They Refused to Fight for Russia. The Law Did Not Treat Them Kindly.

The New York Times

They Refused to Fight for Russia. The Law Did Not Treat Them Kindly.

Neil MacFarquhar – April 30, 2023

Pedestrians walk past a patriotic mural dedicated to victory in World War II, in Moscow, Feb. 17, 2023. (Nanna Heitmann/The New York Times)
Pedestrians walk past a patriotic mural dedicated to victory in World War II, in Moscow, Feb. 17, 2023. (Nanna Heitmann/The New York Times)

An officer in the Federal Guard Service, which is responsible for protecting Russian President Vladimir Putin, decided last fall to avoid fighting in Ukraine by sneaking across the southern border into Kazakhstan.

The officer, Maj. Mikhail Zhilin, disguised himself as a mushroom picker, wearing camouflage and carrying a couple of small bottles of cognac so that he could douse himself and then act drunk and disoriented if he encountered the Russian border patrol.

In the dark, the lean, fit major navigated across the forested frontier without incident, but he was arrested on the other side.

“Freedom is not given to people that easily,” he told his wife, Ekaterina Zhilina, months later, after Kazakhstan rejected his bid for political asylum and handed him back to Russia to face trial for desertion.

“He had these romantic notions when he first began his military-academic studies,” Zhilina said in a recent interview, describing perceptions drawn from Russian literature about the honor and pride inherent in defending your homeland. “But everything soured when the war started.”

Zhilin is among the hundreds of Russian men who faced criminal charges for becoming war refuseniks since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. Some dodge the draft, while those already serving desert or refuse orders to redeploy on the bloody, chaotic battlefields of Ukraine.

In 2022, 1,121 people were convicted of evading mandatory military conscription, according to statistics from Russia’s Supreme Court, compared with an average of around 600 in more recent years. Before the war, a vast majority were fined, not imprisoned. Russia recently passed a measure making it much harder to avoid a draft summons.

In addition, criminal cases have been initiated against more than 1,000 soldiers, mostly for abandoning their units, according to a broad court survey by Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet. Anticipating the problem in September, when several hundred thousand civilians were mobilized, Russia toughened the penalties for being AWOL.

The maximum sentence was doubled to 10 years for what is euphemistically called “Leaving for Sochi.” (SOCH is the Russian acronym for AWOL, but the expression is a play on the name of Sochi, a Black Sea getaway for the country’s elite and site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.) Refusing an order to participate in combat carries a sentence of three to 10 years.

That has not stopped Russian men from going to unusual lengths to avoid fighting. One officer said he took a bullet in the leg as part of a pact among several soldiers to shoot one another and then claim that they were wounded in a firefight. Hailed as a hero for various battlefield events, it took him six months to recover, at which point he decided to flee.

The Kremlin has shrouded in secrecy an increasing amount of information about the military, including new statistics about crimes involving military service, so the numbers are undoubtedly higher than what is available. But the number of AWOL cases accelerated after the general mobilization, according to Mediazona. Many criminal cases involve soldiers who refused orders to enter battle, leading to confrontations with their commanders, according to several lawyers who defend soldiers.

One lawyer, Dmitri Kovalenko, was retained by the families of more than 10 soldiers who said they were thrown into pits, called “zindans,” near the front line after refusing to fight. “People realize that they are not ready — that their commanders are not ready, that they have to go in blind, not knowing where or why,” he said.

Intimidation is the first response of commanders, he said, so treatment can be harsh. Two soldiers whom he defended were locked into a container last summer without food or water, he said. At one point, about 300 conscripts who refused to fight last year were held in a basement in eastern Ukraine, where they were threatened, called “pigs,” not fed and not allowed to go to the toilet or to bathe, according to Astra, an independent news outlet, and other Russian news media organizations, quoting relatives. The Wagner mercenary group has threatened to execute its refuseniks, and there have been scattered reports of them being shot.

In theory, Russian law allows for conscientious objectors performing alternative service, but it is rarely granted. Sometimes those charged with refusing to fight are given suspended sentences, which means they can be redeployed.

The officer who was shot in the leg by his colleague had pursued a military career since he was 9 and a cadet, he said, but he wanted it to be over the minute he was ordered into Ukraine. He ended up staying about three months, appalled by the very idea of the war as well as by the terrible state of the Russian military.

Soldiers were not provided basic items like underwear, he said, and few knew how to navigate and got themselves killed.

“There are no saints on either side,” said the officer, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, nor his location published, out of concern that Russia might seek his extradition. “The locals were actively partisan. I shot back. I didn’t want to die.”

After he recovered, and the military ordered him back to Ukraine, he decided to run.

“I’m ready to die for Russia, but I don’t want to fight, to risk my life for the criminals who sit in the government,” said the officer, who is now on a wanted list in Russia.

