March 2023 – Page 9 – The Tarbabys Blog

It’s mid-March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free. That’s a problem.

Akron Beacon Journal

It’s mid-March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free. That’s a problem.

Caitlin Looby, Akron Beacon Journal – March 19, 2023

Trumpeter swans find some open water along the Lake Erie shore last month. The ice in Ottawa County has melted since then as temperatures have been unseasonably warm.

It’s the middle of March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free.

Ice has been far below average this year, with only 7% of the lakes covered as of last Monday — and no ice at all on Lake Erie. Lake Erie’s average ice coverage for this time of year is 40%, based on measurements over the past half-century. The lake typically freezes over the quickest and has the most ice cover because it’s the shallowest of the five Great Lakes.

But communities along Ohio’s north coast, including Cleveland, Sandusky and Port Clinton, have seen considerably less ice forming on Lake Erie in recent years.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Lake Erie’s ice coverage peaked in early February at 40%, a nearly 20% decrease from the historical average.

No ice isn’t a good thing for the lakes’ ecosystem. It can even stir up dangerous waves and lake-effect snowstorms.

So, what happens when the lakes are ice-free? What does it mean for the lakes’ food web? Is climate change to blame?

Little ice cover can be disastrous

This winter has already proved how dangerous lake-effect snow can be.

At the end of November, more than 6 feet of snow fell on Buffalo, New York, which sits on the shores of Lake Erie. A few weeks later on Dec. 23, more than 4 feet of snow covered the city and surrounding areas once again. The storm resulted in 44 deaths in Erie and Niagara counties, which sit on Lakes Erie and Ontario, respectively.

December 2022 storm:Winter storm leads to more than 1,300 crashes, multiple fatalities on Ohio roads

Cleveland and Sandusky reside on the shores of Lake Erie as well. The 2022 storm that swept the region on Dec. 23 dropped relatively little snow, only about 2-4 inches, but created dangerous conditions nonetheless.

In some places in Northeast Ohio, temperatures dropped from nearly 40 degrees to zero and below. Wind chills fueled by hurricane-force winds dragged the temperature even lower to minus 30 or even 35 below zero. This storm was the first time in almost a decade that the Cleveland Weather Forecast Office issued a blizzard warning.

A 46-vehicle pileup on the Ohio Turnpike near Sandusky claimed four lives.

A 46-vehicle pileup killed four people injured many others on the Ohio Turnpike during a winter storm with whiteout conditions Dec. 23.

During stormy winter months, ice cover tempers waves. When there is low ice cover, waves can be much larger, leading to lakeshore flooding and erosion. That happened in January 2020 along Lake Michigan’s southwestern shoreline. Record high lake levels mixed with winds whipped up 15-foot waves that flooded shorelines, leading Gov. Tony Evers to declare a state of emergency for Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties.

And while less ice may seem like a good thing for the lakes’ shipping industry, those waves can create dangerous conditions.

The Great Lakes are losing ice with climate change

The Great Lakes have been losing ice for the past five decades, a trend that scientists say will likely continue.

Of the last 25 years, 64% had below-average ice, said Michael Notaro, the director of the Center on Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The steepest declines have been in the north, including Lake Superior, northern Lake Michigan and Huron, and in nearshore areas.

Record high temperatures:Another weather record broken in Greater Akron; third record high set this month

More: What’s the state of the Great Lakes? Successful cleanups tempered by new threats from climate change

But this also comes with a lot of ups and downs, largely because warming is causing the jet stream to “meander,” said Ayumi Fujisaki Manome, a scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan who models ice cover and hazardous weather across the lakes.

There is a lot of year-to-year variability with ice cover spiking in years like 2014, 2015 and 2019 where the lakes were almost completely iced over.

Ice fishermen stay close to shore off of Bay Shore Park in New Franken, Wisconsin, in January, which saw relatively little ice cover on the Great Lakes.

No ice makes waves in the lakes’ ecosystems

A downturn in ice coverage due to climate change will likely have cascading effects on the lakes’ ecosystems.

Lake whitefish, a mainstay in the lakes’ fishing industry and an important food source for other fish like walleye, are one of the many Great Lakes fish that will be affected, said Ed Rutherford, a fishery biologist who also works at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Lake whitefish spawn in the fall in nearshore areas, leaving the eggs to incubate over the winter months. When ice isn’t there, strong winds and waves can stir up the sediment, reducing the number of fish that are hatched in the spring, Rutherford said.

Walleye and yellow perch also need extended winters, he said. If they don’t get enough time to overwinter in cold water, their eggs will be a lot smaller, making it harder for them to survive.

Even so, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife released a report stating that Lake Erie’s 2022 walleye and yellow perch populations in the central and western basins are above average. Yellow perch hatches in the central basin are below average, however.

Declining ice cover on the lakes is also delaying the southward migration of dabbling ducks, a group of ducks that include mallards, out of the Great Lakes in the fall and winter, Notaro said. And if the ducks spend more time in the region it will increase the foraging pressure on inland wetlands.

Warming lakes and a loss of ice cover over time also will be coupled with more extreme rainfall, likely inciting more harmful algae blooms, said Notaro. These blooms largely form from agricultural runoff, creating thick, green mats on the lake surface that can be toxic to humans and pets.

In this 2017 photo, a catfish appears on the shoreline in the algae-filled waters of Lake Erie in Toledo.

Lakes Erie and Michigan are plagued with these blooms every summer. And now, blooms cropping up in Lake Superior for the first time are raising alarm.

“Even deep, cold Lake Superior has been experiencing significant algae blooms since 2018, which is quite atypical,” Notaro said.

More: Blue-green algae blooms, once unheard of in Lake Superior, are a sign that ‘things are changing’ experts say

There is still a big question mark on the extent of the changes that will happen to the lakes’ ecosystem and food web as ice cover continues to decline. That’s because scientists can’t get out and sample the lakes in the harsh winter months.

“Unless we can keep climate change in check … it will have changes that we anticipate and others that we don’t know about yet,” Rutherford said.

Caitlin Looby is a Report for America corps member who writes about the environment and the Great Lakes. Beacon Journal reporter Derek Kreider contributed to this article.

