April 2023 – Page 11 – The Tarbabys Blog

Pressured by Their Base on Abortion, Republicans Strain to Find a Way Forward

The New York Times

Pressured by Their Base on Abortion, Republicans Strain to Find a Way Forward

Jonathan Weisman – April 11, 2023

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Feb. 2, 2023 (Kenny Holston/The New York Times)

Republican leaders have followed an emboldened base of conservative activists into what increasingly looks like a political cul-de-sac on the issue of abortion — a tightly confined absolutist position that has limited their options before the 2024 election season, even as some in the party push for moderation.

Last year’s Supreme Court decision overturning a woman’s constitutionally protected right to an abortion was supposed to send the issue of abortion access to the states, where local politicians were supposed to have the best sense of the electorate’s views. But the decision on Friday by a conservative judge in Texas, invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, showed the push for nationwide restrictions on abortion has continued since the high court’s nullification of Roe v. Wade.

Days earlier, abortion was the central theme in a liberal judge’s landslide victory for a contested and pivotal seat on the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Some Republicans are warning that the uncompromising position of their party’s activist base could be leading them over an electoral cliff next year.

“If we can show that we care just a little bit, that we have some compassion, we can show the country our policies are reasonable, but because we keep going down these rabbit holes of extremism, we’re just going to keep losing,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who has repeatedly called for more flexibility on first-term abortions and exceptions for rape, incest and the life and health of the mother. “I’m beside myself that I’m the only person who takes this stance.”

She is far from the only one.

The chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, has been showing polling to members of her party demonstrating that Americans largely accept abortion up to 15 weeks into a pregnancy and support the same exemptions that Mace wants. Dan O’Donnell, a conservative radio host in Wisconsin, wrote after the lopsided conservative defeat in the state Supreme Court contest that abortion was driving young voters to the polls in staggering numbers and that survival of the party dictated compromise.

“As difficult as this may be to come to grips with, Republicans are on the wrong side politically of an issue that they are clearly on the right side of morally,” he wrote.

The problem goes beyond abortion. With each mass shooting, the GOP’s staunch stand against gun control faces renewed scrutiny. Republicans courted a backlash last week when they expelled two young Democratic lawmakers out of the Tennessee state legislature for leading youthful protests after a school shooting in Nashville that left six dead. Then on Monday came another mass shooting, in Louisville, Kentucky.

“My kids had friends on Friday night running for their lives,” said Mace, referring to a shooting on South Carolina’s Isle of Palms, which elicited no response from most of her party. “Republicans aren’t showing compassion in the wake of these mass shootings.”

The party’s stand against legislation to combat climate change has helped turn young voters into the most liberal bloc of the American electorate. And Republican efforts to roll back LGBTQ rights and target transgender teenagers, while popular with conservatives, may be seen by the broader electorate as, at best, a distraction from more pressing issues.

Rep. Mark Pocan, an openly gay Democrat from Wisconsin, said Monday that in the short term, the Republican attacks on transgender Americans were having a real-world effect, with a rise in violence and bigotry. But he said it is also contributing to the marginalization of the party, even in his swing state.

He pointed to the “WOW counties” that surround Milwaukee — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — where then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker won 73% in 2014, and where the Republican, Dan Kelly, won 58.7% in the state Supreme Court race last week.

“We keep seeing our numbers increase in those counties because those Republicans largely are economic Republicans, not social Republicans,” Pocan said, adding that GOP candidates “definitely are chasing their people away.”

Mace does appear to be correct that her desire for compromise is not widely shared in a party in which analysts continue to look past social issues to explain their electoral defeats.

Kelly was a poor candidate who lost by an almost identical margin in another state Supreme Court race in 2020, noted David Winston, a longtime pollster and strategist for House Republican leaders. And, Winston added, Republicans may have lost female voters by 8 percentage points in the 2022 midterm elections, but they lost them by 19 points in 2018.

If inflation and economic concerns remain elevated, he added, the 2024 elections will be about the economy, not abortion or guns.

Republicans greeted the abortion-drug ruling on Friday, by Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, with near total silence. The judge gave the Biden administration seven days to appeal, and on Monday, senior executives of more than 250 pharmaceutical and biotech companies pleaded with the courts to nullify the ruling with a scorching condemnation of Kacsmaryk’s reasoning.

Most anti-abortion advocates are not backing down. Katie Glenn Daniel, the state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups, said Wisconsin’s results were more about anti-abortion forces being badly outspent than about ideology. In her state, Florida, she noted, Democrats scorched Republicans with advertising in 2022 saying they planned to ban abortion without exceptions. Republicans, from Gov. Ron DeSantis on down, easily prevailed that November.

Republicans need to keep pressing with abortion restrictions that will affect Democratic states as well as Republican ones, she said.

“A national minimum standard is incredibly important. Without it there will continue to be late-term abortions, and governors like Gavin Newsom are very motivated to force his views on the rest of the country,” she said of California’s Democratic governor.

Last week, the Florida state Senate approved legislation pushing the state’s ban on abortion from the current 15 weeks into pregnancy to six weeks. If the state’s House of Representatives approves it, DeSantis has said he will sign it. If DeSantis runs for president as expected, his signature would thrust abortion squarely into the 2024 race for the White House.

Last year, John P. Feehery, a veteran Republican leadership aide in the House, urged his party to find a defensible position on abortion that included flexibility on abortion pills, allowed early pregnancies to be terminated and detailed a coherent position on exceptions for rape, incest and health concerns. He said Monday that he was repeatedly told abortion would be a state-level issue and federal candidates should just stay quiet.

“They didn’t want to do the hard work on abortion,” he said, blaming “a lack of leadership” in the party that still has the Republican position muddled.

Guns are another issue where silence is not working. The shooting in Louisville, which left six dead, including the gunman, and eight wounded, kept the issue of guns in the spotlight after last week’s heated showdown in Tennessee — and before a three-day gathering of the National Rifle Association on Friday in Indianapolis. The Kentucky attack was the 15th mass shooting this year in which four or more victims were killed, the largest total in a year’s first 100 days since 2009, according to a USA Today/Associated Press/Northeastern University database.

“You can’t stop paying attention after one horrible event happens. You have to watch what happens afterward,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, 26, a Florida Democrat who last year became the first member of Generation Z to be elected to the House.

Voices for compromise are beginning to bubble up, in some cases from surprising sources. Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, one of the country’s largest anti-abortion groups, said Monday that even she was “somewhat concerned” that the Republican Party might be getting ahead of the voters on abortion. Her organization has drafted model legislation to ban abortion at the state level in every case but when the life of the mother is in grave danger. But, Tobias said, that legislation comes with language to extend those exceptions to the “hard cases,” pregnancies that result from rape or incest, or that might harm a mother’s health.

