Russia’s Navalny describes harsh reality at ‘Polar Wolf’ Arctic prison
Andrew Osborn and Olzhas Auyezov – December 26, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at a court hearing via video link
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Tuesday confirmed his arrival at what he described as a snow-swept prison above the Arctic Circle and said he was in excellent spirits despite a tiring 20-day journey to get there.
Navalny posted an update on X via his lawyers after his allies lost touch with him for more than two weeks while he was in transit with no information about where he was being taken, prompting expressions of concern from Western politicians.
His spokeswoman said on Monday that Navalny, 47, had been tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony north of the Arctic Circle located in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region about 1,900 km (1200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
“I am your new Father Frost,” Navalny wrote jokingly in his first post from his new prison, a reference to the harsh weather conditions there.
“Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (traditional Russian winter footwear).
“The 20 days of the transfer were quite tiring, but I’m still in an excellent mood, as Father Frost should be.”
Navalny’s new home, known as “the Polar Wolf” colony, is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia. Most prisoners there have been convicted of grave crimes. Winters are harsh – and temperatures are due to drop to around minus 28 Celsius (minus 18.4 Fahrenheit) there over the next week.
About 60 km (40 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, the prison was founded in the 1960s as part of what was once the GULAG system of forced Soviet labour camps, according to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, has said she believes the decision to move him to such a remote and inhospitable location was designed to isolate him, make his life harder, and render it more difficult for his lawyers and allies to access him.
Navalny, who thanked his supporters for their concern about his welfare during his long transfer, said he had seen guards with machineguns and guard dogs and had gone for a walk in the exercise yard which he said was located in a neighbouring cell, the floor of which he said was covered with snow.
Otherwise, he said he had just seen the perimeter fence out of a cell window. He said he had also seen one of his lawyers.
Navalny, who denies all the charges he has been convicted of, says he has been imprisoned because he is viewed as a threat by the Russian political elite.
The Kremlin says he is a convicted criminal and has portrayed him and his supporters as extremists with links to the CIA intelligence agency who they say is seeking to destabilise Russia.
Navalny earned admiration from Russia’s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.
In his social media post, he told supporters he was unfazed by what he was facing.
“Anyway, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m awfully glad I finally made it here,” said Navalny.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Olzhas AuyezovEditing by Angus MacSwan, William Maclean)
“MAY THEY ROT IN HELL”: Trump blasted for hitting “new low” in Christmas Truth Social meltdown
Gabriella Ferrigine – December 26, 2023
Donald Trump KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump spent much of the holiday weekend firing off posts from his Truth Social platform, haranguing President Joe Biden and special counsel Jack Smith, and bemoaning a perceived fall from grace of “our once great U.S.A.”
Trump on Christmas Eve shared a series of messages targeting the committee investigating the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection and the “DERANGED” Smith.
“JOE BIDEN’S MISFITS & THUGS, LIKE DERANGED JACK SMITH, ARE COMING AFTER ME,” Trump wrote. “AT LEVELS OF PERSECUTION NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR COUNTRY???”
“WHY DID THE UNSELECT JANUARY 6th COMMITTEE OF POLITICAL HACKS & THUGS ILLEGALLY DELETE & DESTROY ALL OF THE EVIDENCE THEY USED TO WRITE THEIR FAKE REPORT,” the ex-president fumed on Sunday evening. “WHY DO THEY NOT SHOW THAT I USED THE WORDS ‘PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY’ IN MY SPEECH? THEY ACTUALLY PRETENDED THAT THESE WORDS WERE NEVER UTTERED. CROOKED POLITICS!!!”
“THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN,” Trump continued, “LIED TO CONGRESS, CHEATED ON FISA, RIGGED A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ALLOWED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, TO INVADE OUR COUNTRY, SCREWED UP IN AFGHANISTAN, & JOE BIDEN’S MISFITS & THUGS, LIKE DERANGED JACK SMITH, ARE COMING AFTER ME, AT LEVELS OF PERSECUTION NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR COUNTRY??? IT’S CALLED ELECTION INTERFERENCE. MERRY CHRISTMAS!”
Trump’s Christmas Eve invective followed a major blow to the special counsel’s team, in which the Supreme Court rejected a request to hasten arguments on whether Trump had presidential immunity from federal prosecution for crimes he is accused of commuting while in the White House in election subversion case.