Another Russian, a member of the Sakha ethnic group concentrated in the Siberian region of Yakutia, also deserted. Five days among the drunken, newly mobilized soldiers at an army camp convinced him to leave.

The man, who also insisted on anonymity, was fired from his construction job so that he could go fight. Packed onto an airplane, the draftees discovered their destination for training by looking at their phones when they landed. Most soldiers drank constantly, he said in an interview. One night in another barracks, he said, a soldier stabbed another to death.

The conscript said that the racist attitude of his Russian officers when he did his military service a decade earlier had soured him on the military — they called him “reindeer herder” because of his ethnic Siberian background. He said he was subjected to similar comments as soon as he mobilized. Things deteriorated further after he tried to bribe his lieutenant to leave. The officer mocked him openly as a coward.

His mother flew in to extract him, directing a taxi to a hole in the base’s fence. After he fled the country and was charged with desertion, he faced fierce criticism from home, he said, with authorities saying that he had disgraced the Sakha people. Even a close friend threatened to beat him up.

Some Russian courts still publicize military cases to create a chilling deterrent to potential deserters. In the spring, for example, a court announced that a sailor who had gone AWOL twice had been sentenced to nine years in a prison colony.

The Krasnoyarsk Garrison Military Court released a photograph and a statement in December showing dozens of soldiers crowding a courtroom to watch an AWOL case. The sentence was pronounced before that audience “for preventive purposes,” the statement said.

In the Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border, two soldiers were detained on a parade ground in November and charged with refusing to obey a deployment order. They were called out of the ranks, handcuffed and thrown into a paddy wagon in front of their unit, all shown on a video posted on the Telegram messaging app. Earlier this month, both were sentenced to three years in prison, according to Russian news media reports.

Well before the war, Zhilin, 36, the soldier who left for Kazakhstan, had become disenchanted with the very administration he was assigned to protect. An engineer, he worked in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk for the presidential security service, supervising the Kremlin’s communications lines with the eastern parts of Russia.

The assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015 and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in 2020 had drawn his attention, his wife said. He started following political news more closely.

He weighed quitting, but decided he could endure the two years until he received a pension. Then came the war. “‘It is one thing to suppress human rights,’” his wife quoted him as saying, “‘it is quite another to kill people.’”

In the fall, before the mobilization, he had visited the cemetery where his mother is buried. He found 30 new graves of riot police officers who had fought in the war. The ribbon on one small wreath said just “Daddy.”

Two colleagues had already died in Ukraine, and he wondered if his son, 11, and daughter, 8, might one day make a similar wreath. When the mobilization was announced, he quickly decided to leave the country.

Since his security clearance gave him access to state secrets, leaving was prohibited. He decided to cross on foot while his family drove into Kazakhstan legally.

But the plan went awry. Lacking a cell signal, he could not find their car. He was arrested after stumbling upon a Kazakh border officer. He requested political asylum, but in December, he was deported.

In March, he was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in a penal colony and stripped of his rank.

Right after he was deported, his wife, fearing that she and the children would also be sent back, sought and received political asylum in France.

So far, her husband has not been mistreated, she said. The couple, although bitter toward Kazakh authorities, consider the sentence a far better alternative than dying in Ukraine.

“Mikhail wrote me that he feels morally freer than he was,” she said, adding that he told her, “‘I guess you have to pay a certain price for the freedom to think and to say what you want.’”

A law school named after the late Antonin Scalia is a haven for conservative Supreme Court justices to enjoy lavish treatment

Business Insider

A law school named after the late Antonin Scalia is a haven for conservative Supreme Court justices to enjoy lavish treatment, New York Times reports

Hannah Getahun – April 30, 2023

antonin scalia
AP
  • Antonin Scalia Law School at the Virginia-based George Mason University was renamed in 2016.
  • The renaming was part of a plan to help its reputation by getting closer to the Supreme Court.
  • Justices were given notable benefits to teach there, emails obtained by The New York Times reveal.

A conservative law school looking to rebrand into a powerhouse institution buttered up conservative Supreme Court Justices with excessive benefits and good pay, documents obtained by The New York Times show.

Because justices are legally allowed to make money outside of the court in limited ways, including through teaching opportunities, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, which was renamed after the late judge in 2016, offered justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas teaching roles in remote locations like Iceland and Italy, as well as salaries sometimes upwards of $30,000 for two weeks of teaching, the NYT reported.

According to the NYT, the judges were treated well, with lodging and trip planning arranged by the school. University officials told Gorsuch in 2017, before a teaching trip to Italy, that he would only be required to teach in the mornings, leaving the rest of the day to explore the country, according to the emails obtained by the Times. Upon hearing this news, Gorsuch replied, “Fantastico!”

Even liberal justices were enamored by the treatment, according to the Times, with Justice Elena Kagan, who once spoke at the university, saying the law school “seems like a really good place to be.”

Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, spoke with the NYT and described the teaching jobs as appearing to be “all-expenses-paid vacations, with a little teaching thrown in.”

The law school began its relationships with the court following a renaming ceremony — planned by the school’s dean and Republican megadonor Leonard Leo — in 2017, where multiple justices attended and spoke. According to internal emails from university leadership, these relationships were explicitly made to help build the school’s reputation.

“Establishing and building a strong relationship with Justice Gorsuch during his first full term on the bench could be a game-changing opportunity for Scalia Law, as it looks to accelerate its already meteoric rise to the top rank of law schools in the United States,” one email from the university law school read, according to the NYT.

The law school’s staff, many of whom worked directly with the justices, often filed amicus briefs with the court, and court staff helped to handle school duties — despite not being allowed to do so — revealing how the justices’ jobs frequently entwined with their outside work at Scalia Law.

This desire to keep Supreme Court leadership on their roster even superseded scandals the judges faced. Following the sexual misconduct allegations Brett Kavanaugh faced right before he was appointed, Butler assured the justice protests from students against the soon-to-be law professor on campus had nothing to do with the law school, according to the NYT.

The NYT story comes at a time when the lives of the often-secretive Supreme Court have been scrutinized following a ProPublica report that Justice Thomas had been taking lavish secret vacations on a private jet and superyacht paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow for years without disclosing them.

A new report from Insider’s Mattathias Schwartz found that the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts made millions as a legal recruiter for law firms, according to a whistleblower who worked with him.

Despite this extra scrutiny over conflicts of interest, legal experts told Insider there isn’t much that can be done to hold justices accountable.

The Antonin Scalia Law School and a spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Ukraine hits Crimea depot as nation gears up for spring offensive: Updates

USA Today

Ukraine hits Crimea depot as nation gears up for spring offensive: Updates

John Bacon, USA TODAY – April 30, 2023

A suspected Ukraine drone strike that ignited a massive fire at a Crimean oil depot in the Russian-occupied city of Sevastopol was a prelude to a much-anticipated spring offensive, the Ukraine military warned Sunday.

Russian Occupation governor Mikhail Razvozhaev blamed the fire Saturday on a Ukrainian drone, and social media footage showed the fire raging at a storage facility at Kozacha Bay. He said no injuries were reported.

The Ukraine military, as usual after a strike into Russia, did not claim direct responsibility, but spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk came close.

“This work is a preparation for the broad, full-scale offensive that everyone expects,” Humeniuk told Ukraine Pravda.

The attack came a day after Russia struck Ukraine with over 20 cruise missiles and two drones, killing at least 23 people. Most of the deaths took place in an apartment building in the central Ukraine city of Uman.

Ukraine military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov told RBC Ukraine the Crimean strike was “God’s punishment. … This punishment will be long-lasting.” He warned residents of Crimea to stay away from sites that support “the aggressor’s army.”

A Russian military blogger based in Sevastopol reported that two Ukrainian drones destroyed four fuel tanks, the Study for the Institute of War said in its most recent assessment of the war. Another Russian military blogger reported that at least 10  drones conducted the attack but that most were shot down. Crimean occupation head Sergey Aksyonov said the attack did not result in any casualties.

Russia has occupied Crimea for nine years. Since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pledged to drive Russian forces out of all Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea.

In this handout photo made from video released by the governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, on April 29, 2023, on Telegram, a firefighter speaks on a walkie-talkie as smoke and flames rise from a burning fuel tank in Crimea.
In this handout photo made from video released by the governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, on April 29, 2023, on Telegram, a firefighter speaks on a walkie-talkie as smoke and flames rise from a burning fuel tank in Crimea.

Developments:

►Ukrainian forces shelled the city of Nova Kakhovka, according to Moscow-installed authorities in the Russian-occupied part of southern Ukraine’s Kherson province. “Severe artillery fire” cut off power in the city, the officials said.

►Ukraine is set to boycott the world judo championships next week after the International Judo Federation signaled it will allow Russian and Belarusian competitors to enter the event, a key Olympic qualifier.

RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKES KILL 23: The attack was among the deadliest  in months: Updates

Wagner leader threatens to back off Bakhmut without more ammo

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin threatened to withdraw Wagner forces from Bakhmut if the Russian military command fails to provide more ammunition to the Wagner mercenaries. Prigozhin told a Kremlin-affiliated miitary blogger that his troops will continue to fight in Bakhmut but will need to “withdraw in an organized manner or stay and die” if the situation does immediately not improve.

Prigozhin said Wagner needs about 80,000 shells per day – its previous shell allowance prior to apparent Russian Ministry of Defense efforts to reduce Wagner’s influence. Prigozhin added that Wagner is only receiving 800 of the 4,000 shells per day that it is now requesting. Prigozhin claimed that Wagner and Deputy Commander of Russian Forces in Ukraine Army General Sergei Surovikin developed a plan to “grind” the Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut to deprive Ukraine of its initiative on the battlefield.