“We’ve always known the American public does not support abortion for all nine months of a pregnancy,” she said. “They want some limits. We are trying to find those limits.”

She added, “If we can only at this time save 95% of the babies, I am happy to support that legislation.”

Volcano eruption in Russia’s Kamchatka spews vast ash clouds

Associated Press

Volcano eruption in Russia’s Kamchatka spews vast ash clouds

Associated Press – April 11, 2023

Smoke and ash are visible during the the Shiveluch volcano’s eruption on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Shiveluch, one of Russia’s most active volcanoes, erupted Tuesday, spewing clouds of ash 20 kilometers into the sky and covering broad areas with ash. (Alexander Ledyayev via AP)

MOSCOW (AP) — A volcano erupted early Tuesday on Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, spewing clouds of dust 20 kilometers (65,600 feet) into the sky and covering broad areas with ash.

The ash cloud from the eruption of Shiveluch, one of Kamchatka’s most active volcanoes, extended over 500 kilometers (more than 300 miles) northwest and engulfed several villages in grey volcanic dust.

Officials closed the skies over the area to aircraft. Local authorities advised residents to stay indoors and shut schools in several affected communities. Two villages had their power supplies cut for a few hours until emergency crews restored them.

Ash fell on 108,000 square kilometers (41,699 square miles) of territory, according to the regional branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Geophysical Survey. Scientists described the fallout as the biggest in nearly 60 years.

The village of Klyuchi, which is located about 50 kilometers (some 30 miles) from the volcano, was covered by an 8-centimeter (3-inch) layer of dust. Residents posted videos showing the ash cloud plunging the area into darkness.

Kamchatka Gov. Vladimir Solodov said there was no need for mass evacuation, but added that some residents who have health issues could be temporarily evacuated.

Shiveluch has two parts, the 3,283-meter (10,771-foot) Old Shiveluch, and the smaller, highly active Young Shiveluch.

The Kamchatka Peninsula, which extends into the Pacific Ocean about 6,600 kilometers (4,000 miles) east of Moscow, is one of the world’s most concentrated area of geothermal activity, with about 30 active volcanoes.

Russia’s economy is becoming more ‘primitive’ and war could push it to the same fate as the Soviet Union

Business Insider

Russia’s economy is becoming more ‘primitive’ and war could push it to the same fate as the Soviet Union, says economist targeted by Moscow

Phil Rosen – April 10, 2023

Putin rides a train — Russian President Vladimir Putin rides a suburban train in Moscow, Russia, in November 2019.Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Economist Konstantin Sonin said the Russian economy has become more primitive since the war began, Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta reported.
The economist, who Moscow placed on its wanted list, said Russia could follow the Soviet Union’s path toward “complete economic implosion.”
“Everything that is happening makes the Russian economy more primitive, more backwards.”

Russia’s economy is becoming increasingly primitive as its war in Ukraine drags on, and the repercussions could push it down the same path the Soviet Union endured three decades ago, according to the Russian economist and University of Chicago professor Konstantin Sonin.

Sonin, who Moscow targeted with a criminal case in last month, told Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta Sunday that the West’s sanctions so far have had “no influence” on the Russia economy. He said it’s instead been Vladimir Putin’s war efforts that have dragged on growth and fueled turmoil.

“Sanctions are a consequence of Russian planes bombing Ukrainian cities, Russian tanks crawling along Ukrainian roads, and Russian soldiers killing Ukrainians,” he said. “Therefore, talking about the influence of sanctions is like talking about the influence of fever on illness.”

The US has led Europe and other nations in imposing various sanctions on Russia and Russian individuals over the last year, including bans on oil and fuel purchases, as well as price cap mechanisms.

The academic explained that the country’s GDP has contracted 3%, instead of expanding 4% as anticipated. And with consumption and retail activity plunging, citizens have suffered even more than what’s been reflected in GDP.

“Everything that is happening makes the Russian economy more primitive, more backwards,” Konstantin said. “This makes backwardness and primitivism more persistent. And I think we are seriously going to follow the Soviet Union’s path from the 1970s to the complete economic implosion of the late 1980s.”

The collapse has already started, in his view. The Kremlin posted a $29 billion deficit in the first quarter, new data showed, as energy revenue continued to decline.

While Russia’s coming demise may not be as dramatic in scale as the Soviet Union’s fall, since certain parameters exist now that weren’t present decades earlier, the economic drag will be severe, Konstantin said.

“[T]he stagnation can reach the level that will cause the full collapse of the state government machine, as it happened in the 1990s.”

Sea levels rising rapidly in southern U.S., study finds

Yahoo! News

Sea levels rising rapidly in southern U.S., study finds

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – April 10, 2023

Damage after Hurricane Ian Bonita Springs, Fla., Sept. 29, 2022. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

A study published Monday finds sea-level rise along the coast of the southeastern United States has accelerated rapidly since 2010, raising fears that tens of millions of Americans’ homes in cities across the South will be at risk from flooding in the decades to come.

“It’s a window into the future,” Sönke Dangendorf, an assistant professor of river-coastal science and engineering at Tulane University, who co-authored the study that appeared in Nature Communications, told the Washington Post.

That paper and another published last month in the Journal of Climate find that sea levels along the Gulf Coast and the southern Atlantic Coast have risen an average of 1 centimeter per year since 2010. That translates to nearly 5 inches over the last 12 years, and it is about double the rate of average global sea-level rise during the same time period.

The Journal of Climate study found that the hurricanes that have recently hammered the Gulf Coast, including Michael in 2018 and Ian — which was blamed in the deaths of 109 Floridians last year — had a more severe impact because of higher sea levels.

“It turns out that the water level associated with Hurricane Ian was the highest on record due to the combined effect of sea-level rise and storm surge,” Jianjun Yin, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona and the author of the Journal of Climate study, told the Post.

Residents of Houston evacuate their homes after the area was flooded from Hurricane Harvey, Aug. 28, 2017. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the water level at Lake Pontchartrain, an estuary bordering New Orleans, is eight inches higher than it was in 2006. Other cities threatened by rising oceans in the region include Houston, Miami and Mobile, Ala.

The centimeter-per-year rate is far faster than experts had expected, and it is more in line with projections made for the end of the century, Dagendorf said. High-tide flooding — when the tides bring water onto normally dry land on rain-free days — has more than doubled on the Gulf Coast and Southeast coast since the beginning of this century, according to NOAA. Recent years have seen records for high-tide flooding obliterated. The city of Bay St. Louis, Miss., went from three days of high-tide flooding in 2000 to 22 days in 2020.