Sen. Mark Kelly flew with Russian pilots in the Navy and with NASA, and he said the Russian fighter jet running into a US drone shows ‘how incompetent they are’

Business Insider

Sen. Mark Kelly flew with Russian pilots in the Navy and with NASA, and he said the Russian fighter jet running into a US drone shows ‘how incompetent they are’

Sarah Al-Arshani – March 19, 2023

mark kelly has a skeptical expression wearing a us navy bomber jacket — Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., waits to speak during a news conference at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix, on Nov. 7, 2022.AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File

A US drone crashed after a Russian fighter jet clipped its propeller over the Black Sea last week.
A think tank suggested the move was “aggressive messaging” by Russia.
Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot, said it was an example of Russia’s incompetence.

Sen. Mark Kelly flew with Russian pilots as a US Navy combat pilot and as a NASA astronaut.

He said the incident last week where a Russian fighter jet dumped fuel on and then clipped the propeller of a US military drone shows how “reckless” and “incompetent” they are.

“I’m not surprised by this. I mean, I flew with Russian pilots, fighter pilots who couldn’t fly formation. And I watched this video, and it’s pretty obvious what happened. He lost sight of it, and he crashed into it,” Kelly told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday.

—CNN (@CNN) March 19, 2023

On Tuesday, two Russian Su-27 fighter jets intercepted a US military MQ-9 Reaper drone that was flying over international waters above the Black Sea. The jets dumped fuel on the drone, and one jet eventually clipped the drone’s propeller. The drone eventually crashed into the water.

Watch: How a Russian warplane hit an unarmed US drone 0:00 1:32

Insider previously reported that while one think tank analysis suggested this was aggressive messaging by Russia, US officials have said the incident was most likely due to Russians not knowing how to fly.

The incident further soured the tense relationship between Washington and the Kremlin since Russia invaded Ukraine last February.

Kelly compared the fighter jet incident to the “incompetence that we see on the battle field every day in Ukraine.”

“That’s why the losses that the Russians are suffering right now are really high. At this point I mean, the best choice for Vladimir Putin would be to say: ‘Hey, this isn’t working,’ and he’s got to stop this illegal invasion,” Kelly said.

A Ukrainian soldier wondered if the Russians advancing on Bakhmut are on drugs: ‘Otherwise, how can they go to certain death?’

Insider

A Ukrainian soldier wondered if the Russians advancing on Bakhmut are on drugs: ‘Otherwise, how can they go to certain death?’

Kenneth Niemeyer – March 19, 2023

Ukrainian servicemen are seen along the frontline south of Bakhmut in the town of Toretsk, Ukraine on March 17, 2023.Anadolu Agency/GettyImages

A Ukrainian soldier said troops from Russia’s Wagner Group in Bakhmut seem like they are on drugs.
No evidence has emerged to show that Russia or the Wagner Group provide their troops with drugs.
Ukrainian soldiers have previously claimed that Russian troops seemed like “zombies.”

A Ukrainian soldier fighting in Bakhmut told The New York Times that his unit has sometimes wondered if fighters belonging to Russia’s infamous Wagner Group are on drugs.

While there’s no evidence of that, it’s not the first time Ukrainians have wondered aloud that the behavior of some Russian soldiers could be medically induced.

The Wagner Group is a powerful Russian paramilitary unit that has emerged as a key ally in Russia’s advance inside Ukraine. The group once sparked controversy when it offered convicted Russian prisoners freedom in return for fighting. Fighters from the Wagner group are notorious for storming frontline positions and enduring severe casualties.

A retired US Marine estimated that the average life expectancy of a Wagner soldier on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine is just four hours. And a 48-year-old prison inmate who exchanged his freedom to serve in Russia’s Wagner Group told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that the group only trained him for three weeks and that he expected to die on his first mission.

It’s the kind of behavior that soldiers from Ukraine’s Third Assault Brigade, which is now fighting the Wagner Group in the key eastern city of Bakhmut, believe could be the result of taking drugs. The unit’s media officer told The New York Times that 10 to 15 Wagner fighters were advancing on their position, to their almost certain deaths, every day during the first month of fighting.

“They are killed and they come again,” he told The Times. “Our guys are wondering if they are on drugs. Otherwise, how can they go to certain death, stepping over the rotting corpses of their colleagues? You can go mad a bit.”

Ukrainians earlier speculated that Russian soldiers were taking drugs in November as winter began to make the fighting ever more miserable, telling AFP that Russian soldiers seemed like “zombies.”

“You shoot them and more come constantly,” one soldier said, according to AFP.

Another Ukrainian soldier told CNN in February that advancing Russian forces looked like a “zombie movie” as they climbed over “the corpses of their friends.”

“It looks like it’s very, very likely that they are getting some drugs before attack,” the soldier told CNN.

While there’s no evidence that fighters from the Wagner Group are taking drugs, there is a long history of drug-taking in conflict.

During World War II, Nazi Germany administered amphetamines, which were touted as a “miracle product,” according to TIME. Nazi soldiers took the drugs to increase their alertness and vigilance, according to the outlet.

Also during World War II, Russia’s Ministry of Defense gave every Russian soldier on the frontline a 100-gram ration of vodka called the commissar’s ration, according to a report from Macalester College.

And in World War 1, according to the BBC, cocaine and heroin use was common among soldiers. Department stores even sold kits for taking the drugs, which were marketed as a nice present for those fighting on the frontline.

A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis

The New York Times

A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis

Eli Saslow – March 19, 2023

Joel Coplin unlocks a gate on the fence surrounding the building where he lives and operates an art gallery, four blocks from the location where Joe Faillace operates The Olde Station Subway Shop, in Phoenix, Ariz. on Feb. 11, 2023. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

PHOENIX — He had been coming into work at the same sandwich shop every weekday morning for the past four decades, but now Joe Faillace, 69, pulled up to Old Station Subs with no idea what to expect. He parked on a street lined with three dozen tents, grabbed his Mace and unlocked the door to his restaurant. He picked up the phone and dialed his wife and business partner, Debbie Faillace, 60.

“All clear,” he said. “Everything looks good.”

“You’re sure? No issues?” she asked. “What’s going on with the neighbors?”

He looked out the window toward Madison Street, which had become the center of one of the largest homeless encampments in the country, with as many as 1,100 people sleeping outdoors. On this February morning, he could see a half-dozen men pressed around a roaring fire. A young woman was lying in the street. A man was weaving down the sidewalk in the direction of Joe’s restaurant with a saw, muttering to himself and then stopping to urinate.

