global strongmen – at times at the expense of more traditional US allies.

The former president and a small group of close advisers met with Orbán for roughly an hour Friday night, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, with one of the sources describing it as a “social meeting” with no agenda. A separate source called it “friendly.”

Trump, according to a readout from his campaign, met with Orbán “to discuss a wide range of issues affecting Hungary and the United States, including the paramount importance of strong and secure borders to protect the sovereignty of each nation.”

Orbán, a fourth source told CNN, sought the meeting with Trump and had been planning to be in the US separately.

Afterward, Trump took him to a tribute concert that was part of a “members only” event at the club, featuring The Beatles and Rolling Stones tribute bands, along with the Palm Beach Symphony.

In one clip posted to social media, Orbán can be seen at the concert – billed as “Orchestral Elegance Meets Rock Legends” – presenting former first lady Melania Trump with a large bouquet of flowers as the band played “Oh, Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison.

A Biden administration official confirmed to CNN that the White House did not extend an invitation to the authoritarian leader to meet with President Joe Biden, and Orbán did not request a White House meeting during his trip to the US this week.

Biden earlier in the day suggested the meeting between the Hungarian strongman and Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, was worrying.

Asked whether he was concerned about the Mar-a-Lago talks, Biden said: “If I’m not, you should be” – suggesting it was only natural for him to be alarmed by the meeting between Orbán and Trump.

Orbán’s far-right populism, fierce anti-immigration rhetoric, Christian nationalism and hostility to LGBTQ rights has made him a popular ideological model for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” followers. He has spoken in the past at the Conservative Political Action Conference – an annual gathering of pro-Trump forces – and Hungary will host another edition of CPAC’s overseas conferences next month.

The Biden administration has mostly declined to comment on Orbán’s meetings with Trump, but the president seized on the visit during remarks Friday evening in the crucial 2024 battleground of Pennsylvania.

“You know who he’s meeting with today, down in Mar-a-Lago? Orbán of Hungary, who stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works – he’s looking for dictatorship,” Biden told the crowd gathered for what was his effectively his first rally of the 2024 general election campaign.

“That’s who he’s meeting with,” Biden added. “I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it.”

This headline and story have been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Betsy Klein, Michael Williams and Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.

Sweden finally joins NATO after months of wrangling – meaning Putin has another member on his doorstep

Independent

Sweden finally joins NATO after months of wrangling – meaning Putin has another member on his doorstep

Chris Stevenson – March 7, 2024

Sweden finally joins Nato after months of wrangling – meaning Putin has another member on his doorstep

Sweden has officially joined Nato – ending decades of post-Second World War neutrality to become the alliance’s second new member since Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine.

The ratification cements NATO’s presence in the Nordic region with all countries now members, and makes the Baltic essentially a “Nato sea” right on Vladimir Putin‘s doorstep.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken presided at a ceremony in which Sweden’s “instrument of accession” to the alliance was officially deposited at the State Department.

“This is a historic moment for Sweden. It’s historic for alliance. It’s history for the transatlantic relationship,” Mr Blinken said as he welcomed the 32nd country into the group. “Our Nato alliance is now stronger, larger than it’s ever been.”

The Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg described it as “a historic day,” adding: “After over 200 years of non-alignment Sweden now enjoys the protection granted under Article 5, the ultimate guarantee of Allies’ freedom and security”.

Article 5 of Nato’s treaty obliges all members to come to the aid of an ally whose territory or security is under threat. It has only been activated once – by the US after the 11 September, 2001, attacks – and is the collective security guarantee that Sweden has sought since Russia invaded Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, accepts Sweden’s instruments of accession from Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (Reuters)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, accepts Sweden’s instruments of accession from Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (Reuters)

Finland and Sweden both applied to join the defence alliance in the wake of Russian President Putin ordering the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While Finland officially joined Nato last April, Sweden’s bid was held up by Hungary and Turkey.