A study by scientists with the University of Miami, NOAA, NASA and other institutions, which has not yet undergone peer review, found that the Southeastern sea-level rise accounted for “30%-50% of flood days in 2015-2020.”

“In low-lying coastal regions, an increase of even a few centimeters in the background sea level can break the regional flooding thresholds and lead to coastal inundation,” the study said.

Miami and New Orleans face greater sea-level threat than already feared

Richard Luscombe – April 10, 2023

<span>Photograph: Wilfredo Lee/AP</span> — Photograph: Wilfredo Lee/AP

Coastal cities in the southern US, including Miami, Houston and New Orleans, are in even greater peril from sea-level rise than scientists already feared, according to new analysis.

What experts are calling a dramatic surge in ocean levels has taken place along the US south-eastern and Gulf of Mexico coastline since 2010, one study suggests, an increase of almost 5in (12.7cm).

That “burst”, more than double the global average of 0.17in (0.44cm) per year, is fueling ever more powerful cyclones, including Hurricane Ian, which struck Florida in September and caused more than $113bn of damage – the state’s costliest natural disaster and the third most expensive storm in US history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

The University of Arizona study, published in the Journal of Climate and reported on Monday by the Washington Post, provides an alarming new assessment of a key ingredient of the escalating climate emergency, particularly in popular but vulnerable areas of the US where millions of people live.

Existing projections by Nasa show a sea-level rise up to 12in (30cm) by the middle of the century, with longer-range forecasts even more dire.

The Gulf region from Texas to Florida, and southern Atlantic seaboard will see most of the change, the agency says.

“The entire south-east coast and the Gulf Coast is feeling the impact of the sea-level rise acceleration,” the study’s author Jianjun Yin, professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona, told the Post.

“It turns out that the water level associated with Hurricane Ian was the highest on record due to the combined effect of sea-level rise and storm surge.”

The threat from rising oceans hangs over numerous centers of heavy population located on, or close to the coast. Miami, and Miami Beach, cities often cited as ground zero for the climate emergency, frequently see flooding during high tides. Property insurance rates throughout Florida, which Noaa says has experienced more than 40% of all US hurricane strikes, have soared in recent years.

The two most expensive hurricanes in US history, Katrina in 2005 and Harvey in 2017, ravaged New Orleans, Louisiana, and Houston, Texas, respectively,

Earlier this month, the Guardian carried an extract from a new book about how Charleston, South Carolina, is facing a “perfect storm” of rising sea levels and racism that leaves the city, in the view of many observers, living on borrowed time.

“What is likely to happen in Charleston is likely, absent a substantial shift in attitude, to happen in many other coastal cities around the globe,” wrote Susan Crawford, author of Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm.

The Post reported on a second study, published on Monday on nature.com, effectively mirroring the finding of the Arizona analysis that an “acceleration” of sea-level rise was under way.

Researchers at Tulane University, New Orleans, also note that the increase in the Gulf and south-eastern region is greater than the global average, a surge of greater than 0.4in per year they say is “unprecedented in at least 120 years”.

The study, which says the rise is “amplified by internal climate variabilities”, cites storms such as Katrina, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, that “illustrate that any further increases in the rate of MSL [mean sea-level] rise, particularly rapid ones, threaten the national security of the US and hamper timely adaptation measures.”

Human activity in the Gulf region, which the researchers refer to as “vertical land motion” (VLM), has played a role, the study continues.

“It is well known that tide gauges in the Gulf of Mexico are subject to significant nonlinear VLM, likely related to oil, gas, or groundwater withdrawal. These nonlinear changes appear predominantly along the western portions of the US Gulf coast (Louisiana and Texas),” it says.

In Wisconsin, a big win for liberals and a warning for the GOP

Yahoo News 360

In Wisconsin, a big win for liberals and a warning for the GOP

Mike Bebernes – Senior Editor – April 9, 2023

How Wisconsin’s new liberal supreme court could rule on abortion rights, redistricting

What’s happening

On Tuesday night, while most of the political world was still focusing on the indictment of former President Donald Trump, a liberal candidate secured a major win that arguably suggests more about how future national elections may go than anything that happened in that New York City courtroom earlier in the day.

In Wisconsin, a liberal judge, Janet Protasiewicz, decisively defeated her conservative opponent, Daniel Kelly, and secured a seat on the state’s Supreme Court in a race widely considered to be the most important election of 2023. Protasiewicz’s victory will give liberals a majority on the Wisconsin court for the first time in 15 years. This potentially offers them the opportunity to strike down a 19th-century law banning nearly all abortions and to redraw congressional maps that have allowed Republicans to dominate the Wisconsin Legislature, despite the near 50-50 split of voters in the state.

Although the contest was nonpartisan on paper, it had all of the markings of a traditional campaign. Democrats and Republicans rallied intensely behind their preferred candidates, spending a combined $42 million on the race — nearly three times the previous record for any state Supreme Court election. Protasiewicz campaigned heavily on abortion and democracy reform, while Kelly attempted to portray her as “soft on crime.”

In another high-profile race Tuesday night in Chicago, the progressive candidate, Brandon Johnson, beat the conservative Democrat Paul Vallas in the race to become mayor of the nation’s third-largest city. These two victories come five months after Democrats overcame predictions of a “red wave” in last year’s midterm elections by winning key Senate, House and governors’ races across the country.

Why there’s debate

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will probably have a significant impact on politics in the state, but many political observers say it also serves as a strong bellwether of the political dynamics in the country ahead of next year’s critical presidential election cycle.

Commentators on both sides of the political spectrum say the result should be a flashing red warning light for Republicans about the dangers they face in 2024. They argue that Protasiewicz’s win shows that the dynamics that fueled the GOP’s lackluster showing in the midterms — most notably opposition to Trump and backlash to the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning abortion protections established in Roe v. Wade — are still swaying swing voters. Many also make the case that Republicans have little hope of pivoting away from such unpopular positions because of the intensely pro-Trump and anti-abortion views of the party’s core voters.

There are also practical implications of the new liberal majority on Wisconsin’s top court that could benefit Democrats. If the court throws out the state’s gerrymandered district map, which is strongly biased in the Republicans’ favor, that could help Democrats gain a handful of seats in the House of Representatives and tip the balance in the state Legislature in their favor. Some legal experts add that having Protasiewicz on the bench, rather than an ally of Trump, like Kelly, dramatically reduces the chances that a GOP-backed legal effort to challenge the state’s results in the next presidential election would be successful.