On Monday, the ex-president continued his tirade.
“Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith, the out of control Lunatic who just hired outside attorneys, fresh from the SWAMP (unprecedented!), to help him with his poorly executed WITCH HUNT against ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA,’” he wrote.
“Included also are World Leaders,” Trump added, “both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”
As noted by the Daily Beast, Trump’s Christmas post included a reference to Smith’s addition of attorney Michael Dreeben — a former member of special counsel Bob Mueller’s team who has argued before SCOTUS more than one hundred times — to his legal team.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” panel on Tuesday sharply criticized Trump’s “anger” and “bad faith attacks” to close out the year.
“I think it shows that these indictments and the civil case, despite his pretense otherwise, has gotten to him, because he’s reacting and responding in a way of no one projecting self-confidence or like this is nothing,” panelist Al Sharpton said.
“I also think it shows an inner kind of anger and displacement that he has, because who spends the holiday with this kind of venom, particularly when he is a guy that claims to be this self-confident, self-made guy with this kind of darkness, unless you are just that kind of dark person,” he continued.
“We’ve certainly gotten used to Trump’s unorthodox holiday messages, ‘the haters,’ but this one hit a new low, even for him,” host Jonathan Lemire agreed.
Step by step, Florida Guard inches toward becoming DeSantis’ personal army | Opinion
The Miami Herald Editorial Board – December 25, 2023
The creeping threat of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new State Guard has increased again, this time with the news that a special unit within the organization recently took lessons at a Panhandle combat training center on things like “aerial gunnery” and treating “massive hemorrhages.”
Gun training? “Massive hemorrhages”? That sounds ominous.
This is the same guard that was supposed to be a civilian disaster response organization but has become increasingly militarized, according critics, including some former guard members. As we have said before, the big danger is that DeSantis will turn the State Guard into his personal militia. In a state that is already trying to squelch dissent and target vulnerable groups, that’s a scary prospect. This latest information only bolsters that fear.
Fleeing strongmen
That holds especially true in Miami. The push to give the governor what amounts to a personal law enforcement unit should ring some terrifying bells of recognition: Too many people here have had to flee countries run by authoritarians or strongmen who keep power through force.
The reason for the special training, which was reported by the Miami Herald, apparently is to allow DeSantis to use the guard, which reports only to him — a recipe for abuse — to stop migrants at sea. That’s a far cry from using the group to distribute hurricane relief supplies or help out an overworked National Guard.
That this is happening, though, can’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. Florida’s governor has gone ever more extreme as he has watched his GOP presidential nomination hopes slipping away as Donald Trump’s have grown. His language has grown increasingly incendiary. He has described his plan to shoot and kill drug smugglers at the U.S. southern border using in bloodthirsty, B-movie terms: “We’re gonna shoot them stone cold dead.”
And yet his poll numbers keep going down. According to one recent Quinnipiac University poll, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has now pulled even with him for second place in the primary — both at a mere 11%. In February, DeSantis polled at 36%. Trump, despite his betrayal of the country that many Republicans once spoke against, now has about 67% support, with less than a month before the first primary votes will be cast.
Political points?
With the State Guard, Florida’s governor is no doubt hoping for a wave of people fleeing their country on the high seas so he can unleash his soldiers on them for political purposes. When the State Guard was revived last year by the Legislature at DeSantis’ behest, there was an actual surge of migrants in the Florida Keys, mostly from Cuba and Haiti. But since then, the surge has mostly dried up.
That makes no difference to the governor. Clearly, DeSantis wants to use the State Guard as a pawn in his fight to stay relevant in the primary by focusing on a sure-fire hit with Republicans: the evils of immigration.
It’ll be hard to go any lower than Trump has, though. He recently launched a particularly horrendous attack, saying that migrants crossing the southern border are “poisoning the blood” of the United States. Afterward, he insisted — in his usual attempt at manipulation — that any similarity between his words and those in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” manifesto — “All great cultures of the past perished only because the original creative race died out from blood poisoning” — was simply all in our heads.
DeSantis’ push to revive the State Guard during his presidential run was political from the start and has only become more so. This latest weapons and wounds training is part of the progression toward a potential abuse of power in Florida that he has created with the full-on support of the Legislature. And we’re the ones who will be stuck with the results after he’s gone from office.