“It’s the usual chaos and suffering,” he told Debbie. “But the restaurant’s still standing.”

That had seemed to them like an open question each morning for the past three years, as an epidemic of unsheltered homelessness began to overwhelm Phoenix and many other major American downtowns. Cities across the West had been transformed by a housing crisis, a mental health crisis and an opioid epidemic, all of which landed at the doorsteps of small businesses already reaching a breaking point because of the pandemic. In Phoenix, where the number of people living on the streets had more than tripled since 2016, businesses had begun hiring private security firms to guard their property and lawyers to file a lawsuit against the city for failing to manage “a great humanitarian crisis.”

The Faillaces had signed onto the lawsuit as plaintiffs along with about a dozen other nearby property owners. They also bought an extra mop to clean up the daily flow of human waste, replaced eight shattered windows with plexiglass, installed a wrought-iron fence around their property and continued opening their doors at exactly 8 each morning to greet the first customer of the day.

Debbie arrived to help with the lunch rush, and she greeted customers at the register while Joe prepared tomato sauce and weighed out turkey for chef’s salads. Their margins had always been tight, but they saved on labor costs by both going into work every day. They remodeled the kitchen to make room for a nursery when their children were born and then expanded into catering to help those children pay for college. They kept making sandwiches for a loyal group of regulars even as the city transformed around them — its population growing by about 25,000 each year, housing costs soaring at a record pace, until it seemed that there was nowhere left for people to go except onto sidewalks, into tents, into broken-down cars, and increasingly into the air-conditioned relief of Old Station Subs.

Their restaurant was located in an industrial neighborhood that had always attracted a small number of transients. Over the years, Joe and Debbie came to know many by name and listened to their stories of eviction, medical debt, mental illness and addiction, and together they agreed that it was their job to offer not only compassion but help.

They had given out water, opened their bathroom to the public and cashed unemployment and disability checks at no extra cost. They hired a sandwich maker who was homeless and had lost his teeth after years of addiction; a dishwasher who lived in the women’s shelter and first came to the restaurant for lunch with her parole officer; a cleaner who slept a few blocks away on a wooden pallet and washed up in the bathroom before her shift.

But the homeless population in Phoenix continued to grow. Soon there were hundreds of people sleeping within a few blocks of Old Station, most of them with mental illness or substance abuse issues. They slept on Joe and Debbie’s outdoor tables, defecated behind their back porch, smoked methamphetamine in their parking lot, washed clothes in their bathroom sink, pilfered bread from their delivery trucks, had sex on their patio, masturbated within view of their employees and lit fires that burned down trees and scared away customers. Finally, Joe and Debbie could think of nothing else to do but to start calling police.

Within a half-mile of their restaurant, police had been called to an average of eight incidents a day in 2022. There were at least 1,097 calls for emergency medical help, 573 fights or assaults, 236 incidents of trespassing, 185 fires, 140 thefts, 125 armed robberies, 13 sexual assaults and four homicides. The remains of a 20- to 24-week-old fetus were burned and left next to a dumpster in November. Two people were stabbed to death in their tents. Sixteen others were found dead from overdoses, suicides, hypothermia or excessive heat. The city had tried to begin more extensive cleaning of the encampment, but advocates for people without housing protested that it was inhumane and in December the American Civil Liberties Union successfully filed a federal lawsuit to keep people on the street from being “terrorized” and “displaced.”

Shina Sepulveda had been living in the encampment for a few weeks or maybe for a few months. It was hard to know for sure, she said, because she had been experiencing delusions. What she remembered was escaping from a cult in Mesa, Arizona, building the first internet search engine, losing billions of dollars to a government conspiracy, cutting wiretaps out of her brain, retaking her dynastic name of Espy Rockefeller and then moving onto a sidewalk across the street from Old Station Subs.

For as long as she had been homeless, she tried to nap during the relative safety of the day and stay up late at night to help look over her small corner of the encampment. She put on makeup and sat down at a plywood desk, where a handwritten nameplate introduced her as “Doctor, Poet, Psychologist, Partner at Law,” and where in reality she was now the 47-year-old caretaker of a half-dozen people — because, even if many of her stories were fantastical, she had earned a reputation for being generous and kind and for knowing a bit about everything.

“Hey, Espy, can you help me?” Brandon Mack said as he walked over from his nearby tent. He lifted his shirt to reveal two stab wounds from a few days earlier. He had fought with a neighbor over a coveted corner spot on the sidewalk, walked to the emergency room, gotten 18 stitches and then returned to recover on a molding mattress in a partly burned tent.

Espy took out a pair of scissors, scrubbed them with hand sanitizer and started to cut away a few of his stitches. She wiped away the pus and blood with napkins, tossing them into the street. Then she turned her attention to the next person in need of help. Cecilia wanted soap, so Espy handed her a bar she had scavenged from the nearby shelter. C.J. was drunk and needed help getting into the street to go to the bathroom. A man known as K.D. was moving his tent down the sidewalk because he’d gotten into an argument with a neighbor who insulted his pit bull. “Nobody talks down to Dots,” K.D. said. “I’m ready to go off. I’m armed and dangerous.”

“I was a police officer,” Espy told him. “If you really have to shoot, don’t aim to kill. Just fire a warning shot.”

Joe came into work the next morning and saw a bag of drugs in the road, human waste on the sidewalk, a pit bull wandering the street and blood-soaked napkins blowing toward his restaurant patio, where he and Debbie were scheduled to meet with a real estate agent about the future of Old Station. Debbie still insisted that she was ready to be done with the restaurant. Joe didn’t want to run it without her, but he also didn’t want to walk away with nothing. They had spent the past several months exploring a compromise, seeing if they could sell the business and retire together.

“Are we getting any bites?” Joe asked the agent, Mike Gaida.

“Oh, yeah. I get calls every week,” Mike said, and he explained that at least 25 potential buyers had looked over the financials and recognized a strong family business for the reasonable price of $165,000. Several bailed once Mike mentioned the encampment, but at least a dozen potential buyers secretly came to check out the property. “Most of the time, they don’t call back,” Mike said. “If I track them down, it’s like, ‘God bless those people for staying in business, because I couldn’t do it.’”