Other observers are wary of making too many predictions based on a single, off-year election, with more than 18 months to go before the presidential election. They argue that the types of voters who turn out for a state Supreme Court race don’t necessarily reflect the voters who will turn out next November, especially if Trump himself is on the ballot. It’s also possible, some add, that abortion may not be as potent an issue for Democrats in the future, because the question may largely have been settled in most states by the time voters head to the polls.

What’s next

Protasiewicz is scheduled to be sworn in in August, and the court is expected to quickly take up challenges to both the state’s centuries-old abortion ban and its gerrymandered district map. There has been some speculation that Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate may attempt to impeach Protasiewicz to prevent her from tipping power in the court, but the party’s leaders have insisted that is not going to happen.

Perspectives

Republicans’ refusal to abandon unpopular positions means the losses will keep coming

“Republicans were, after all, warned. Again and again. On Trump and abortion, but also on guns, moral Grundyism, and their addiction to the crazy. Yet despite all the red blinking lights — and they are flashing everywhere — the GOP simply smacks its lips and says, ‘This is fine.’ More, please.” — Charlie Sykes, Bulwark

The GOP has time to stem its losses on abortion if it’s willing to moderate on the issue

“The Wisconsin results show abortion is still politically potent. … Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024. A total ban is a loser in swing states. Republicans who insist on that position could soon find that electoral defeats will lead to even more liberal state abortion laws than under Roe.” — Editorial, Wall Street Journal

An obscure, off-year court race can’t tell us much about how national elections will go

“The supreme-court election is a big win for the Left, but it would be foolish to suggest it means Wisconsin won’t be a competitive state in 2024. Turnout in 2023 was significantly higher than in a typical supreme-court election but significantly lower than in the November 2022 midterm elections or the 2020 presidential election.” — John McCormack, National Review

Democratic strength in Midwest swing states narrows the GOP’s path to the White House

“These gains in turn will further energize progressives and elect more Democrats in a virtuous circle. It is hard to imagine any Republican presidential candidate carrying Wisconsin in 2024, and that pattern is likely to hold in other key Midwestern states.” — Robert Kuttner, American Prospect

Unique circumstances made abortion more central in Wisconsin than it will be in most other contests

“The answer seems to be that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, but only in some circumstances. When a campaign revolves around the subject — as the Wisconsin Supreme Court race did this week and voter referendums in Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan did last year — abortion can win big even in purple or red states. … But there is not yet evidence that abortion can determine the outcome of most political campaigns.” — David Leonhardt, New York Times

The GOP’s MAGA base is driving the party straight toward disaster in 2024

“The GOP nominee will have most likely endorsed a national abortion ban (or at least draconian abortion restrictions in their own state) to make the party’s primary voters happy. … If messaging about defending abortion rights and democracy commanded a sizable majority in this highly polarized, blue collar-heavy swing state, it may well continue constituting Kryptonite to MAGA — all the way through 2024.” — Greg Sargent, Washington Post

The messages that have helped the GOP win in the past may not work today

“Away from the Trump circus, it certainly feels like a shift is happening. The go-to Republican scare tactics – Socialism is coming! Crime is rampant! The family is under attack! – aren’t working. And when the face of your party becomes the first former president ever indicted, the old ‘party of law and order’ line falls a bit flat.” — Rex Huppke, USA Today

The result should inspire Democrats to proudly stand up for progressive policies

“For Democrats, there is a lesson here. When they run on protecting abortion rights, they tend to win. When they shy away from messages that are central to their party’s identity — for instance, by tacking to the center with tough-on-crime policies — their record is much more mixed. … In much of the country, voters don’t want Republican-lite candidates. They want Democrats who act like Democrats.” — Alex Shephard, New Republic

Abortion fights may be largely settled by the time the presidential election comes around

“Abortion might be legal in Wisconsin by the 2024 election. I think that’s actually quite likely. So, you know, abortion as a motivating issue might not be there for some voters.” — Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, FiveThirtyEight

A liberal majority on Wisconsin’s court will counter the GOP’s efforts to subvert democracy

“A redrawn map could put two or three GOP-held seats in Congress in play for Democrats. … The actual winner of the 2024 Wisconsin presidential election will all but certainly receive the state’s electoral votes.” — Christina Cauterucci, Slate

Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.

Photo Credit REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Trump and His Lawyers: A Restless Search for Another Roy Cohn

The New York Times

Trump and His Lawyers: A Restless Search for Another Roy Cohn

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan – April 9, 2023

Todd Blanche, a newly hired criminal defense lawyer for former President Donald Trump, leaves the courthouse after Trump’s indictment, in New York, April 4, 2023. (Ahmed Gaber/The New York Times)

Seated far to the left of the defendant, former President Donald Trump, in a Manhattan, New York, criminal courtroom Tuesday was a lawyer who has never tried a case in court, whose phone was seized by federal agents executing a warrant last year, and who once hosted syndicated news segments bombastically defending the Trump White House.

Seated to Trump’s far right was Todd Blanche, a newly hired criminal defense lawyer who also represents the lawyer at the far left end of the table, Boris Epshteyn. In between them was Joe Tacopina, a combative presence on cable television who recently represented Trump’s future daughter-in-law, Kimberly Guilfoyle, before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The tableau, rounded out by another lawyer, Susan Necheles, from Trump’s arraignment on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records, revealed more about the client than about the case at hand. It was emblematic of his relentless search for the perfect lawyer — and of his frequent replacement of his lawyers when they fail to live up to his ideal for how the perfect lawyer should operate.

Trump has long been obsessed with lawyers: obsessed with finding what he thinks are good lawyers and obsessed with ensuring that his lawyers defend him zealously in the court of public opinion.

His lawyers’ own foibles are seldom disqualifying, so long as they defend him in the manner he desires.

That often means measuring up to the example of Roy Cohn, Trump’s first fixer-lawyer, who represented him in the 1970s and early 1980s. Cohn, whose background included being indicted himself and who was eventually disbarred, earned a reputation for practicing with threats, scorched-earth attacks and media manipulation.

Trump’s continual efforts to identify and recruit the newest Roy Cohn have always been unusual and impulsive, according to interviews with a half-dozen people who have represented Trump or been involved in his legal travails over the past seven years.

He has occasionally hired lawyers after only the briefest phone call, knowing little to nothing about their background but having been impressed by a quick introduction or by seeing them praise him on Fox News.