DeSantis delivers a political smackdown as Miami teachers union struggles to survive | Opinion
The Miami Herald Editorial Board – December 25, 2023
Trashing labor unions, in particular teachers unions, has become a talking point for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the presidential trail. He told California Gov. Gavin Newsom during their Fox News debate that Democrats are “owned lock, stock and barrel, by the teachers union.”
What does that look on the ground, when laws DeSantis signed singling out some types of public-sector unions start to take effect?
The results may be upwards of 30,000 school employees being left without representation to bargain for better pay and working conditions.
The state’s largest teachers union, United Teachers of Dade, is close to decertification thanks to a new law that requires unions have at least 60% of union members pay dues, the Herald reported. The law — Senate Bill 256 — was a union-busting one-two-punch that not only raised the threshold for certification from 50%, but also prohibited unions from deducting dues directly from members’ paychecks. UTD, which represents teachers in the state’s biggest school district in Miami-Dade County, has gained 800 new members, but still failed to meet the state’s stringent requirements. In November, the Herald reported union membership was at 58.4%.
‘Right to work’
The Republican anti-union spiel usually leaves out the fact that Florida, unlike many blue states, is among 26 states that have “right to work” laws. That means workers cannot be forced to join a union and pay dues as a condition of employment. In other words, teachers and school staff do not have to be part of United Teachers of Dade to benefit from the 7% to 10% pay raise the union negotiated with the school district this year,
Teacher unions became a preferred target of DeSantis during his fight to reopen schools during the pandemic and to eliminate anything he deems “woke” indoctrination in schools. The governor has gone even further by demonizing teachers, who have been muzzled on what they say about race and LGBTQ issues in the classroom.
Unions, like all organizations, have had very public shortcomings, such as protecting bad employees from accountability. But if we’re talking about unions that are too powerful, we cannot leave out police and firefighter unions, whose endorsements DeSantis and other Republican gladly accept. It turns out SB 256 exempted those unions — along with those representing corrections officers — from that 60% threshold requirement.
Union pushed back
In other words, the law affects organizations that have directly clashed with DeSantis and the Republican-led Legislature. United Teachers of Dade was among the most vocal groups pushing back against the parental-rights law critics call “Don’t say gay,” laws that made it easier for organizations like Moms for Liberty to push schools to ban books, and DeSantis’ infamous “Stop Woke Act,” which bans instructions that some may interpret as making students feel guilty about being white. UTD President Karla Hernandez-Mats ran against DeSantis in 2022 as Charlie Crist’s running mate.
Meanwhile, groups like the Police Benevolent Association, the largest police union in the state, have been in lockstep with Republicans. In June, the PBA endorsed DeSantis for president, despite supporting Donald Trump in 2020.
Masked as a measure to hold unions accountable, SB 256 was a version of the same kind of political payback Disney received when it opposed the “Don’t say gay” law.
United Teachers of Dade will not face decertification immediately. It must now prove to the state that it has support from at least 30% of its bargaining unit. After that, the union must hold a vote seeking recertification and show at least 50% support. Next year, UTD must try again to meet that 60% threshold, the Herald reported, which could put it in a potentially never-ending cycle.
This is exactly the type of pain the new state law appears to seek to inflict. In Florida, opposition to the party in power comes with a high cost.
Ukraine’s effort to isolate Russia’s economy through ‘International Sponsors of War’ list
Daniil Ukhorskiy – December 25, 2023
Editor’s Note: This story was sponsored by the Ukrainian think-tank Center for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM).
What do a Snickers bar, an Oreo cookie, and Haagen-Dazs ice cream have in common?
Apart from being beloved sweet treats, these products are manufactured by companies that were named “international sponsors of war” by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) for fuelling Russia’s economy and its war effort against Ukraine.
While some multinational corporations left Russia following the full-scale invasion in 2022, many stayed behind. Household names such as Unilever, Nestlé, and Mondelez offered a range of excuses for their continued presence in Russia. These companies are not targeted by international sanctions since they do not directly contribute to Russia’s war machine. But according to Ukrainian officials, they might as well be: the tax money that these companies pay into Russia’s coffers may be used to finance its military.