Ukraine: Residents in occupied areas can get Russian passports to ‘survive’

Ukrainians who live in Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine should “make a decision to survive” and sign up for Russian passports, Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said Sunday. Otherwise, people should leave occupied territories “in any possible way,” the ombudsman told the Kyiv Independent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree last week allowing the deportation of Ukrainians who refuse Russian citizenship. Ukrainians who choose to retain their Ukrainian citizenship can be deported after July 1, 2024. They also face arrest, turning them into a “separate category of civilian hostages,” Lubinets said.

“This decree is aimed at legalizing forced ‘passportization,'” Lubinets said.

Moscow promises ‘very harsh’ response to embassy school eviction

Moscow will give a “very harsh” response to the seizure of the Russian embassy’s school in Poland, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said  Sunday.

Polish authorities ordered the Russian staff out Saturday, saying the building was part of Warsaw City Hall. Moscow described the eviction as illegal. Russia’s Ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreyev told TASS that on Sunday the staff of the school was moving equipment out of the building and that an alternative site had been obtained. Classes will resume after the May holidays on May 10, Andreyev said.

Zakharova told Russia’s TV1 channel that “Warsaw will receive retaliatory steps. … This is their choice; we will respond.”

Contributing: The Associated Press

Putin’s gangster state is bleeding his forces dry

The Telegraph – Opinion

Putin’s gangster state is bleeding his forces dry

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon – April 30, 2023

A damaged tank and pieces of war, Izyum
A damaged tank and pieces of war, Izyum

It comes as no surprise that Vladimir Putin rules Russia in spectacularly corrupt fashion. We all know how money is siphoned from the state and funnelled to his allies and oligarchs, as well as his own pocket. For years, this systemic corruption strengthened his grip on power, yet for his forces in Ukraine – despite the stalemate on the front lines, and undue pessimism from certain quarters – this criminality continues to do the opposite, slowly but steadily weakening the Russian ability to wage war and eroding Putin’s ability to control events.

Despite appearances, the Russian invasion is still falling apart – quite literally in the case of some poorly maintained vehicles and naval equipment – as a direct result of the rot at the heart of the Kremlin. The news that a Russian tank commander was arrested last week and accused of stealing the engines out of battle tanks comes as no surprise; neither are the recent revelations of the decrepit state of much of the Russian navy. It’s the perfect illustration of the insurmountable moral rot plaguing Putin’s gangster state.

The spectacular losses of armoured vehicles suffered by Moscow’s forces was initially a surprise to Western analysts; now I’m inclined to think they may well have been sitting ducks, with critical components sold for scrap or maintained on the cheap. In hindsight, we should have seen it coming: I can remember stories from my time serving as a tank commander in the Cold War facing off against the Russians in Germany. It was common to hear about Russian tank soldiers stealing engine coolant to drink for its intoxicating properties or flogging diesel supplies to buy food.

As for the state of the navy, Russia’s only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, has been out of action since 2018 thanks to a toxic combination of botched repairs and blatant illegality. In March 2021, the general director of the shipyard was arrested in connection with embezzlement of funds. The carrier is not predicted to return to active service until 2024 at the earliest. Meanwhile, the similarly antiquated nuclear-powered flagship of the Northern fleet, Peter the Great, will probably have to be scrapped because it is too expensive to modernise. So much for a country “bouncing back” from its earlier humiliations in Ukraine, such as the memorable sinking of the Moskva.

It is worth remembering, too, that many in the intelligence community believe that even Putin’s trump card – his much-vaunted tactical nuclear weapons – would not actually work properly because of age and mismanagement, even if the soldiers manning them could be persuaded to deploy them, which is far from clear.

As a former soldier, I remain certain this rot will inevitably deprive Russians of the will to fight. The most effective soldiers the Kremlin has left are the criminals that have been sprung out of jails across Russia to fight with the mercenary Wagner Group. But the moral component to fighting spirit is embedded in the belief and right of the fight, and the “silver” shilling of encouragement will only glint for so long. Russian gold is now badly tarnished and the exploitation of the people by a small elite is now all too obvious. The Kremlin’s coin will eventually poison those who cherish it and lead to Russia’s capitulation.

The timing of this implosion will entirely depend on Western resilience to keep giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to drain the Russians of their morale and ability to fight. Reports that Ukrainian units are having to ration shells when they have the might of so many advanced industrialised countries behind them shames us all. This is 2023, not 1915.

To those who think Russia can still summon an unstoppable wave of men and materiel like in the Second World War, think again. Putin’s gangsters have pillaged their own country, normalised corruption throughout the ranks of the military, and, in doing so, doomed themselves to defeat. The moral corruption endemic in Russia will bring Putin down, as it has countless tyrants before him. It is only a matter of time, if the West shows the same resilience in supporting Ukraine as the Ukrainians have in defending their country.

Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a former commander of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment

What is the meaning of ‘woke’? Once a term used by Black Americans, it’s now a rallying cry for GOP

USA Today

What is the meaning of ‘woke’? Once a term used by Black Americans, it’s now a rallying cry for GOP

Mabinty Quarshie, USA TODAY – April 28, 2023

During the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, speaker after speaker attacked “woke” ideology in their speeches to conservative activists.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley decried wokeness as “a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.”

“I traveled the country calling out the woke-industrial-complex in America,” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy bragged.

Elsewhere, Republicans have declared war on “woke capitalism” and even introduced legislation like the “Stop WOKE Act,” in Florida, an acronym for Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees.

The uptick on excoriating “woke ” ideology has increased in recent years among politicians, including former President Donald Trump, as Americans across the nation battle over diversity, inclusion and equity efforts in the workforce, public schools and in legislation.

But what is “woke”? And what do the GOP attacks mean for 2024?

A GOP war on ‘woke’?: Most Americans view the term as a positive, USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds

What does being woke mean?

Among conservative lawmakers and activists “woke” tends to be an across-the-board denunciation of progressive values and liberal initiatives.

Some have used it to attack trans and gay rights while others apply it to critical race theory – a legal theory that examines systemic racism as a part of American institutions – and the teachings of the New York Times’ 1619 project in public schools.

“If you ask people what woke is, I think what they mean is they want to stand against people who are engaging in some type of advocacy for marginalized people,” said Andra Gillespie, political scientist at Emory University.

“It’s kind of this lumping together of anybody whose views could be construed as being progressive on issues related to identity and civil rights.”

At CPAC this year, for example, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles called for the eradication of “transgenderism.”

Woke capitalism: Why Republicans aren’t winning over investors in war against ESG and ‘woke’ big business

But Black Americans have used the term “woke” since at least the early-to-mid 20th century to mean being alert to racial and social injustice.

A version of the term was first used by Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey as early as 1923. It was later popularized by Blues artists such as Lead Belly, who used it when singing about the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine Black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in northeast Alabama in 1931.

As the Black Lives Matter movement began after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, “woke” expanded outside of Black communities into the larger public lexicon.

What about ‘stay woke’?

Black artists and entertainers continued to insert the phrase in their music, including Grammy-award-winning artists Erykah Badu and Childish Gambino — a.k.a. Donald Glover—for political causes.

Yet “woke” has now been hijacked by the political right to mean something far from its original definition.

“The reason we have to ‘stay woke’ is because of exactly what these people are doing right now, which is finding very insidious ways to undercut our rights,” said Terri Givens, a political science professor at McGill University.

Givens called the attacks on the term “a full-on dog whistle” and pointed to attempts to limit the right to vote, curtail reproductive and abortion rights and ban inclusive education in schools as examples of the backlash against Black and brown civil rights.

“Learning history is not about woke-ism,” Given said.

The ‘woke’ backlash

Political experts said the backlash to woke-ism greatly increased after the 2020 worldwide protests against the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s killing.

Conservatives now use the term as a political retort to combat what they perceive as political correctness gone haywire.

But progressive commentators note that the response also comes in the context of a changing America, which is becoming more diverse racially and ethically and along sexual orientation and gender identity lines.

“What they’re trying to do is make the term a pejorative,” said Kendra Cotton, chief operating officer of New Georgia Project, a progressive-leaning voting rights group.

As more marginalized groups are elected into office and exercising their voting power during elections, it can make some Americans afraid, said Cotton.

GOP wins House majority: Republicans send a message to ‘woke’ businesses— get out of politics

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible GOP presidential candidate, has built a persona crusading against ideas and policies conservatives deem as “woke.”

In addition to championing the Stop WOKE Act, he has stated that the Sunshine state is “where woke goes to die.”

Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, a political scientist at George Mason University and co-author of the book “Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter,” said the legislation is “perhaps the most explicit way we see the co-optation of the term ‘woke’ today.”

“Right now, we’re seeing racially conservative pundits and politicians positioning themselves as adversaries of the multiracial Black Lives Matter movement,” said Lopez Bunyasi. “One of the rhetorical tools they are using is the maligning of a term that has been in use by Black people and in Black politics for well over a hundred years.”

Have the anti-woke attacks been successful?

Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin cruised to victory in 2021 riding a wave of parental anger over teaching inclusive history in public schools.

Keneshia Grant, a political scientist at Howard University, said Youngkin’s success was part of an intentional pushback against marginalized communities, which includes misunderstanding terms like woke, critical race theory, and LGBTQ rights.

“He ends up successfully using the fear that people have about teaching students Black history or American history through the guise of CRT and successfully uses that to motivate a base,” Grant said. “They are doing this because they think it will help them win. And we have evidence that sometimes it actually does help them win.”