Turkey expressed concern that Sweden was harboring and not taking enough action against members of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which is deemed a terrorist group by Ankara, the US and the EU. The Turkish parliament finally gave approval in January. As for Hungary, it continued to drag its feet, without ever being so clear about the reasons for its objections. Populist

President Viktor Orban is Putin’s closest ally in Europe, and has been a block on EU-wide funding for Ukraine. Some have suggested that Orban has sought to play up his nation’s military and economic leverage to look strong to a domestic audience. Hungary finally ratified in the decision within the last week.

“Good things come to those who wait. No better example,” Mr Blinken said.

The White House said that having Sweden as a Nato ally “will make the United States and our allies even safer.”

A Ukrainian serviceman from air defence unit of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade fires a AK-74 assault rifle on the eastern frontline near Bakhmut (REUTERS)
A Ukrainian serviceman from air defence unit of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade fires a AK-74 assault rifle on the eastern frontline near Bakhmut (REUTERS)

“Nato is the most powerful defensive alliance in the history of the world, and it is as critical today to ensuring the security of our citizens as it was 75 years ago when our alliance was founded out of the wreckage of the Second World War,” it said in a statement.

Mr Kristersson was due to visit the White House and then be a guest of honor at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress late on Thursday. Mr Biden is expected to cite Sweden’s accession to Nato as evidence that Putin’s intent to divide and weaken the alliance has failed as a direct result of the Ukraine invasion. He is also set to use Sweden’s decision to join to step up calls for reluctant Republicans to approved stalled military assistance to Ukraine as the war enters its third year.

Ukraine has been facing Russian advances in eastern areas of the 600-mile frontline while having to contend with shortages of ammunition. While the EU has managed to overcome Orban’s objections to push through some fresh funding, the US Congress still cannot agree. As Washington is the single largest supplier of military aid to Kyiv, Ukrainian officials have urged the US to agree new funds as soon as possible, as it is having a direct impact on the frontline.

The Swedish flag will be raised outside the military organization’s headquarters in Brussels on Monday. “Sweden will now take its rightful place at Nato’s table, with an equal say in shaping Nato policies and decisions,” Mr Stoltenberg said in his statement.

“Sweden’s accession makes Nato stronger, Sweden safer and the whole alliance more secure,” he added. He said that the move “demonstrates that Nato’s door remains open and that every nation has the right to choose its own path.”

Sweden has already got a taste of military exercises with NATO. Nordic response, a first-of-its-time training venture was launched in recent days across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland. The exercises across land, air and sea involve more than 20,000 troops from 13 nations, including the UK.

Some Russians are resisting the state’s ‘all-pervasive’ crackdown on war dissidents – and paying for it

Business Insider

Some Russians are resisting the state’s ‘all-pervasive’ crackdown on war dissidents – and paying for it

Katie Balevic – March 9, 2024

Some Russians are resisting the state’s ‘all-pervasive’ crackdown on war dissidents – and paying for it
  • The Russian government is cracking down on citizens who oppose the war.
  • Some 260 people have been jailed for anti-war stances, a Russian human rights organization said.
  • The crackdown comes as Russians mourn the death of prominent Putin critic Alexey Navalny.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine plods onward, so does its severe surveillance of citizens who have spoken out against the war effort.

As the invasion enters its third year, authorities have been bringing up charges against citizens like 70-year-old human rights activist Oleg Orlov for “discrediting the army,” CNN reported.

“The state in our country is once again controlling not only social, political, and economic life but is now claiming full control over culture, scientific thought, and is inserting itself in private life. It’s becoming all-pervasive,” Orlov said during his trial in Moscow, after which he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, CNN reported.

His crime was penning an article in the French press in 2022 about Russia’s descent into fascism and President Vladimir Putin’s “mass murder of the Ukrainian people,” according to The New York Times.

Some 260 people are currently detained in Russian jails for their antiwar sentiments, according to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights group, CNN reported.