It took only an introduction over the phone by Epshteyn on a conference call for Trump to hire Evan Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor, to handle discussions with the government over its efforts to recover classified materials in Trump’s possession. (Corcoran has since become the focus of government efforts to pierce attorney-client privilege and learn about his discussions with Trump in connection with a grand-jury subpoena for classified material at Mar-a-Lago as the government amasses evidence of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors believe Trump may have misled Corcoran during those discussions.)

Trump hired Jim Trusty, a former federal prosecutor, to work on the classified documents case after seeing him discuss one of Trump’s legal entanglements as a commentator on television.

“That’s one of the first questions: ‘Can you go on TV?’ He picks his lawyers literally off of TV,” said one lawyer who used to represent Trump, who insisted on anonymity to avoid publicly breaking confidence with a former client. “It’s more important that you go on TV for him and how you look on TV than what you actually say in the courtroom.”

The same lawyer cited Trump’s lawsuits against journalist Bob Woodward and the Pulitzer Prize Board as actions that any experienced lawyer would have known would get him or her “laughed out of court.”

“He wants people who will go out and say things that lawyers can’t say, things you just can’t say in a courtroom,” the former Trump lawyer said. “Lawyers who push back don’t make it.”

The Woodward and Pulitzer lawsuits were advocated nonetheless by Epshteyn, according to two of the former president’s advisers, because Epshteyn is “the good news guy” who relays to Trump only what he thinks will please him. (Others say Epshteyn has delivered bad news as well, when it’s been necessary.)

Epshteyn declined to comment.

“President Trump has assembled a legal team that is battle-tested and proven on all levels,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump. “With the law, facts and truth on President Trump’s side across the board, the witch hunts and hoaxes being thrown against him and his supporters have no chance. President Trump will not be deterred and will always keep fighting for America and Americans.”

Trump employs some veteran lawyers with extensive experience, who are candid with him even though they know he may disregard their advice or, worse, attack them for giving it, according to some who have worked in Trump’s orbit. And he hasn’t pushed them all to go on television. But longtime Trump observers see a correlation between others on his current team and the self-described “elite strike force” that championed Trump’s false claims of a stolen election after his defeat by Joe Biden.

Epshteyn was part of the group that pushed to keep Trump in power and has since stayed involved as a communications and in-house counsel. Still, several of Trump’s advisers were surprised to see Epshteyn seated at the defense table when photos were published from inside the Manhattan courtroom Tuesday: While Blanche, Tacopina and Necheles were all named in the court transcript as attorneys of record in the criminal case, Epshteyn was not.

Until he announced his presidential campaign in November, Trump had paid at least $10 million to his lawyers over the prior two years using money donated to his political action committee. The fact that he was not personally on the hook for the money seemed to make Trump even more impulsive in his hiring of lawyers, according to a person familiar with his legal decisions.

Trump is not an easy client: He often tells lawyers that he is smarter than them and more experienced in legal combat. He is given to instructing them not only what to say on television but also what to say in court.

In an interview in 2021, Trump named Cohn and Jay Goldberg, who represented him in his divorce from his first wife, Ivana, as the two best lawyers he had ever had.

“I’m not finding people like this; Jay Goldberg, you know, he was a great Harvard student, but he was great on his feet,” Trump said, before making clear how much he saw the job of his lawyers as representing him in the public eye: “I know they’ve got to exist, they’re around, but you don’t see it. A lot of people choke. They choke, you know, when the press, when you call, when the press calls. In all fairness, the press calls, and they can’t handle it.”

While Trump has privately praised Tacopina for his appearances on television, some of the former president’s advisers have been unhappy with them; Tacopina was recently joined in talking about the Manhattan criminal case by Trusty, though Trusty represents Trump in the classified documents case.

Another lawyer who has worked with Trump — his former attorney general, William Barr — shook his head at the sight of the defense table Tuesday.

Barr, who sat for an interview with the House select committee investigating Trump’s efforts to stay in office, explained that lawyers working for Trump tend to come to one conclusion.

“Lawyers inevitably are sorry for taking on assignments with him,” Barr said on Fox News. “They spend a lot of time before grand juries or depositions themselves.”

Fed Up With Mayhem, Miami Beach Wants to Tame Spring Break for Good

The New York Times

Fed Up With Mayhem, Miami Beach Wants to Tame Spring Break for Good

Patricia Mazzei – April 9, 2023

From left, Chandler Robinson, Sam Fisher and Alexis Illes play slam ball on South Beach in Miami Beach, Fla. on Friday, March 31, 2023, while vacationing from Orlando, Fla. (Scott McIntyre/The New York Times)

MIAMI BEACH — After two fatal shootings on Ocean Drive over a March weekend, Miami Beach leaders followed their recent playbook for dealing with raucous spring break crowds: a state of emergency, a midnight curfew and limited liquor sales.

Then, in a new and drastic step, the city commissioners announced a curfew for 2024, a full year in advance, and declared spring break on the sun-kissed streets of Miami Beach to be over.

“Miami Beach is shutting the door on spring break, once and for all,” Alex Fernandez, a city commissioner who sponsored a series of 2024 measures, said before the vote.

The decision, in the middle of the March and April season that is the most profitable time of the year for local businesses, has caused both relief and consternation over the possible loss of the throngs of visitors that have grown to overwhelm the city’s police and other public services — and of the money that those visitors spend on hotel rooms, nightclub cover charges and boozy cocktails.

Miami Beach both loves and hates its tourists, a conflicting sentiment that has long plagued officials as the city has evolved from a cocaine cowboy den in the 1980s to a high-fashion Riviera in the 1990s to what it is today: a glittering playground for affluent families making a home, foreigners chasing the sun and young American visitors who come looking for a good time. Some people, including the city’s mayor, want the partyers gone for good.

If Miami Beach is to be rebranded as less of a spring break destination and more of an arts, culture and health and wellness hub, some owners of bars, nightclubs and liquor stores worry that they will lose business. And some residents and officials fear losing the diversity and laid-back vibe that make Miami Beach Miami Beach.

“What we’re seeing is panic-stricken politicians who feel the need to do something,” Ricky Arriola, a city commissioner who voted against the 2024 curfew, said in an interview. “The heavy hand of government is being imposed on residents, our visitors and businesses, rather than doing the hard work of coming up with really strategic alternatives.”

Similar frictions between residents and visitors have afflicted other popular Florida spring break locales like Panama City Beach. Over time, Fort Lauderdale and other cities have pushed spring breakers out, in part by raising hotel rates and changing zoning laws to turn dive bars into more upscale establishments.

Miami Beach has been wrestling with its reputation as a party town. A judge recently upheld an ordinance imposing a partial 2 a.m. cutoff on alcohol sales for a South Beach neighborhood known as South of Fifth, now full of glimmering condos. The law had been challenged by Story, a nightclub that argued it could not survive if it could no longer sell alcohol until 5 a.m.