Americans divided on what ‘woke’ means

What’s telling is that despite the conservative backlash most Americans don’t view “woke” negatively heading into the 2024 presidential contest.

March 2023 USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll found that 56% of Americans said it means “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.”

But the efforts to re-define “woke” have worked with a significant portion of the country. Roughly 39% of those surveyed agree with the Republican definition,”to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.”

The war on ‘woke’: Senate blocks Biden ESG investing rule, Biden vows to veto

“Racial resentment and grievance are certainly one of those things that have been very effectively used to mobilize a certain segment of the Republican population for a long time,” said Gillespie.

Reporter Phillip M. Bailey contributed to this story.

Here’s everybody with stricter ethics rules than the Supreme Court

Yahoo! Finance

Here’s everybody with stricter ethics rules than the Supreme Court


Rick Newman, Senior Columnist – April 27, 2023

Ponder this: Most journalists at mainstream news organizations face far tougher ethical rules than the nine Supreme Court justices who decide monumental issues that directly affect the lives of millions of Americans.

The Associated Press’s rule on gifts allows its journalists to accept nominal offerings worth no more than $25 from anybody who could plausibly be the source of subject or a news story—even if it’s a personal friend. Most news organizations follow the AP guidelines or have a similar code.

There are no such rules at the Supreme Court. A troubling exposé by ProPublica recently revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted numerous lavish gifts from real-estate magnate Harlan Crow, including an Indonesian yachting trip worth as much as half-a-million dollars. Thomas also sold real-estate to Crow in what looks like a sweetheart deal for the jurist. Thomas’s fellow conservative, Justice Neil Gorsuch, also profited from a property deal with a wealthy friend, as if there’s some secret real-estate agency that only serves nine exalted judges, allowing them to avoid the vicissitudes of the normal market.

FILE - Members of the Supreme Court sit for a new group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE – Members of the Supreme Court sit for a new group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Thousands of US businesses and most of the federal government follow ethics guidelines meant to sustain trust in those organizations, protect their integrity, and prevent self-dealing. Nobody pretends those guidelines are perfect. People cheat. Businesses play dirty. Bosses cover up wrongdoing. But a basic code of ethics protects against legal liability and bolsters morale at most organizations in the country.

“Most companies take the code of ethics seriously,” says Rue Dooley, a knowledge adviser at the Society for Human Resource Management. “It’s a good way to regulate certain behaviors. It’s about building trust, sustaining credibility with vendors, clients, customers, patients, and stockholders.”

The executive branch of the federal government has an exhaustive set of rules governing what’s permissible, covering gifts, outside income, investments, property, financial disclosures, conflicts of interest and many other things. There’s a whole agency, the Office of Government Ethics, whose job is to oversee and enforce ethics rules in the executive branch.

The House of Representatives has a detailed code of ethics, with any gift valued at more than $250 requiring approval of the House Ethics Committee. In the Senate, the limit on gifts is $50. Both codes clarify what counts as a “personal friendship,” including possible conflicts of interest. The federal judiciary has its own code of ethics, with the same $50 gift limit as the Senate.

The Supreme Court, by contrast, is uniquely unbound by any behavioral rules. With the court under fire, Chief Justice John Roberts published an unusual note on April 25 outlining what he called the “foundational ethics principles” the justices follow. “The Justices … consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues,” he wrote. These include guidelines for other judges and federal employees, various laws, scholarly articles, disciplinary decisions and advice from colleagues.

There are a couple of problems with Roberts’s reasoning, however. First, there is no single document or set of documents that represents the court’s code of ethics. If you go looking for it, you won’t find it. That’s an obvious recipe for confusion. Justice Thomas responded to the ProPublica exposé saying that years earlier, he “sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends … was not reportable.” This would never fly in an organization with a formal policy and a process for approving or disapproving gifts.

That gets to another problem with the court: There’s no ethics enforcement mechanism. In virtually every other organization, somebody has the power to rule yes or no on a dodgy ethics question. In Congress, it’s the ethics committees. In the rest of the federal judiciary, there’s a chief judge or some other authority. At companies, bosses leading up to the CEO decide what’s acceptable, and they’re accountable if something goes wrong. At the Supreme Court, the chief justice has no such authority over any other justice. Justices are literally answerable to nobody. Roberts acknowledged this in his April 25 memo, pointing out that the organization that oversees other federal courts does not have jurisdiction over the Supreme Court.

Thomas claims that his rich buddy Harlan Crow is a “close personal friend who did not have business before the court,” at the time Thomas went on all-expense-paid luxury trips with him. A proper ethics inquiry would likely shred this defense. Crow is a politically active conservative who, along with his wife, has donated nearly $15 million to candidates and causes during the last 30 years. Almost all of that went to Republicans. During that time the court has heard numerous cases Republicans took a position on, such as three challenges to the Affordable Care Act, several matters involving former President Donald Trump, and the current legal challenge to President Biden’s effort to forgive student debt. Saying a major Republican donor has no interest in Supreme Court outcomes is either woefully naïve or completely disingenuous.