Shortly after the invasion began in February 2022, Putin signed a law punishing people who share “false information” with up to 15 years in prison. People have faced punishment for benign acts of protest, like holding up a blank posterboard or even referring to the conflict as a war, according to Human Rights Watch.

“They will imprison old people, they will imprison people who have disabilities. They will imprison people with children, women with children,” Darya Korolenko, a lawyer at OVD-Info, told CNN. “They just want everyone to be silent.”

Similar to Orlov’s case, an elderly woman named Evgeniya Mayboroda was jailed for reposting what authorities called anti-war stances on social media, CNN reported.

In another case, 67-year-old Nadezhda Buyanova, a doctor in Moscow, was arrested and had her apartment searched after she was accused of sympathizing with Ukraine.

Russia’s tightening grip comes on the heels of the death of Alexey Navalny, one of Putin’s top critics whose sudden demise in a Russian prison has been blamed on state actors. Hundreds of Russians nationwide were detained at memorials for the late Navalny.

Russia’s presidential election is nearing. We already know who the winner will be

CNN

Russia’s presidential election is nearing. We already know who the winner will be

Rob Picheta – March 8, 2024

Russia is nearing a presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule throughout this decade and into the 2030s.

The vast majority of votes will be cast over three days from 15 March, though early and postal voting has already begun, including in occupied parts of Ukraine where Russian forces are attempting to exert authority.

But this is not a normal election; the poll is essentially a constitutional box-ticking exercise that carries no prospect of removing Putin from power.

The president’s dominance over the Russian electoral system has already been reinforced as the election looms. The country’s only anti-war candidate has been barred from standing, and Alexey Navalny, the poisoned and jailed former opposition leader who was the most prominent anti-Putin voice in Russia, died last month.

Here’s what you need to know about the election.

When and where will the election take place?

Voting will be held from Friday March 15 until Sunday March 17, the first Russian presidential election to take place over three days.

A second round of voting would take place three weeks later if no candidate gets more than half the vote, though it would be a major surprise if that were required. Russians are electing the position of president alone; the next legislative elections, which form the make-up of the Duma, are scheduled for 2026.

Early voting began late last month in certain hard-to-access areas, with approximately 70,000 people able to cast their ballots in remote areas of Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District, according to state news agency TASS. The region makes up more than a third of Russia’s total territory but has only about 5% of its population.

Voting will take place over three days in March. - Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
Voting will take place over three days in March. – Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Early voting in Zaporizhzhia, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia said it would annex in September 2022 in violation of international law, also began on February 25, TASS said.

Russia has already held regional votes and referenda in those occupied territories, an effort dismissed by the international community as a sham but which the Kremlin sees as central to its campaign of Russification.

How long has Putin been in power?

Putin signed a law in 2021 that allowed him to run for two more presidential terms, potentially extending his rule until 2036, after a referendum the previous year allowed him to reset the clock on his term limits.

This election will mark the start of the first of those two extra terms.

He has essentially been the country’s head of state for the entirety of the 21st century, rewriting the rules and conventions of Russia’s political system to extend and expand his powers.

That already makes him Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Putin’s previous efforts to stay in control included a 2008 constitutional amendment that extended presidential terms from four years to six, and a temporary job swap with his then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev the same year, that preceded a swift return to the presidency in 2012.

Who else is running?

Candidates in Russian elections are tightly controlled by the Central Election Commission (CEC), enabling Putin to run against a favorable field and reducing the potential for an opposition candidate to gain momentum.

The same is true this year. “Each candidate fields juxtaposing ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively they feed into Putin’s aim of tightening his grip on Russia during his next presidential term,” wrote Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.

Nikolay Kharitonov will represent the Communist Party, which has been allowed to run a candidate in each election this century, but has not gained as much as a fifth of the vote share since Putin’s first presidential election.

Two other Duma politicians, Leonid Slutsky and Vladislav Davankov, are also running. Davankov is deputy chair of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, while Slutsky represents the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the party previously led by ultra-nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in 2022. All are considered to be reliably pro-Kremlin.