Patience has worn thin as spring break revelers, often partying with alcohol or drugs, have packed a roughly 10-block stretch of South Beach along the Atlantic oceanfront each season, leading to unpredictable situations that sometimes turn violent because so many people have guns, according to city leaders, police officers and business owners.

The two deadly incidents this year took place over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend, typically one of the busiest of the season. After the second, the city briefly imposed a midnight curfew.

Last year, two shootings on Ocean Drive led the city to set a midnight curfew. In 2021, Miami Beach made headlines when, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, the city marketed itself to visitors even though many nightclubs remained closed, leading to raucous street parties. Officials responded that year by imposing an 8 p.m. curfew.

The rowdy behavior in the streets and the curfews that result have hurt businesses year after year, said Joshua Wallack, the chief operating officer of Mango’s Tropical Cafe, an Ocean Drive institution for more than 30 years.

“When they go from a dangerous situation to complete lockdown, there is no business,” he said. “We’re just caught in the wake of how they handle it. The service industry and the hospitality industry, they get completely obliterated because it goes from having complete chaos to nothing.”

In the past, civil rights activists have complained about the city police department’s use of military-style vehicles, pepper balls and forceful crowd control tactics during spring break, which attracts many Black visitors to a city whose resident population is largely white. Glendon Hall, chair of the Miami Beach Black Affairs Advisory Committee, which was created two years ago, was embedded with police officers and the city’s “goodwill ambassadors” during spring break last month. He said in a statement that was read at a meeting Tuesday that he was pleased with how law enforcement handled the “massive crowds” this year and that there had been no major complaints from civil rights groups.

The Miami Beach Police Department made 573 arrests in March, a slight drop from 615 arrests in March 2022, according to Officer Ernesto Rodriguez, a department spokesperson. Police officers seized more than 100 guns this year, he added.

Despite the headlines about shootings and curfews, families, couples and small gaggles of friends strolled down the sidewalks of Ocean Drive on a Friday afternoon late last month. Marcus Benjamin, a 19-year-old college student from Chicago, said the city’s emergency measures had “not at all” affected his trip with two of his buddies.

“I’ve seen a lot of cops on the beach,” said one of his friends, Cameron Sasser, also 19. “But it’s about the same as other years.”

Still, most everyone in city leadership seems to agree that the chaotic spring break crowds have become too much. But when it comes to what to do about them, views differ.

Mayor Dan Gelber said spring break “doesn’t fit with a city that has so many residents.”

“South Beach has bars and restaurants,” he said, “but it also has elementary schools and churches and synagogues.” Some local residents and visitors who spend lavishly often avoid the city during spring break.

Some commissioners like Fernandez have said they want to keep spring breakers but not “lawbreakers” who follow them into the city.

“The worst thing that we can do is continue doing the same thing we’ve done now for several years in a row, which is knowing that we’re going to have an overcrowding of our city and waiting until the violent situation occurs — until the death occurs — to react,” he said in an interview. “It’s better to get ahead of the situation and impose the curfew and the restrictions now.”

In 2021, Miami Beach lost in court after the Clevelander Hotel sued the city over a law setting a 2 a.m. cutoff for alcohol sales. The judge ruled that the ordinance had not been properly enacted.

Under states of emergency during past spring breaks, increased regulations yielded little success in subduing the party scene, according to commissioners like Arriola, who would prefer to bring in a big organized event in March that would allow officials to set up barricades, ticketed entry and metal detectors around Ocean Drive roughly from Fifth to 15th streets.

“At least people that are celebrating spring break in a street party on Ocean Drive could have the comfort of knowing that there wouldn’t be any weapons in that area,” he said.

After seeing crowds grow for nearly two decades at another busy time of year, Memorial Day weekend, the city began in 2017 to host the Hyundai Air & Sea Show, which features the military. The event has displaced many of the partyers who used to gather for Urban Beach Week, celebrating hip-hop.

This year, a three-day festival in March on Ocean Drive and in nearby Lummus Park drew daytime visitors and, the police department said, helped tame spring break — but only until the festival’s music and other entertainment ended around 9 p.m. each day. Both of the shootings happened later at night.

Without a major event lined up for 2024, the city appears to be considering a spring break lockdown — something Wallack said would go too far. Miami Beach should be able to offer a multitude of activities, from arts to wellness to nightlife, without having to sacrifice one for another, he argued.

“This is a city,” he said.

And anyway, he added, “Good luck trying to lock down public beaches.”

Putin’s plundered aircraft not our problem, insurance chief says

The Telegraph

Putin’s plundered aircraft not our problem, insurance chief says

Oliver Gill – April 9, 2023

Vladimir Putin seized 500 commercial aircraft after his invasion of Ukraine - MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/POOL/AFP via Getty Images — Vladimir Putin seized 500 commercial aircraft after his invasion of Ukraine – MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Insurers will go bust if they are forced to cover the cost of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, the founder of one of the world’s biggest brokers has warned.

David Howden, who has built an £11bn eponymous insurance empire, said his industry cannot be expected to cover the cost of war, amid a row over Mr Putin’s seizure of hundreds of commercial aircraft.

Mr Howden said: “The insurance market cannot be a systemic backstop for a war between the UK and Russia. And it’s not designed to be. No policies cover it.

“Otherwise, if we covered it all, it would actually end up with the Government anyway – we’d all go bankrupt.”

Russian authorities seized 500 commercial aircraft owned by overseas leasing companies shortly after the outbreak of war against Ukraine.

The owners, mostly domiciled in Ireland, have tried to claim on insurance but have been rebuffed. They are now suing Lloyd’s of London insurers for their refusal to pay out up to $10bn (£8bn) in claims. A legal showdown in the High Court is scheduled for next year.

Mr Howden said insurers are legitimately refusing to pay under the terms of certain types of cover.

He said: “Ultimately, war has never been something that insurance has been there to cover.”

If insurance policies were broad enough to cover the impact of war, it would force the Government to bail out companies “because there is not enough capital in the insurance market to pay for it,” he said.

“The insurance industry – no-one quite knows – [but it’s] four or five trillion dollars of capital. It’s small. It’s a tenth of the derivative market, for example.”

David Howden - David Rose — David Howden – David Rose

Howden Group has not underwritten policies itself but has deep connections within the industry as Europe’s largest broker.