The Roberts defense is “wholly insufficient,” says Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonprofit that advocates for more judicial accountability. “The Supreme Court should agree, or Congress should require them, to follow all the same rules on gifts, travel, and personal hospitality that Congress has to follow.”

A new bill in Congress would do just that. The Supreme Court Code of Conduct Act would require the court to adopt a formal set of ethics rules, appoint somebody to enforce them and publish an annual report on any violations or complaints about questionable activity by the justices. Prospects are dim, however, since Republicans who control the House are generally opposed. For the foreseeable future, the Supreme Court will govern itself and enjoy fewer strictures than most of the Americans it supposedly serves.

Russia’s Defense Ministry braces for major defeat in Ukraine, expert says

The New Voice of Ukraine

Russia’s Defense Ministry braces for major defeat in Ukraine, expert says

April 27, 2023

Ukrainian soldiers ride a tank on the road to the town of Chasiv Yar
Ukrainian soldiers ride a tank on the road to the town of Chasiv Yar

Read also: Russia’s General Staff spread disinformation about winter offensive on Kyiv – Pentagon leaks

“This is preparation; not only are information resources being prepared, but also the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation,” said Svitlan.

“They are already starting to move (personnel), removing from certain positions generals who can be held accountable for failures and, possibly, war crimes.”

Svitlan adds that Russia is bracing for a major breach of its defensive lines in Ukraine.

“At least two fronts will implode; and it needs to be somehow covered up, redirected, and obscured from the media space,” he said.

Read also: Dmytro Syryk, Suspilne radio host, killed at front

“The only way to cover it is to be overtaken by a more significant problem. This is a standard technique of information warfare.”

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, citing data from the Pentagon, Russia does not have enough personnel to maintain full control over all temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.

Read also: Fighter jets ranked 8th on Ukraine’s list of military needs, Pentagon says

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces could launch a major counter-offensive in May, according to recent reports in Western media.

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Billions of gallons of water from Lake Powell are being dumped into the Grand Canyon

ABC News

Billions of gallons of water from Lake Powell are being dumped into the Grand Canyon

Julia Jacobo – April 27, 2023

Billions of gallons of water are being taken from Lake Powell and dumped into waterways along the Grand Canyon, according to federal environmental agencies.

For 72 hours, water will be released from the Glen Canyon Dam at a rate of 39,500 cubic feet per second, which the National Park Service characterized as a “much larger than normal.”

PHOTO: Glen Canyon Dam holds back Colorado River water to create Lake Powell on April 15, 2023 in Lake Page, Arizona. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
PHOTO: Glen Canyon Dam holds back Colorado River water to create Lake Powell on April 15, 2023 in Lake Page, Arizona. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

The release aims to restore sandbars, beaches and campsites used by visitors to the Grand Canyon, according to the NPS. The water will enter the Paria River and move sediment onto beaches and sandbars in Marble Canton and eastern Grand Canyon to restore the Colorado River corridor in eastern Grand Canyon National Park.

In addition to serving as recreational areas for tourists, the sandbars also supply sand needed to protect archaeological sites.

MORE: Here’s what will happen if Colorado River system doesn’t recover from ‘historic drought’

Releases from Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell to supply water to Lake Mead typically happen in the fall.

Current sediment loads, as well as “favorable hydrology conditions” resulting from a wet winter with ample rainfall and snowpack, are conducive to the high-flow experiment, which is being conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The release will mimic the natural flow pattern of the Colorado River, which would typically occur each spring during the runoff of snowmelt.

PHOTO: Glen Canyon Dam holds back Colorado River water to create Lake Powell on April 15, 2023 in Lake Page, Ariz. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
PHOTO: Glen Canyon Dam holds back Colorado River water to create Lake Powell on April 15, 2023 in Lake Page, Ariz. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

The experiment will not affect the total annual amount of water released from Lake Powell to Lake Mead for the 2023 water allotment, officials said.

The high flows that follow the initial release could affect the difficulty of some of the rapids within the canyons, according to the NPS.

MORE: How beavers could help the Colorado River survive future droughts

River users are advised to exercise caution along the Colorado River through Glen and Grand Canyons through Sunday.

“There are inherent risks associated with recreational activities along the Colorado River corridor through Grand Canyon at all times,” the NPS statement said.

PHOTO: A group of rafters push off from the banks at Lees Ferry for a 25-day rafting trip down the Grand Canyon on January 1, 2023 in Marble Canyon, Arizona. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images, FILE)
PHOTO: A group of rafters push off from the banks at Lees Ferry for a 25-day rafting trip down the Grand Canyon on January 1, 2023 in Marble Canyon, Arizona. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images, FILE)

The water releases will eventually snake through the canyons to Lake Mead.