But there is notably no candidate who opposes Putin’s war in Ukraine; Boris Nadezhdin, previously the only anti-war figure in the field, was barred from standing by the CEC in February after the body claimed he had not received enough legitimate signatures nominating his candidacy.

In December, another independent candidate who openly spoke out against the war in Ukraine, Yekaterina Duntsova, was rejected by the CEC, citing alleged errors in her campaign group’s registration documents. Duntsova later called on people to support Nadezhdin’s candidacy.

Writing on social media in February, opposition activist Leonid Volkov dismissed the elections as a “circus,” saying they were meant to signal Putin’s overwhelming mass support. “You need to understand what the March ‘elections’ mean for Putin. They are a propaganda effort to spread hopelessness” among the electorate, Volkov said.

Are the elections fair?

Russia’s elections are neither free nor fair, and serve essentially as a formality to extend Putin’s term in power, according to independent bodies and observers both in and outside the country.

Putin’s successful campaigns have been in part the result of “preferential media treatment, numerous abuses of incumbency, and procedural irregularities during the vote count,” according to Freedom House, a global democracy watchdog.

Outside of election cycles, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine targets voters with occasionally hysterical pro-Putin material, and many news websites based outside Russia were blocked following the invasion of Ukraine, though more tech-savvy younger voters have grown accustomed to using VPNs to access them.

Protests are also tightly restricted, making the public expression of opposition a perilous and rare occurrence.

Ballot papers bearing Putin's name are prepared ahead of the election. - Vladimir Nikolayev/AFP/Getty Images
Ballot papers bearing Putin’s name are prepared ahead of the election. – Vladimir Nikolayev/AFP/Getty Images

Then, as elections come into view, genuine opposition candidates almost inevitably see their candidacies removed or find themselves prevented from seeking office, as Nadezhdin and Duntsova discovered during this cycle.

“Opposition politicians and activists are frequently targeted with fabricated criminal cases and other forms of administrative harassment designed to prevent their participation in the political process,” Freedom House noted in its most recent global report.

Is Putin popular in Russia?

Truly gauging popular opinion is notoriously difficult in Russia, where the few independent think tanks operate under strict surveillance and where, even in a legitimate survey, many Russians are fearful of criticizing the Kremlin.

But Putin undoubtedly has reaped the rewards of a political landscape tilted dramatically in his favor. The Levada Center, a non-governmental polling organization, reports Putin’s approval rating at over 80% – an eye-popping figure virtually unknown among Western politicians, and a substantial increase compared to the three years before the invasion of Ukraine.

The invasion gave Putin a nationalist message around which to rally Russians, and even as Russia’s campaign stuttered over the course of 2023, the war retained widespread support.

National security is top of mind for Russians as the election approaches; Ukrainian strikes on Russian border regions have brought the war home to many people inside the country, but support for the invasion — euphemistically termed a “special military operation” by Russia’s leaders — remains high.

The Levada Center found at the end of 2023 that “increased inflation and rising food prices may have a lasting impact on the mood of Russians,” with the proportion of Russians cutting back on spending increasing.

But that is not to say Russians expect the election to change the direction of the country. Putin benefits heavily from apathy; most Russians have never witnessed a democratic transfer of power between rival political parties in a traditional presidential election, and expressions of anger at the Kremlin are rare enough to keep much of the population disengaged from politics.

Putin’s former speechwriter, Abbas Gallyamov, told CNN last month that discontent against the president was increasing in Russia. Gallyamov said Putin is attempting to eliminate opposition leaders from society to at least ensure such discontent remains “unstructured,” “disorganized” and “leaderless” ahead of future elections.

How will Navalny’s death affect the election?

The timing of the death of Alexey Navalny – Putin’s most prominent critic – served to emphasize the control Russia’s leader exerts over his country’s politics.

In one of Navalny’s final court appearances before his death, he urged prison service workers to “vote against Putin.”