The row over the “stolen” planes in Russia comes with the UK insurance sector still reeling from a public backlash to its refusal to pay claims under business interruption policies during the Covid pandemic.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-11-1/html/r-sf-flx.html

Small businesses and the UK’s financial regulator challenged the industry in court, with the Supreme Court ultimately ordering insurers to pay out.

Mr Howden admitted that insurers had handled the crisis poorly.

He said: “Did we cover ourselves in glory over business interruption during the Covid pandemic? No, we didn’t. Should we respond differently? Yes, we should have.”

He said insurers were too focused on the technical detail of policies despite the extraordinary circumstances.

“When the claims come, the insurance company, rightly from a technical point of view but maybe wrongly from a PR point of view, say: ‘I’m very sorry, that’s not covered by our policy.’”

The insurance industry is currently facing a new headache over how to handle cyber insurance.

Members of Lloyd’s of London, the 335-year-old insurance market, have been angered by the institution’s insistence that all cyber policies exclude “state-backed” attacks.

Many hackers are based in countries such as Russia and North Korea. Clarifying which ones are and aren’t backed by the state can be more of an art than a science.

Lloyd’s members complain that the blanket policy is too broad and prevents them from offering coverage they would be happy to sell.

Mr Howden called the row over cyber insurance “ridiculous”. The straight-talking 59-year-old said: “The excitement over cyber is ridiculous.”

“We’re trying to be clear and we try to tell people it’s not covered, [but] suddenly – because we are bad at PR – people go: ‘Oh, my God, they are excluding war.’ It’s never been covered.”

Mr Howden suggested Lloyd’s should settle the argument by drawing up official guidance as to what constitutes a state-backed attack, which the marketplace worries would leave members open to “systematic risk.”

He said: “Most wars are easy to define. Cyber wars are more difficult to define.

“What we should have on cyber is one of the very smart GCHQ people define what is a war, and what is systemic attack. And then you could go out and separately buy from the insurance market your war coverage.”

Mr Howden started his eponymous empire in 1994 with three employees, a dog and £25,000 of funding from an angel investor. These days the company is headquartered in One Creechurch Place, a 156 metre skyscraper in the heart of the City that looks directly over onto the second floor office where it all began.

Employing 14,500 people – 6,500 of them in the UK – across 50 countries, Howden Group is a towering presence within the insurance sector.

Mr Howden has created the largest insurance broker in the UK – and the biggest operator outside of the US – through a series of shrewd acquisitions, turbo-charged by private equity investment from General Atlantic and Hg Capital alongside funding from Canadian pension fund CDPQ.

Yet Howden Group is the UK’s fifth-largest employee-owned business, with 4,500 employees owning 35pc of the company.

“Employee ownership is amazing,” Mr Howden said. “We’ve built a business around people.”

The buy-in from staff has helped foster a positive culture without too much effort, he said.

“People care about people and people seem to be having fun. That’s culture. It’s like within your family or friends, it’s how you behave, how you act.”

“Anywhere where I go where they have got their culture on the wall, you know that’s not their culture. You know they are lying.”

Howden Group’s combination of employee-ownership and private investment is precisely the model now being considered by John Lewis, Britain’s biggest employee-owned business.

Mr Howden said: “We don’t have any dividends at all. All the money we make, we reinvest back in, unlike a public company that would use a lot of its capital to pay dividends.”

The long-standing executive is a refreshing counterpoint to the majority of Britain’s carefully manicured executives. Running a privately-owned business means he does not have to mince his words.

“We don’t make f****** kitchens!” he exclaims when asked about Howden Joinery, the kitchen supplier that shares the business’ name and is better known to the general public.

“They’re worth half what we’re worth. They are worth £3.6bn, we are worth £7.2bn.” (Add in Howden’s roughly £4bn in debt and the group boasts an enterprise value in excess of £11bn.)

Mr Howden laments that his business is not as well known as publicly traded peers such as L&G or Aviva.

“We’re opening more offices on the high street than anyone else. We’ve got a market cap that is more than Sainsbury’s – but no-one has heard of us!”

Howden Group’s head offices are an extension of its co-founder’s personal tastes. Life-size figures of dogs, oodles of artwork and clocks of all shapes and sizes are littered across the 14th floor of the company headquarters.

“These clocks are all Howden clocks, because we were clockmakers as well,” he explained, referencing the Victorian clockmakers who bore his family’s name.

For the insurance sector to flourish, it must shake off its stuffy past, he said. Above his office is a cafe and neon-signed bar stocked with beer and wine aplenty – more Shoreditch than Square Mile.

“We want to attract people who aren’t in insurance. We want to get really bright young kids who think they’re going to work with Google,” he said. “Don’t work for Google, come to Howden.”

Mr Howden was arguably destined for a career in insurance. After dropping out of Radley College following his O Levels, he started working at City broker Alexander Howden in 1981. The company had originally been founded by his great-great-great grandfather, though the family connection had been lost by the time he joined.

Today, he lives in Oxfordshire’s Cornbury Park estate, best known among younger generations as the venue that hosts the Wilderness music festival.

“I love life,” Mr Howden said. “I think to be good at a job, you’ve got to be good at life. I don’t think you can really just be a workaholic.”

Soldiers Make Secret Pact to ‘Destroy’ Putin’s Empire From Within

Daily Beast

Soldiers Make Secret Pact to ‘Destroy’ Putin’s Empire From Within

Tom Mutch April 8, 2023

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine—The horrors of Ukraine are an eerily familiar sight for Maga, a 30-year-old Chechen fighter who spoke with The Daily Beast using his codename.

“The same torture, the same mass graves… the things the Russians are doing in Ukraine, they were doing back in Chechnya,” Maga told The Daily Beast from his unit’s hideout in eastern Ukraine last month. “They just come and destroy everyone who could be against their power.”

Having fought first to defend Kyiv—and then in the battles for the liberation of the Kharkiv region—Maga said the atrocities he has seen in Putin’s invasion match stories told by his relatives, who fought in the wars for Chechen independence from the Russian Federation in the 1990s.

While much of the world was shocked by the bloody atrocities committed by Putin’s forces in cities like Mariupol and Bucha, for many Chechens none of this came as a surprise.

Now, this shared trauma appears to have formed a bond between Chechens who have flocked to Ukraine to fight against Putin’s invasion and their new Ukrainian comrades, who have agreed that once the war is finished here, they will travel to fight for a free Chechnya.