Rick Steves Is Making One Major Change to His European Guidebooks This Year — for an Important Reason

Travel + Leisure

Rick Steves Is Making One Major Change to His European Guidebooks This Year — for an Important Reason

Kelsey Fowler – April 27, 2023

The newest edition of Rick Steves Eastern Europe is getting a new name.

<p>Courtesy of Rick Steves
Courtesy of Rick Steves’ Europe

The guidebook formerly known as “Rick Steves Eastern Europe” will have a new title when the next edition is published later this year.

Rick Steves’ Europe is changing “Eastern Europe” across the brand to “Central Europe,” to better reflect a more geographically accurate name for the region.

When the 11th edition is published, the guidebook will switch over to “Central Europe” as the identifier for the area that includes countries like the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. The change was announced in February and will roll out across the company’s guidebooks, website, and tour itineraries.

In a recent interview with Travel + Leisure, founder Rick Steves explained why he thought the switch was long overdue.

<p>Courtesy of Rick Steves' Europe </p>
Courtesy of Rick Steves’ Europe

“From a marketing, publishing, and tourism point of view, we call Central Europe ‘Eastern Europe’ and that’s a hangover from the Cold War,” he said. “That was a 50-year anomaly. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic got filed away in our minds as Eastern Europe, but that’s really Central Europe.”

In a post announcing the change, guidebook co-author Cameron Hewitt wrote that “Eastern” Europe should really be considered countries like Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia. Prague, often the showcase city of “Eastern” European tours, is actually located to the west of cities like Vienna, Stockholm, and even parts of Italy.

“The political divide of Europe has changed, of course, and it’s high time guidebooks and tour itineraries do, too,” Hewitt wrote.

The zone is also down in tourism this year, Steves said, because people are worried about the ongoing war in Ukraine. Rick Steves’ Europe is continuing to operate tours in the region as long as it remains safe to do so, and Steves said he plans to film with his TV crew in Poland later this year.

<p>Courtesy of Rick Steves' Europe </p>
Courtesy of Rick Steves’ Europe

“It’s unfortunate that people are penalizing the countries that are farther east,” Steves said. “Their economy is hurting because people are staying away.”

While the change might result in some confusion for travelers looking to visit Poland but still searching for “Eastern” Europe trips and tips, Hewitt and those at Rick Steves’ Europe believe the change is worth the risk that come with rebranding.

Hewitt wrote: “We’ve learned that Rick Steves travelers are savvy, open-minded, and curious enough about our world to hop on board when we lead them toward new places and new ideas.”

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Russia has emptied out a Crimea base of weaponry, with officials worried Ukraine could target the region in a possible counteroffensive

Business Insider

Russia has emptied out a Crimea base of weaponry, with officials worried Ukraine could target the region in a possible counteroffensive

Sinéad Baker – April 27, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov in November 2016.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov in November 2016.Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
  • Satellite photos obtained by CNN show that Russia has emptied out a military base in Crimea.
  • Ukraine is planning a counteroffensive, and the head of the region indicated it could be a target.
  • Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and Ukraine says one of its goals is to get it back.

Russia has taken weaponry and equipment out of a military base in Crimea, according to satellite images obtained by CNN, as a Russian official warns that Ukraine may be gearing up to try to take back the region.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, claiming it as part of Russia in a move that has not been recognized internationally.

CNN compared satellite images of the base taken on January 21, February 11, and March 27 by the EU’s Sentinel 2 satellite and by Maxar Technologies.

The January image of the base, located close to the village of Medvedivka and near the border with Kherson, shows a lot of Russian equipment at the site, while the February image shows “dozens of armoured vehicles, including tanks and artillery pieces,” CNN reported.

But in the March image, much of that weaponry is gone.

It is not clear why Russia would move the equipment, but a local official warned that Ukraine appears poised to target the region when it launches its expected counteroffensive.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Russia-appointed governor of Crimea, said earlier this month that Russia was building defensive structures in and around Crimea, indicating that Russia expects a Ukrainian attack.

He said that they “had to prepare for any scenario,” per CNN’s translation.

The governor of Crimea’s largest city said earlier this week that Ukrainian drones had targeted Russia’s main naval base there.

And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly stated that he wants to take Crimea back.

ukraine crimea russia map
The location of Crimea compared to Russia and Ukraine.Thomson Reuters

Ukraine has been gearing up for a long-awaited counteroffensive, including by getting more advanced training and weapons from its allies.

But it isn’t clear when it will begin.

Crimea has a strategic military importance: Russia uses it to support its troops in Ukraine’s south, and it is home to multiple military bases and airports, as well as Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

The region also served as a launchpad for Russia when it began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

And it has symbolic value: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has called it a “holy land” for his country.

Insider’s John Halitwagner reported in January that Crimea could become the next big battlefield, and one that could decide the outcome of the war.