“I have a suggestion: to vote for any candidate other than Putin. In order to vote against Putin, you just need to vote for any other candidate,” he said on February 8.

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexey Navalny, addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on February 28, 2024. - Johanna Geron/Reuters
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexey Navalny, addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on February 28, 2024. – Johanna Geron/Reuters

His death has cast an ominous shadow over the campaign. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, urged the European Union to “not recognize the elections” in a passionate address to its Foreign Affairs Council a few days after she was widowed.

“Putin killed my husband exactly a month before the so-called elections. These elections are fake, but Putin still needs them. For propaganda. He wants the whole world to believe that everyone in Russia supports and admires him. Don’t believe this propaganda,” she said.

Thousands gathered for Navalny’s funeral in Moscow despite the threat of detention by Russian authorities.

Navalnaya has since urged Russian people to turn out at noon on the final day of the elections, March 17, as a show of protest. In a video posted on social media, Navalnaya told Russians they could “vote for any candidate besides Putin, you can ruin your ballot, you can write Navalny on it.”

She added that Russians did not have to vote, but could “stand at a polling station and then go home… the most important thing is to come.”

This story has been updated.

CNN’s Anna Chernova, Pauline Lockwood and Mariya Knight contributed reporting.

Trump meets with Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, continuing his embrace of autocrats

Associated Press

Trump meets with Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, continuing his embrace of autocrats

Nicholas Riccardi and Justin Spike – March 8, 2024

FILE - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks at CPAC in Dallas, Aug. 4, 2022. Former President Donald Trump is meeting Friday, March 8, 2024, with Orban, a prominent conservative populist whose crackdowns in Hungary have sparked criticism that he's eroding that country's democracy. The meeting comes as Hungary has had conflicts with President Joe Biden's administration. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks at CPAC in Dallas, Aug. 4, 2022. Former President Donald Trump is meeting Friday, March 8, 2024, with Orban, a prominent conservative populist whose crackdowns in Hungary have sparked criticism that he’s eroding that country’s democracy. The meeting comes as Hungary has had conflicts with President Joe Biden’s administration. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)
A fisherman casts a line near Mar-a-Lago, as former President Donald Trump is planning to meet Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, Friday, March 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
A fisherman casts a line near Mar-a-Lago, as former President Donald Trump is planning to meet Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, Friday, March 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
A security guard stands near an entrance to Mar-a-Lago, as former President Donald Trump is planning to meet Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, Friday, March 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
A security guard stands near an entrance to Mar-a-Lago, as former President Donald Trump is planning to meet Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, Friday, March 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

Former President Donald Trump met Friday with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as the likely Republican presidential nominee continued his embrace of autocratic leaders who are part of a global pushback against democratic traditions.

Orbán has become an icon to some conservative populists for championing what he calls “illiberal democracy,” replete with restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. But he’s also cracked down on the press and judiciary in his country and rejiggered the country’s political system to keep his party in power while maintaining the closest relationship with Russia among all European Union countries.

In the U.S., Trump’s allies have embraced Orbán’s approach. On Thursday, as foreign dignitaries milled through Washington, D.C., ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Orbán skipped the White House and instead spoke at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank overseeing the 2025 Project, the effort to create a governing blueprint for Trump’s next term.

“Supporting families, fighting illegal migration and standing up for the sovereignty of our nations. This is the common ground for cooperation between the conservative forces of Europe and the U.S.,” Orbán wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after his Heritage appearance.

He then flew to Florida, where met Trump late Friday afternoon at the former president’s beachfront compound, Mar-a-Lago. Orbán posted on his Instagram account footage of him and his staff meeting with Trump and the former president’s staff, then of the prime minister walking through the compound and handing Melania Trump a giant bouquet of flowers.

In the video, Trump praised Orbán to a laughing crowd. “He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it. Right?” Trump said of the Hungarian prime minister. “He’s the boss.”