“It’s taken years off my life,” Debbie said.

“For her it’s, ‘Get me out. We’ve got to sell, sell, sell,’” Joe said. “But we refused an offer for $250,000 eight years ago, and it keeps dropping. I don’t want to give this place away.”

“I get it,” Mike said. “If you were a half-mile in another direction, you’d be sitting on a million bucks. Instead, it’s, How can you dispose of it?”

A few days later, Joe arrived for work to the sound of a gunshot coming from across the street and a bullet pinging off a nearby fence. He hurried inside and called police. “Yeah, it’s Joe again, over at Old Station,” he said, and a few minutes later two police officers were walking the perimeter of his restaurant, searching for the bullet. Soon Debbie would be waking up and getting ready for work.

“What the heck am I going to tell her to keep her from losing it?” Joe wondered, and he began to rehearse the possibilities in his head. It was only one bullet. Nobody had gotten hurt. Police had come right away. The shooter wasn’t targeting the restaurant. The gunshot was random. It could have happened anywhere.

Joe went outside to get some air. K.D. was ranting on the sidewalk, banging his hand against a fence, contorting his fingers into the shape of a gun and then firing it off at the sky.

“This could be the last straw for her,” Joe said, and then he saw Debbie driving toward the parking lot, steering around K.D. and hurrying through the gate.

“Wow. Tough morning?” she asked.

He took her inside the restaurant while he tried to come up with the right words. It was only one shot. The restaurant was still standing. They’d run Old Station together for 37 years, and maybe they could hang on for a while longer. But instead Joe told her the only thing that felt true.

“The whole thing’s a disaster,” he said. “I get it. It’s OK. I understand why you’re done.”

Want to improve your overall health? Look at these 5 areas of your life

Deseret News

Want to improve your overall health? Look at these 5 areas of your life

Hanna Seariac – March 18, 2023

Salad greens and vegetables in Cambridge, Mass. | Wikimedia Commons

When it comes to health advice, a lot of people have very different opinions. Sometimes you’ll hear people say to eat keto and lift weights, while other times people will say that you should do cardio and count calories. With the litany of different suggestions, it can be difficult to find a routine that works for you.

Many people want to improve their health and aren’t sure which areas matter the most — should sleep and diet be the main focus or should it be exercise? The real answer is focusing on developing a healthier lifestyle and improving different aspects of your life that can have a positive impact on health.

Some of the most apparent ones, according to Stanford, are sleep, diet, exercise, stress management (and with spring coming around the corner, sunlight helps) and relationships. Here’s how you can make little improvements in each of these areas.

What’s the sleep ‘sweet spot’ to boost longevity?

How to improve your sleep

Improving sleep may seem like an impossible task. After getting home from school or work, time can just fly by. There are a couple things to do to help you have better sleep. First, ditch the blue light before sleep. As tempting as it is to scroll through social media or text with your friends right before going to bed, looking at blue light can negatively impact your sleep. According to the Cleveland Clinic, scrolling on your phone can also keep your brain active, which will make it harder to fall asleep.

Try turning off your electronics a couple of hours before bed and doing other activities, like reading a book or meditating before bed, which can help you to relax. Make sure to set your alarm before you put your phone down.

Getting more sleep can help you shed extra pounds, research says

Another thing that can improve your sleep is avoiding caffeine before bed, per the CDC. Try to stop drinking caffeine at noon each day, so that way when you go to sleep, the effects of it have worn off. Improving sleep is about making small changes that will benefit you in the long run. Good sleep is important for hormonal regulation and overall health, and it can set you up to make good decisions in the long run.

How to improve your diet

Improving your diet can feel like a daunting task. One easy way to make changes is to think about making simple switches. If you eat chips with lunch, consider swapping them for carrots and celery. If you’re cooking a pasta dish, consider switching the white flour pasta for a chickpea or red lentil pasta. If you love fried chicken, try making a baked version.

Want to help kids thrive? Focus on these 5 aspects of health

A few of these switches can be helpful in making incremental, positive changes toward health. Also consider what you can add to meals that you love. Say you really like mashed potatoes — consider doing half potato and then half cauliflower. Or think about a pasta dish you like, such as baked ziti. Think about how you can add broccoli and spinach to it. If your diet could use some improvement, chances are if you immediately switch to salads all the time, you won’t be making sustainable changes.

There are other small changes you can make. Healthline suggests that you pay attention to protein intake and stay hydrated throughout the day. Another tip is to stay away from diet foods. Think about eating whole foods when trying to improve your diet.

Eating healthy without cooking or takeout — how to accomplish your New Year’s resolution

How to start exercising

If you’ve stopped exercising, it’s not too late to start doing it again. Real Simple suggests that when you’re trying to get back into the swing of exercising, start small. Instead of immediately trying to go back to where you were when you were exercising the most, get back into the habit of doing some movement each day.

The best exercise to do is the one that you will do consistently and that you like. Experiment with fitness classes or going to the gym or exercising at home or outside. Finding a routine that you like can be helpful to start exercising.

Another way to start exercising is to create accountability for yourself. Talk to a friend about getting back into a routine and develop an accountability plan. Even if you start out small, doing a little bit of exercise each week can help you to feel better.

Why sunlight matters for stress management

Stress management can be a tricky thing to do. According to the Stanford Lifestyle Medicine Program, managing stress can be done by identifying the cause of the stress and then responding accordingly. Sunlight also can be an important part of stress management.

According to The Wellesley News, sunlight can make us feel less stressed. There’s just something about the sun that helps us feel better. According to a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, sunlight increases the amount of vitamin D that you absorb — many people are deficient in this, so getting enough light each day can help your health.

When working a 9 to 5, it can be hard to find the time to go outside. Consider taking your lunch break outside. This is a great time to go for a short, brisk walk as well, which can help you get some movement in. Your mood may also be positively impacted by spending more time in the sun.

How is using your cellphone at a restaurant connected with relationship satisfaction?

How to focus on relationships

Focusing on relationships can improve your overall health. If you’re happy with your relationships, you may also be more inclined to spend more time improving your health in other ways, too.

Improving relationships is more of an art than it is a science. Spending time with the people you love can help you improve your relationships. When you’re with a person you love, take time to listen to them — really listen to them — and think about what they’re saying. Make sure to let people in your life know that you value them. It can improve your overall mood and health to have strong relationships.