The sponsors of war list is a form of “soft sanctions” that harnesses the power of public pressure. Some companies left Russia after being listed, which the NACP claims as their success. In other cases, the Agency negotiated with companies, securing promises to cut ties with Russia. Some of these commitments are yet to be fulfilled.
The “soft sanctions” approach is praised by academia and civil society alike. Yet, some say Ukraine’s policy on isolating Russia’s economy is too arbitrary, and a centralized policy is needed to achieve victory on the economic front.
Multinationals’ Russia Problem
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the thousands of international businesses operating in Russia faced immense pressure to leave the Russian market.
McDonald’s was one of the first massive corporations to cut ties, halting sales in March 2022 and announcing a complete withdrawal two months later.
Multinationals are an important part of Russia’s economy. According to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), which hosts the most comprehensive tracker of international businesses operating in Russia, these companies contributed $25 billion to the Russian GDP in 2021, and paid $2.9 billion in taxes in 2022, according to KSE and their NGO partner on the project, the B4Ukraine coalition.
According to KSE and B4Ukraine, the three most profitable sectors for multinationals in Russia are alcohol and tobacco, mass-market consumer goods, and automobiles.
According to the KSE, after April 2022, the flood of companies leaving Russia turned into a drip. The KSE chart shows that most companies decided on whether to leave by summer 2022 at the latest.
A plateau of companies that made commitments to leave (in blue) shows that after an initial surge, few multinationals decided to exit Russia. (Graph by Nizar Al-Rifai)
Shutting the door on Russia isn’t always simple, even for the companies that want to. A recent investigation by the New York Times showed that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is making withdrawal difficult and costly for foreign companies and enriching Russia in the process.
More than 1,600 foreign companies have continued business as usual in Russia. When challenged about their continued presence, some companies such as Unilever claim only to sell essential goods, while Nestlé cited worries about abandoning their staff, and Carlsberg claims to be unable to find buyers for their business.
These excuses proved thin. Dutch brewer Heineken sold its entire Russian business for the symbolic sum of one euro, showing that withdrawal is possible if a company is ready to take a financial hit. Unilever continued to sell ice cream, under the guise of “essential goods.”
The Kyiv Independent reached out to Unilever, Nestle, and Carlsberg but hasn’t gotten a response as of publication time.
Ultimately, most companies are cynical and profit-driven, and we cannot expect otherwise, says Glib Kanievskyi, co-founder of StateWatch, a Ukrainian transparency watchdog. Any tools that seek to isolate Russia economically must take this into account.
Who are the “sponsors of war’?
The International Sponsors of War list, launched in summer 2022, is an initiative that seeks to turn public opinion against multinationals that stay in Russia and use public pressure to incentivize withdrawal.
Of more than 1,600 foreign companies that stayed in Russia according to KSE, only 45 are listed as sponsors of war. According to Agia Zagrebelska, who oversees the sanctions policy direction at the NACP, there are three main criteria for inclusion: a substantial amount paid in taxes to Russia, any direct connections to the military, and broken promises to withdraw from Russia.
She says the NACP receives suggestions about companies from the public and civil society organizations such as StateWatch. These suggestions are then reviewed in line with the Agency’s criteria.
Some listed companies, like Unilever, snack titan Mondelez, and supermarket chain Auchan, are known worldwide for their consumer goods. Thirteen companies are based in China, a key Russian ally and its largest trading partner.
Of the three most profitable sectors identified by KSE and B4Ukraine, the NACP has widely listed alcohol and tobacco, and mass-market consumer product companies, but the automobile sector is still untouched – no Western automobile companies are on the list.
The list’s purpose is to go after a “gray zone” of companies that are not eligible for sanctions, says Zagrebelska. While there are no legal consequences to being listed, the risk of reputational damage can be enough to change company behavior.
Zagrebelska says the list allows consumers to make informed choices about their purchases, thus enacting a “direct democracy” where the public can vote with their wallets.
‘Soft sanctions’ in action
The NACP points to several companies that stopped dealing with Russia as signs of a successful policy. For instance, British manufacturing group Mondi was listed as a sponsor of war in February 2023, given their sizeable operations in Russia. They were removed from the list in November 2023 following a complete withdrawal.
While Zagrebelska admits that it is difficult to prove that the sponsors of war list had a decisive impact, she says the NACP is confident it pushes companies in the right direction.