The Trump campaign said late Friday that the two men discussed “a wide range of issues affecting Hungary and the United States, including the paramount importance of strong and secure borders to protect the sovereignty of each nation.”

Campaigning Friday in Pennsylvania, Biden said of Trump: ’You know who he’s meeting with today down in Mar-a-Lago? Orbán of Hungary, who’s stated flatly that he doesn’t thinks democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship.”

“I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it,” Biden added.

Orbán’s approach appeals to Trump’s brand of conservatives, who have abandoned their embrace of limited government and free markets for a system that sides with their own ideology, said Dalibor Rohac, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“They want to use the tools of government to reward their friends and punish their opponents, which is what Orbán has done,” Rohac said.

The meeting also comes as Trump has continued to embrace authoritarians of all ideological stripes. He’s praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Orbán’s government has reciprocated, repeatedly praising the former president.

On Friday, Hungary’s Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, posted from Palm Beach, hailing Trump’s “strength” and implying that the world would be more peaceful were he still president.

“If Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States in 2020, the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, would not have broken out and the conflict in the Middle East would have been resolved much faster,” he wrote.

Orbán has served as Hungary’s prime minister since 2010. The next year, his party, Fidesz, used its two-thirds majority in the legislature to rewrite the nation’s constitution. It changed the retirement age for judges, forcing hundreds into early retirement, and vested responsibility for appointing new judges with a single political appointee who was widely accused of acting on behalf of Fidesz.

Fidesz later authored a new media law and set up a nine-member council to serve as the country’s media regulator. All nine members are Fidesz appointees, which media watchdogs say has facilitated a major decline in press freedom and plurality.

The country’s legislative lines have been redrawn to protect Fidesz members and no major news outlets remain that are critical of Orbán’s government, making it almost impossible for his party to lose elections, analysts say.

Orbán backed Trump’s reelection effort and has had frosty relations with the Biden administration, which pointedly did not invite Hungary to a summit on democracy it organized after the president took office. Hungarian officials have accused Biden’s ambassador to the country, former human rights lawyer David Pressman, of interfering in internal governmental affairs.

Earlier this week, Hungary objected to Biden’s choice of a former Dutch prime minister to serve as NATO’s new commander, potentially stalling the appointment.

The Hungarian leader also has enthusiastically boosted Trump’s latest presidential campaign, posting a message encouraging Trump to “keep fighting” after he was hit with the first of what would be four criminal cases against him last year. Last week, Orbán declared that a win by the former president would be “the only serious chance” for ending the war in Ukraine.

A video from the Heritage appearance posted by Orbán’s political director showed the prime minister speaking with Vivek Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination before dropping out and endorsing Trump. The Hungarian leader also met with Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who remains a vocal ally of the ex-president and is active in global populist circles.

Orbán’s visit this week comes after he signed a new National Sovereignty Law that penalizes any foreign support of political actors in Hungary, part of the prime minister’s longstanding battle against the European Union and international nonprofits criticizing his erosion of Hungary’s democracy.

“Orbán is setting up this huge barrier to anyone interfering in Hungarian elections, but Orbán’s interfering in all sorts of other countries’ elections,” said Kim Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist and Hungary expert.

Orbán is one of a small group of conservative populists who have publicly aligned themselves with U.S. conservatives trying to oust Biden in November. Last month, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Argentine President Javier Milei spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington. Orbán was a featured speaker at the 2022 event, after which he met Trump at the former president’s New Jersey golf course.

Several conservative populists have won European elections in recent years, including in Italy and Sweden. But leaders in those countries have remained staunch opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, not battled with the European Union government or taken steps that alarm democracy advocates as Orbán has.

Scheppele said the parallels between Trump and Orbán go beyond ideology. She noted that Orbán is not very religious but has become a hero to Christian conservatives for his hardline stances, much like Trump.

The two men face a similar electoral quandary as well, she added.

“They’ve got the same problem,” Scheppele said. “How do you leverage a really solid base, which is not an actual majority, at election time?”