Donald Trump claims he will be arrested Tuesday in Manhattan probe, calls for protests

USA Today

Donald Trump claims he will be arrested Tuesday in Manhattan probe, calls for protests

Ella Lee, Josh Meyer, David Jackson and Kevin Johnson – March 18, 2023

Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves the stage after speaking during an event at his Mar-a-Lago home

Former President Donald Trump said he expects to be arrested Tuesday in connection with a Manhattan district attorney investigation and called on his supporters to protest, even as uncertainty remained about whether any legal action was actually imminent.

Trump’s advisers Tuesday made clear they had no specific knowledge of the timing of any possible indictment, even as the former president made the comments on Truth Social, the social media network he founded.

Trump is under investigation for a $130,000 payment he made just before the 2016 election to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels about an earlier affair. The former president has denied wrongdoing, and federal investigators ended their own inquiry into the payments in 2019.

An indictment of Trump would send the U.S. political world into unprecedented territory – not just the first indictment of a former president, but one who is in the midst of again running for the White House. And his calls for protest also echoed similar statements by the former president ahead of Jan. 6.

Trump attorney Joe Tacopina confirmed that Trump’s reference to the timing of any possible charge is not based on any contact from Manhattan district attorney’s office.

“No one tells us anything, which is very frustrating,” Tacopina said in an email to USA Today. “President Trump is basing his response on press reports, and the fact that this is a political prosecution and the DA leaks things to the press instead of communicating to the lawyers as they should.”

Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for Manhattan’s District Attorney’s office, declined to comment on the former president’s statement.

Testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who arranged for the payment and already has been convicted and served prison time, could help bring the first charges in history against a former president.

On Truth Social Saturday, Trump urged his supporters to “Protest, take our nation back!”

“The far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week,” he wrote in all caps.

A Trump spokesperson speaking on background told USA TODAY that there has been “no notification” of a possible Trump indictment other than news media reports and “leaks from the Justice Dept. and the DA’s office.”

Manhattan prosecutors on Wednesday met with Daniels. She thanked her attorney in a tweet for “helping me in our continuing fight for truth and justice.”

Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said Trump’s looming indictment in New York is uncharted waters.

“There really is no precedent for indicting a former president,” Tribe said. “It’s anyone’s guess exactly what would happen.”

Experts say Trump arrest unlikely

Trump says he’ll still run for president again if he’s indicted in any of the current investigations into his conduct. His first rally of the 2024 presidential race is scheduled for March 25 in Waco, Texas.

An indictment is not the same as an arrest; it’s a formal charge of a crime, while an arrest is when a person is taken into custody. An arrest of Trump is not likely, said former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.

“Typically defendants are not arrested in cases like this one when they’re represented by counsel,” he said.

Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor and University of Michigan law professor, said a self-surrender is more likely in cases like Trump’s.

“Unless he is a risk of flight or danger to the community, self surrender seems typical in this kind of case,” she said. “He would be booked and have his fingerprints and mugshot taken, and then likely released on bond.”

Tribe said it’s likely that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg will offer Trump a more anonymous way to turn himself in, though it’s unlikely the former president would accept such routes.

“I’m sure he wishes there were an escalator he could descend in order to self-surrender,” he said. “It’s his standard technique to turn everything into publicity, and they will undoubtedly raise a lot of money surrounding his self-surrender.”

Trump’s call for protests raise concerns

While Trump’s spokesperson acknowledged there has been “no notification” related to the timing of possible criminal charges, the former president’s call for protests drew the concern of law enforcement involved in preparing for such an event.

The appeal for demonstrations, said one official familiar with the arrangements, may immediately require a larger security footprint in New York and more agents assigned to shadow the movements of the former president.

The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly on the matter, also was not aware of a definitive time for any possible prosecution announcement.

Cohen, the former Trump lawyer who testified against him, said Trump’s call to action for his supporters echoes those ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

“Donald’s post is eerily similar to his battle cry prior to the January 6th insurrection; including calling for protest,” Cohen told USA TODAY. “By doing so, Donald is hoping to rile his base, witness another violent clash on his behalf and profit from it by soliciting contributions.”

With Trump facing possible criminal charges, W. Ralph Basham, a former Secret Service director, said the prospect raises unprecedented questions for the Secret Service and the boundaries of the agency’s obligation to provide lifetime protection for the former president. Basham, who served during the George H.W. Bush administration, said he was unaware of any provision that would allow the agency to drop its protection obligation, even if a protectee was sentenced to a prison term. “We are in uncharted territory here,” Basham said. “I’m sure the attorneys are scrambling to find answers to those questions.”

“I’m not aware of anything… that would preclude them (Secret Service agents) from escorting a former president to a detention center in the event of a conviction and prison sentence,” Basham said, adding that the agency would then have to consider “establishing a presence” at a detention center for the duration of any sentence. “I just don’t know,” he said. “The lawyers are going to have to figure this out.”

Meet Michael Cohen: Who is the liar and felon who might help convict his former boss, Donald Trump?

Trump being treated ‘like an ordinary citizen’

While a future Trump indictment would be historic, perhaps even greater in significance is that the justice system is working as it should, Tribe said.

“He’s being treated the way he should be treated, like an ordinary citizen,” he said. “Having a mugshot being fingerprinted, having to stand in front of a judge and answer, ‘Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’

“The same thing happens to other ordinary citizens,” he continued.

I moved to Alabama To Fight Trump. I Thought It’d Be Temporary — Here’s Why I Decided To Stay.

HuffPost

I Moved To Alabama To Fight Trump. I Thought It’d Be Temporary — Here’s Why I Decided To Stay.

Ellen Gomory – March 18, 2023

The author at The Nick, a local bar, in Birmingham, Alabama.

In July of 2018, I arrived in Huntsville, Alabama, sight unseen.

My 2009 Honda Accord was packed to the brim with the contents of my Bushwick, New York, apartment, which had started to feel like a distant memory somewhere in the rolling, monotonous beauty of the Smokies. The trunk held garbage bags stuffed with clothing and liquor boxes filled with books. In the backseat was bedding, framed art and a coffee table my uncle made in the 1980s. My plan was to stay for five months ― through the end of the midterm elections ― and then return to the life I had been living in Brooklyn for the better part of a decade.