In other instances, the NACP negotiated extensively with companies. Three Greek shipping companies saw their status change four times as they made and broke promises to the NACP. Finally, the companies were removed for good when they committed to stop shipping Russian oil entirely.
A graph of the Mondelez stock price, the blue square showing the day the company was listed as a sponsor of war by Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention. (Graph by Nizar Al-Rifai)
The stock price of Mondelez, the company behind Oreos, Toblerone, and Milka, tumbled by almost five percent after it was labeled a sponsor of war in May 2023. Mondelez has continued its operations in Russia, and its stock price has not recovered.
The snack maker’s financial troubles were likely exacerbated due to a boycott by clients in Sweden and Norway such as Scandinavian Airlines since June 2023. The Nordic companies cited the listing as a sponsor of war as the reason for their decision. Mondelez claimed they were unfairly “singled out.”
The Kyiv Independent reached out to Mondelez but hasn’t heard back as of publication time.
Wrangling with banks
One of the NACP’s most high-profile clashes was with Hungary’s OTP Bank, which operates in Russia and Ukraine and was listed as a sponsor of war in May 2023.
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister known for pro-Russia stances, was outraged by the listing, and Hungarian diplomats pushed back hard, threatening to derail EU sanctions and Ukraine aid discussions in Brussels.
According to NACP’s Zagrebelska, OTP Bank made significant concessions in discussions with EU and Ukrainian officials and demonstrated a concrete plan for withdrawing from Russia, after which the bank was removed from the list in October 2023. She could not share any details of the plan, which is set to be announced in January 2024, with the Kyiv Independent.
Kanievskyi of StateWatch was skeptical of the NACP’s claim of victory over OTP Bank. He said the likelier explanation is that NACP backed down after internal and external pressure. Passing EU sanctions was more important to the Ukrainian government, he said.
A Ukrainian official who worked closely on negotiations over OTP Bank but was not authorized to speak on the record said the NACP listing caused “a lot of fuss.” They said that the listing of OTP Bank held up the 11th EU sanctions package for up to four weeks and that Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was frustrated with the NACP’s position.
Similar discussions are ongoing about Raiffeisen, an Austrian bank with huge operations in Russia. The bank’s status as a sponsor of war was suspended last week, and Zagrebelska said that NACP is awaiting concrete documentation to show its commitment to withdrawing from Russia.
Once again, the NACP’s decision to remove the bank coincided with Austria’s approval of the latest EU sanctions package. Kanievskyi said the NACP folded to pressure, but Zagrebelska maintained her confidence that Raiffaisen will take concrete steps to withdraw from Russia. She also noted that the bank’s status is only suspended, meaning it can be easily reinstated.
Reflecting on the OTP and Raiffeisen cases, Andrii Onopriienko, a policy expert at KSE, recognized that the sponsors of war list is ultimately a political process that uses these negotiations to try and find a favorable compromise for Ukraine.
On OTP and Raiffeisen, the jury is still out. Should the banks’ promises to exit Russia prove empty, the deterrent power of the list may be weakened. On the other hand, if OTP and Raiffeisen show a real commitment to withdrawing from Russia, the “soft sanctions” and negotiation approach may be vindicated as a powerful tool of economic warfare.
Dealing with the devil?
Another source of criticism has been the inclusion of companies that continue to do business in Ukraine. Philip Morris, one of the “big four” tobacco companies, was listed among sponsors of war in August 2023, having announced a $30 million factory project in Lviv Oblast just two months before.
Japan Tobacco International (JTI), another “big four” cigarette maker is also one of the biggest multinationals still active in Russia and Ukraine, and was also listed as a sponsor of war in August 2023.
Kanievskyi questioned the coherence of listing Philip Morris as a sponsor of war and continuing close cooperation with the company. Many companies on the list maintain significant operations in Ukraine, including Unilever, Nestlé, and Mondelez.
According to Kanievskyi, the cause is a lack of a unified policy and legislative framework.
On the Philip Morris deal, Phil Chamberlain from the campaigning organization Expose Tobacco said that preying on countries in difficult situations to get a better deal was straight out of the “Big Tobacco” playbook. According to Chamberlain, a lack of coherent policy only makes it easier for multinationals to take advantage of the war to increase profits.