Russia Accused of Kidnapping Own Citizens to Fight War in Ukraine

“If I am alive, I will participate in the liberation of Chechnya,” said Alexander, a 43-year-old Ukrainian fighting with the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion, who told The Daily Beast he was named after the first President of the independent Chechen Republic that was bombed into submission by Putin. “Why? Because for me they are brotherly people. I adopted a lot from them: the way they relate to life and death, the way they relate to the elders.” His beard, hair and clothing are cut in the local style—while he retains his Christian faith, he looks Chechen in all but name. Alexander and Maga’s battalion contain some of the around 1,000 Chechens fighting for Ukraine, seeing a direct line between Ukraine’s fight to liberate its territory and Chechnya’s struggle for independence. They invited The Daily Beast to visit their modest barracks in a small townhouse in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk to tell their stories.

<div class="inline-image__caption"><p>A weapons collection in a barracks in Kramatorsk.</p></div> <div class="inline-image__credit">Tom Mutch</div> — A weapons collection in a barracks in Kramatorsk.Tom Mutch

Members of the battalion spoke with The Daily Beast on condition that their last names be omitted and their faces not photographed. They have recently been fighting on the frontlines in Bakhmut, where they say that Russian tactics are just like those of the Soviets during World War II: “They throw and cover everything in meat and capture [territory] because they have a lot of this meat,” while caring nothing for the lives of their soldiers or Ukrainian civilians caught in the crossfire, one member said.

The group keeps a high-powered arsenal inside the townhouse, including 30- and 50-caliber machine guns, AK74 assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Outside, some men were cooking meat on a barbecue, smoking cigarettes, checking weapons and reloading. A well-groomed puppy scurried around the yard snapping at bits of dropped food. One soldier’s patch featured Ukrainian blue and yellow, followed by a verse from the Quran in Arabic (the vast majority of Chechens are Muslim).

<div class="inline-image__caption"><p>A Ukrainian soldier roasts meat on a barbecue in a backyard in Kramatorsk.</p></div> <div class="inline-image__credit">Tom Mutch</div> — A Ukrainian soldier roasts meat on a barbecue in a backyard in Kramatorsk.Tom Mutch

The Ukrainian parliament has already adopted a resolution declaring Chechnya as an independent state that is occupied by Russia, and denounced what they called a genocide of the Chechen people. Maga said that they have many Ukrainian volunteers enlisting who wish to join to fight—not just in Ukraine, but inside the Russian Federation itself.

“Recruits come here all the time,” he said. “They go through training, and everyone is of course preparing to liberate Ichkeria [the local name for Chechnya] and other territories that are occupied, because there are also Tatarstan, Dagestan and Ingushetia.” This, he believes, will be the only way to stop Russian imperial power for good. “All gas and oil come not from Russian territory, it comes from all occupied countries and territories.”

Troops from these ethnic minority regions have made up the bulk of Russian cannon fodder in this war, with one BBC analysis estimating that men from the Muslim-majority region of Dagestan had died at 10 times the rate of those from Moscow. Some critics claim this is a direct result of a cynical strategy from Putin: avoiding domestic backlash by having ethnic minorities bear the brunt of the meat grinder. “The Russians won’t actually go and fight themselves,” Maga said.

<div class="inline-image__caption"><p>Pro-Ukrainian Chechen fighters gather in a backyard in Kramatorsk</p></div> <div class="inline-image__credit">Tom Mutch</div> — Pro-Ukrainian Chechen fighters gather in a backyard in KramatorskTom Mutch

Déjà Vu

Putin’s rise and grip on power owe much to the wars in Chechnya. The Chechens won the first war, fighting between 1994 and 1996 against overwhelming firepower and eventually wrecking the fragile legitimacy of the new democratic Russian state. In 1999, when Putin took over as prime minister, he unleashed a second war which crushed the fledgling Chechen Republic.

His tactics there presaged those that have horrified the world in Ukraine. He used Russia’s overwhelming advantage in artillery and aircraft to raze the Chechen capital city of Grozny to the ground. He would repeat this tactic several times in Ukraine—most notoriously in Mariupol, but also in Severodonetsk, Volnovakha, and Bakhmut.

Alexander admitted that even he used to find Russian propaganda persuasive. “We were constantly brainwashed that Chechens are our enemies. We were told that on TV all day long. Muslims, terrorists, etc. But let’s just say, we didn’t have the sources [that would allow us] to assess it critically. We had only one source: newspapers and TV, and you believed it!” He is extremely disheartened by his countrymen, and even family members who—despite access to the internet and social media—still believe Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine.

“Why do the people who live across the border have all the tools now… Why can’t they take another [source of] information, read it, compare, and think, ‘Oh, but why are we doing it? What is the purpose of it all?,’” he said. “They got brainwashed that they are fighting some kind of mythical fascism and they are protecting their motherland. How can you protect your motherland while being on someone else’s territory?”

But the Chechens in Alexander’s unit are not the only ones fighting this war. Some 9,000 more, loyal to the Kremlin-installed Governor Ramzan Kadyrov, are fighting for Russia in Ukraine. They’ve become notorious not just for their brutality, but also for their tendency to post videos of their fighting on TikTok.

The Chechens fighting for Ukraine also want to clear the name of their nation. “These are not good people, Kadyrovites… There’s a Ukrainian word, nepotrib [trash]. It’s TikTok troops… they [also] have these barrier units—Stalin’s method—and no retreat, only forward,” Alexander said, referring to troops who are reportedly tasked with staying behind regular Russian soldiers to shoot any who try to retreat.

For Maga, the only thing that will bring freedom to Chechnya is not just defeat in the war in Ukraine, but the end of the wider Russian empire. “This is necessary for peace both inside and outside Russia’s borders,” he said. “Dudayev [former Chechen leader] said that if today you keep Chechnya as an internal problem of Russia—tomorrow Europe will be an internal problem of Russia.”

Kremlin Threatens ‘Whole New Level’ of War Over Western Weapons

“Russia must be broken up, otherwise, there will be no peace for the future generation. That’s our goal—liberation of Chechnya and the whole Caucasus from Russian occupation because, without those lands, Russians won’t go fight themselves. Only when an empire is destroyed, will the people change.”

For Alexander, the key to Ukrainian success is the reason Chechens won their first war against Russia, namely their morale and belief in what they are fighting for.

<div class="inline-image__caption"><p>Alexander, a 43-year-old fighter in the brigade</p></div> <div class="inline-image__credit">Tom Mutch</div> — Alexander, a 43-year-old fighter in the brigadeTom Mutch

“They [the Russians] don’t understand where they’ve come to. They don’t understand that their supposedly ‘world’s second army’ is worth nothing. Why? Because they don’t have that inner strength, they don’t have the motivation, they don’t understand what they are doing. They are just a flock of sheep,” he said. “I will [fight] to the end, as long as I can. Until victory.”