I had only been down to Alabama once before, several months prior, to volunteer at the Equal Justice Initiative’s opening of its museum dedicated to victims of lynching. It was there that I met Alabama’s Democratic House minority leader, who offered me a job working on the midterms. It was also there, in the Red Roof Inn on Zelda Road, that I picked up a mean case of bedbugs, which left itchy welts across my face and arms that took weeks to disappear.

Now I was headed to meet Alice, a volunteer on the campaign who had offered to put me up for a few nights and rent me an apartment at one of the properties she owned in downtown Huntsville. The rent was $400 per month for a large one bedroom ― less than half of what I had paid for my portion of the dilapidated two-bedroom I’d been renting in Brooklyn.

Alice and her wife lived about 20 minutes outside of Huntsville in Harvest, an unincorporated rural community. Driving around Huntsville, which I had been told would soon be the largest city in Alabama, I wondered Where’s the city part? The sight of cotton fields sent chills down my spine, and by the time I arrived at Alice’s, I was fundamentally questioning my decision to move.

I was not a professional campaign worker. In fact, this was my first job in politics. Until Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, I had been working in book publishing, teaching yoga and generally enjoying the many privileges that my whiteness allowed me. Like so many New York City liberals, that election had been a wakeup call, and I’d committed myself to doing more, to educating myself, to fighting for the rights I’d naively thought were guaranteed.

I’d read myriad think pieces about how we needed to spend more time in those parts of the country that had voted for Trump. But if Hillary Clinton couldn’t even be bothered to go to Wisconsin, did I really need to uproot my life and move to Alabama?

The scene in Harvest, Alabama, outside of Huntsville.

Growing up in New Jersey, I knew about as much about the South as I did about Timbuktu. When I applied to Tulane University, my grandmother, a die-hard New Yorker, said without a hint of sarcasm, “But you know you can’t get a decent education below the Mason-Dixon line.” The bedbugs were surprising to no one ― my decision to move was a shock.

With some trepidation, I let myself into Alice’s house using her keypad and waited for her to come home. The campaign was in full swing, so I occupied the afternoon with calls, fundraising emails and drafting the paperwork for a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.

When Alice arrived, we greeted each other cautiously. We’d spoken many times on the phone, mostly about campaign-related business, and her low voice, thick accent and easy demeanor immediately put me at ease. She was understandably more skeptical of me. What was a girl from New Jersey with no prior work experience in politics doing down here in Alabama?

Over dinner and bourbon, we got to know each other. I told her about my family, the guy I was dating and my desire to find more meaningful work. Alice shared her struggle to lift herself out of rural poverty and become the vice president of a major tech company, and the difficulties she’d faced in coming out. We began to develop a friendship.

As part of my Alabama education, Alice pulled out a white board to explain the state’s deepest political divide. On one side she wrote “Alabama.” On the other side she wrote “Auburn,” with a line dividing the two. Under Alabama, she wrote “Roll Tide”; under Auburn, “War Eagle.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why is one team called ‘Alabama’ if both teams are in Alabama? And why is Auburn’s chant ‘War Eagle’ if their mascot is the tigers?”

Alice looked at me like I had two heads.

“What’s not to get?” She asked. “I think you’ve had too much bourbon.”

Football as religion was just one of many cultural discoveries I made over those first months in Alabama, the majority of which could be easily packaged into an early-aughts rom-com. Meat and three’s, Jason Isbell and chatting with people in line at the grocery store were all foreign concepts, and I reveled in their discovery. Well, everything except football.

Alice was my first friend, but I quickly made more, and before long Alabama began to feel like home.

The author on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where voting rights protesters marched on Bloody Sunday in 1965.

The campaign was busy, but the work felt meaningful. We hoped to capitalize on Doug Jones’ historic Senate win and break the Republican supermajority in the state house ahead of the census and redistricting. Since state lawmakers are responsible for drawing up voting districts, it was crucial that we win in districts across the state where Democrats had not only lost but in many cases had not even run a candidate for many years. Given the state’s history of civil rights organizing and voter suppression, the task felt especially vital.

During the campaign, I visited New York frequently, on both personal and fundraising trips. Each time I came up, I was surprised by how little I missed the city and how eager I was to return to Alabama. The energy and schlep of the city that had energized me throughout my 20s felt draining, and the disdain with which so many Northeasterners treated my new home felt frustrating.

At a fundraising event in lower Manhattan, I told the host about my recent move. He simply responded, “I’m sorry.”

Almost no one I knew had ever visited Alabama, and most seemed to think that the state was populated by illiterate Trump supporters who didn’t wear shoes. The grace that well-meaning liberals offered the Midwest did not extend to a state whose reputation had been solidified during the civil rights movement. Most people I spoke with still associated Alabama with Gov. George Wallace’s proclamation of “segregation forever” and Bull Connor’s assault on peaceful protesters with dogs and fire hoses.

Though Alabama’s brutal, racist history is very much alive and undeniably woven into the fabric of the state, it is far from unique to Alabama. I was consistently surprised by the smugness with which Northeasterners talked about Alabama without any apparent awareness of our own region’s history of racism or, more strikingly, the state’s equally potent history of activism. In sneering at the state as a whole, people seemed not to realize that they were also sneering at activists, organizers and everyday people working to make the best with what little resources they might have.

The joke that Alabamians are shoeless and illiterate is much less funny when you consider the state’s history of racism and lack of job opportunities or public school funding.

Yard signs at one of Sen. Doug Jones’ COVID-19 drive-in rallies.

Following a brutal midterm loss, I decided to stay in Alabama and work for the state House Democratic Caucus. When the session ended, I went to work for Terri Sewell, our sole Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and then on Doug Jones’ second Senate race. I moved to Birmingham, fell in love and bought a house. I got engaged, started teaching yoga again and completed a master’s program in journalism at the University of Alabama. Before long, 4½ years had passed and I had built a life for myself.

To my friends and family up North, my decision to stay was even more confusing than my initial decision to leave. Then, I had been on a mission with a clear goal and end date. Now, I was just… living?