Riccardi reported from Denver and Spike from Budapest. Associated Press political writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

Sweden finally joins NATO, ending non-alignment, in Ukraine war shadow

Sweden finally joins NATO, ending non-alignment, in Ukraine war shadow

Shaun Tandon – March 7, 2024

An empty mast at NATO headquarters, ahead of a flag-raising ceremony for new member Sweden (JOHN THYS)
An empty mast at NATO headquarters, ahead of a flag-raising ceremony for new member Sweden (JOHN THYS)

Sweden on Thursday became the 32nd member of NATO, turning the page on two centuries of non-alignment and capping two years of tortuous diplomacy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered new fears.

Days after Hungary followed key holdout Turkey and became the last NATO member to sign off, Sweden ceremonially handed over accession documents to the United States, the leading force of the transatlantic alliance that promises joint security for all.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson late Thursday attended as a guest at the annual State of the Union address of President Joe Biden, whose rival Donald Trump has disparaged NATO as unfairly burdening the United States.

“Mr Prime Minister, welcome to NATO, the strongest military alliance the world has ever seen,” Biden said as he recognized Kristersson, who sat in the gallery next to First Lady Jill Biden.

Biden urged the House leadership of the Republican Party to move on  billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, saying, in a dig at Trump, that “I will not bow down” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you he will not,” Biden said.

– ‘Victory for freedom’ –

Kristersson, at an accession ceremony at the State Department, called joining NATO “a major step but, at the same time, a very natural step.”

“It’s a victory for freedom today. Sweden has made a free, democratic, sovereign and united choice to join NATO,” he said.

He later delivered a televised address to the nation from Washington, telling Swedes: “We are a small country, but we understand more than most the importance of the greater world beyond our borders.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said few would have expected Sweden as well as Finland to join NATO before Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

There is “no clearer example than today of the strategic debacle that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has become for Russia,” Blinken said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also hailed Sweden’s membership, saying: “One more country in Europe has become more protected from Russian evil.”

– Overcoming Turkish reluctance –

Sweden has not fought in a war since the Napoleonic conflicts of the early 19th century.

Sweden and Finland, while militarily intertwined with the United States and both members of the European Union, had historically steered clear of joining NATO, formed in the Cold War to unite against the Soviet Union.

Finland and Sweden launched a joint bid quickly after the invasion of Ukraine, which itself had unsuccessfully sought to join NATO.

Finland successfully joined in April 2023, but Sweden’s membership was stalled by Turkey.

“Good things come to those who wait,” Blinken said as he received the documents from Sweden.

Russia has vowed “countermeasures” over Sweden’s entry into NATO, especially if the alliance’s troops and assets deploy in the country.

Sweden’s blue and yellow flag is expected to be hoisted on Monday at the Brussels headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance.

Before agreeing to ratify membership, Turkey used its leverage to press Sweden, known for its liberal asylum policies, to crack down on Kurdish militants who have campaigned against Ankara.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later demanded action after protesters, enjoying Swedish laws on free speech, desecrated Islam’s holy book the Koran.

In a clear if unstated sweetener, the United States dangled the sale of F-16 warplanes to Turkey, which has faced the wrath of US sanctions over an earlier major military purchase from Russia.

The Biden administration in January approved $23 billion in F-16 warplanes for Turkey swiftly after it ratified Sweden’s membership.

The United States simultaneously pushed ahead with $8.6 billion in more advanced F-35 jets for Greece, a fellow NATO member and historic adversary of Turkey.

Even after Turkey’s blessing, Sweden faced another obstacle as it needed approval of a last country — Hungary, whose nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has often thumbed his nose at Western allies.

The Hungarian parliament ratified Sweden’s membership on February 26. But in one last hiccup, Hungary could not sign the accession document due to a brief absence in the mostly ceremonial post of president, after an Orban ally resigned over pardoning a convicted child abuser’s accomplice.