Gradually, more friends and family came down to visit and started to understand the appeal. The pace down here is slower, the food is excellent and history is everywhere. Politically and culturally, the state is still deeply conservative, but I found a group of friends (largely through political work) whose progressive ideals align with my own. We joke that the only time Alabama makes positive national news is for football, but within challenge and struggle, there is also beauty and culture. Social justice and equity work become more potent in the face of clear and vocal enemies.

As a country, we are still mired in the work of consensus building. We are still deeply and fundamentally divided. Partially, I believe the issue is one of exposure. The echo chambers of social media and online news are further isolating and entrenching people in their beliefs and, despite the commitments many of us made to understanding those with opposing viewpoints, it’s easier to hand-wring with likeminded friends.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently made headlines for proposing a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Though pundits were quick to ridicule her, it’s a sentiment I’ve often heard in casual conversation with Northern friends on the left. “If the South is going to hold us back from meaningful climate and social progress, why not just let them secede?”

The answer, in simple terms, is that separation hurts those with the least. If creating a fairer, more equitable society is truly what we as progressives care about, then we have a responsibility not to pull away but to lean in.

We’ve seen what leaning in has done in Georgia, but it took Stacey Abrams and many other organizers and activists well over a decade to implement the internal structures that have turned Georgia purple. And still the fight continues. There is still so much important work to be done and so many people fighting to hold on to the ugliness of the past. Dismissing Alabama or the South as a whole does nothing to advance that work; it only confirms to people down here that they have been left behind.

A photo the author took of Rep. John Lewis in Selma, Alabama, a few weeks before he died.

Ellen Gomory is a New Jersey native living in Birmingham, Alabama. She is passionate about storytelling, progressive politics, the Real Housewives and her pug, Eloise.

Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

The Guardian

Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

David Smith in Washington – March 18, 2023

<span>Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images</span> — Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

When a fiery train derailment took place on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. The former US president visited East Palestine, accused Joe Biden of ignoring the community – “Get over here!” – and distributed self-branded water before dropping in at a local McDonald’s.

Then, when the Silicon Valley Bank last week became the second biggest bank to fail in US history, Trump again lost no time in making political capital. He predicted that Biden would go down as “the Herbert Hoover of the modrrn [sic] age” and predicted a worse economic crash than the Great Depression.

Yet it was Trump himself who, as US president, rolled back regulations intended to make railways safer and banks more secure. Critics said his attacks on the Biden administration offered a preview of a disingenuous presidential election campaign to come and, not for the first time in Trump’s career, displayed a shameless double standard.

“Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald Trump and he sets new standards in a whole bunch of regrettable ways,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “For his true believers, they’re going to take Trump’s word for it and, even if they don’t, it doesn’t affect their support of him.”

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on 10 March and of New York’s Signature Bank two days later sent shockwaves through the global banking industry and revived bitter memories of the financial crisis that plunged the US into recession about 15 years ago.

Fearing contagion in the banking sector, the government moved to protect all the banks’ deposits, even those that exceeded the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $250,000 limit for each individual account. The cost ran into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Trump with crates of Trump water in East Palestine after a train derailed in Ohio. Photograph: Alan Freed/Reuters

The drama reverberated in Washington, where Trump’s criticism was followed by that of Republicans and conservative media, seeking to blame Biden-driven inflation or, improbably, to Silicon Valley Bank’s socially aware “woke” agenda. Opponents saw this as a crude attempt to deflect from the bank’s risky investments in the bond market and more systemic problems in the sector.

The 2008 financial crisis, triggered by reckless lending in the housing market, led to tough bank regulations during Barack Obama’s presidency. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act aimed to ensure that Americans’ money was safe, in part by setting up annual “stress tests” that examine how banks would perform under future economic downturns.

But when Trump won election in 2016, the writing was on the wall. Biden, then outgoing vice-president, warned against efforts to undo banking regulations, telling an audience at Georgetown University: “We can’t go back to the days when financial companies take massive risks with the knowledge that a taxpayer bailout is around the corner when they fail.”

But in 2018, with Trump in the White House, Congress slashed some of those protections. Republicans – and some Democrats – voted to raise the minimum threshold for banks subject to the stress tests: those with less than $250bn in assets were no longer required to take part. Many big lenders, including Silicon Valley Bank, were freed from the tightest regulatory scrutiny.

Sabato commented: “The worst example is the bank situation because that is directly tied to Trump and his administration and changes made in bank regulations in 2018. Yes, some Democrats voted for it, but it was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans and by Trump who heralded it as the real solution to future bank woes.”

The minority of Democrats who supported the 2018 law have denied that it can be directly tied to this month’s bank failures, although Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, was adamant: “Let’s be clear. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 bank deregulation bill signed by Donald Trump that I strongly opposed.”

You do need government to regulate finance … but that point cannot be made if you’ve got Donald Trump inventing reality
Larry Jacobs

Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator for Ohio who introduced bipartisan legislation to improve rail safety protocols, drew a parallel between the banks’ collapse to rail industry deregulation lobbying that contributed to the East Palestine train disaster. “We see aggressive lobbying like this from banks as well,” he said.

Trump repealed several Barack Obama-era US Department of Transportation rules meant to improve rail safety, including one that required high-hazard cargo trains to use electronically controlled pneumatic brake technology by 2023. This rule would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine – where roughly 5,000 residents had to evacuate for days – as it was not classified as a high-hazard cargo train.

But the debate around the railway accident and bank failures points to a perennial divide between Democrats, who insist that some regulation is vital to a functioning capitalism, and Republicans, who have long claimed to believe in small government. Steve Bannon, an influential far-right podcaster and former White House chief strategist, framed the Trump agenda as “the deconstruction of the administrative state”.

Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Republican party has gotten by for many years on this idea that less is better. However, we’re now learning in this country that, as America continues to mature, in some cases more is better, and more has to be how we get to better. Otherwise the mistakes can spin out of control and cause generations of people long-term damage.”

A Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on fire on 4 February 2023. Photograph: Gene J Puskar/AP

Biden called on Congress to allow regulators to impose tougher penalties on the executives of failed banks while Warren and other Democrats introduced legislation to undo the 2018 law and restore the Dodd-Frank regulations. It is likely to meet stiff opposition from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and even some moderate Democrats.

Biden has also insisted that no taxpayer money will be used to resolve the current crisis, keen to avoid any perception that average Americans are “bailing out” the two banks in a way similar to the unpopular bailouts of the biggest financial firms in 2008.

But Republicans running for the 2024 presidential nomination are already contending that customers will ultimately bear the costs of the government’s actions even if taxpayer funds were not directly used. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, said: “Joe Biden is pretending this isn’t a bailout. It is.”

Another potential 2024 contender, Senator Tim Scott, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, also criticised what he called a “culture of government intervention”, arguing that it incentivises banks to continue risky behavior if they know federal agencies will ultimately rescue them.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “This is familiar ideological territory. The battle lines between liberalism and a fake conservatism appear to be playing out here. But the tragedy of the situation is that the liberals are right.

It’s not new that the Republicans will deregulate an industry and then it collapses … look at American political and economic history of the last 50 years
Wendy Schiller

“You do need government to regulate finance and, when you don’t, you get mischief making and bank failures but that point cannot be made if you’ve got Donald Trump inventing reality. He’s demonstrated that facts and position taking don’t matter. It’s an extraordinary political strategy but it’s even more devastating to our whole political system and our media that this could be allowed.”

This poses a huge messaging challenge for Democrats, who after the 2008 financial crisis came up against the Tea Party, a populist movement feeding off economic and racial resentments. Long and winding explanations about the negative impacts of Trump era deregulation are a hard sell compared to the former president’s sloganeering in East Palestine.

Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Once again we see that Trump is taking advantage of the Achilles’ heel of the Democratic party by telling voters that the Democrats like big government because it bails out industries and it never provides a bailout for the little guy.”

Democrats’ efforts to point out that Trump was responsible for deregulation are unlikely to cut through, Schiller added.

“Any time it takes more than 10 seconds to explain something, you’re done in politics. This is why Trump has catchy phrases, sound bytes. He understands that all voters see is that rich people made a bad investment and then more rich people are making sure that their money’s available to them within three days, coming off the heels of all the closures during Covid, lost business, lost income, people struggling, inflation.

“Democrats don’t want to call it a bailout but it is a bailout. The high visibility of this bailout smothers anything else the Democrats are doing for the average voter. It’s a perfect issue for the Republicans. It’s not new that the Republicans will deregulate an industry and then it collapses and the Democrats have to save it. Look at American political and economic history of the last 50 years: this is exactly what happens.”

Russia tries to boost its flagging army by changing conscription age range

The Telegraph

Russia tries to boost its flagging army by changing conscription age range

James Kilner – March 18, 2023

The Kremlin wants to shift the age of army conscripts to boost the number of combat personnel under its command to 1.5 million.

The age bracket for conscription will be moved from 17-27 to 21-30 in order to close a loophole used by students to avoid conscription, according to the British Ministry of Defence (MoD).

“Many 18 to 21-year-old men currently claim exemption from the draft due to being in higher education,” it said.

The Russian parliament introduced a Bill covering these changes earlier this week. The MoD said it was “likely to be passed” by the start of next year.

Under current Russian law, conscripts are banned from being deployed overseas. However, by illegally annexing Crimea in 2014 – along with Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia last September – Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, can claim that they are defending Russia.

Bid to expand army

Russia’s ministry of defence has said it wants to increase the size of combat personnel under its command from 1.15 million to 1.5 million.

Putin was forced to order the first mobilisation in Russia since the Second World War in September to shore up his front line, which was in danger of collapse. Many of the 325,000 men called up were sent straight to fight in Ukraine without decent equipment or training.

Conscription is carried out twice a year in Russia, recruiting around 125,000 men for 12 months through each draft. But it is treated as a duty and a sort of finishing school. Conscripts are there to serve but not to be thrown into battle.

Even if conscripts are not sent to fight in Ukraine, the MoD said that expanding conscription would still help the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

“Extra conscripts will free up a greater proportion of professional soldiers to fight,” it said.

Reports from inside Russia have said that a low-level mobilisation is ongoing for the army, especially in regional cities.

The Kremlin’s Wagner mercenary group has also switched to openly recruiting in 42 cities across Russia.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, said that he hoped to recruit an extra 30,000 fighters by May.

Slovakia Will Send Entire Fleet of MiG-29 Jets to Ukraine

Bloomberg

Slovakia Will Send Entire Fleet of MiG-29 Jets to Ukraine

Daniel Hornak – March 17, 2023

(Bloomberg) — Slovakia will send its entire fleet of Soviet-era fighter jets to Ukraine to boost its defense against Russian forces, government officials said.

The eastern NATO member state will send all 13 of its MiG-29 jets – grounded since last August and in various states of readiness – at an unspecified date, Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad told reporters in Bratislava on Friday.

The announcement comes a day after Poland said it will send four Soviet-era fighter jets to Ukraine in the coming days. Both nations are responding to pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has persistently demanded warplanes since the first days of the war as essential to driving back the Russian invasion.

The deliveries would cross a threshold in sending firepower to Kyiv, as many western allies have drawn the line at delivering fighter jets, citing the risk of being drawn into a direct confrontation with Moscow.

And while the aging aircraft don’t meet the standard of more modern F-16s or similar models Kyiv has craved most, MiG shipments could add to Ukraine’s fleet with operational jets or spare parts for its own damaged stock.

Officials didn’t specify when the jets, which have been grounded since a maintenance agreement with Russia was terminated last year, will be transferred to Ukraine, citing security reasons. Slovakia is awaiting the delivery of new US-made F-16 warplanes.

The nation will also send part of its Kub air-defense system to Ukraine. In return, it will receive about $700 million worth of US military equipment and $200 million from European Union funds, Nad told reporters.

Read More: Poland to Send Four Soviet-Era Jets to Kyiv in Coming Days

Last month, Nad said that Ukraine would be able to add as many as eight new planes to its fleet from Slovak hardware.

The Kremlin dismissed the plan of Slovakia and Poland on Friday, saying the fighter jets won’t be a game changer.

“You get the feeling that these countries are just getting rid of old, unneeded equipment,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Tass. “You don’t need to be a military expert to say that this won’t affect” the war, he added, saying that they will be “subject to destruction” by Russian forces.

The administration has been a staunch ally of Ukraine despite public opposition that has risen over the past few months of political turmoil. Prime Minister Eduard Heger defended the decision to send the jets, saying they were “not dragging Slovakia into the war.”

With assistance from Peter Laca.

(Updates with reaction from Russia from ninth paragraph.)