According to Hlib Kolesov, a lawyer with the Ukrainian think-tank Center for Democracy and Rule of Law, it is hypocritical of tobacco companies to be contributing to Russia’s economy as they claim to support Ukraine amid war.
“On the one hand, tobacco companies position themselves as good partners of Ukraine, investors in its economy, in recovery, but, on the other hand, the same tobacco companies earn money in Russia and pay huge taxes to the budget of the Russian Federation,” Kolesov told European Pravda.
A picture taken on Aug. 21, 2018, shows the research and development campus of cigarette and tobacco manufacturing company Philip Morris International, in Neuchatel, western Switzerland. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
Yet, Ilona Sologoub, an economist and head of the VoxUkraine think tank, recognized the challenges faced by Ukraine’s government in elaborating a coherent policy in this area.
Ultimately, Sologoub agreed with the NACP’s “gray area” logic. She said that “soft sanctions” fill a valuable gap, targeting companies that cannot be sanctioned because of the possible negative impact on Ukraine’s economy.
For NACP’s Zagrebelska the presumable “whitewashing” efforts by Philip Morris and other companies are too little, too late. She said she was confident that consumers can see through the efforts and will continue to pressure companies to exit Russia.
The Kyiv Independent requested a comment from Philip Morris but hasn’t heard back as of publication time.
Coordinated policy
Experts were broadly positive about the sponsors of war list and its contribution to Russian economic isolation. “There is no perfect solution,” said KSE’s Onopriienko, “but it is an all-out war. We all do our part.”
Kanievskyi, whose organization StateWatch collaborates extensively with the NACP, emphasized the lack of central government policy as the biggest challenge for Ukraine in this area.
He said that in the early months of the all-out war, companies were more afraid of reputational damage for staying in Russia, while now many are ready to take the risk. For him, this highlights an urgent need for a centralized policy on sanctions and other economic restrictions from the authorities. Ultimately, he says a lack of a clear policy undermines the communications efforts of the NACP which is crucial to the list’s success.
A lack of centralized policy also led to tensions over OTP Bank, with different Ukrainian government agencies pushing for different outcomes, as recounted by the Ukrainian official who worked closely on internal and external negotiations and who is not authorized to speak with the media.
The NACP and partners are looking to develop new initiatives to isolate Russia economically and increase the effectiveness of sanctions. A newly launched project tracks electronic components used in Russian weapons that continue to bypass sanctions. Zagrebelska said that in early 2024, the Agency plans to launch a mobile application allowing consumers to spot products by companies listed as sponsors or war.
In the meantime, Kanievsky underscores the importance of having a coordinated policy on the sponsors of war list. Lacking proper guidance from the central government, Ukrainian officials and civil society may struggle to do their part in isolating Russia’s wartime economy.
No ruling by the courts, not even one by the U.S. Supreme Court, will change the fact that Los Angeles’ housing costs are out of reach for most people. Many of us are one missed paycheck, illness or mistake away from ending up in a tent on the sidewalk, and an anti-camping ordinance won’t stop people from doing what they must to survive.
We are all frustrated by the street conditions, but instead of brutal sweeps that shuffle people like trash from one corner to the next, our leaders should focus on affordable housing and protecting tenants from eviction.
Rae Huang, Los Angeles
The writer is senior organizer with the group Housing Now.
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To the editor: Those of us who grew up in the 1950s never saw our cities’ sidewalks or parks overrun with tents pitched by the unhoused.
Yes, we had seen homeless encampments elsewhere. They typically were located on the outskirts of towns, along railroad tracks and on stream beds.
Back then, vagrancy laws barred people from camping within city limits. Furthermore, the number of unhoused people was kept low by two factors: Jobs were abundant, and state mental hospitals housed thousands of people who would have otherwise lived on the street.
Within a few decades momentous changes steadily accelerated homelessness. Courts struck down vagrancy laws. Psychiatric hospitals were emptied. Automation, computerization and job outsourcing to foreign countries diminished employment opportunities.
Evidently the foreseeable downsides of those changes escaped our leaders’ notice — that, or there was no political upside to addressing these downsides. It’s time to pay the homelessness piper.
Betty Turner, Sherman Oaks
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To the editor: Unfortunately, homeless encampments eventually become public health hazards. How do we balance the rights of unhoused individuals against the rights of the communities affected by encampments?
Despite all the good intentions and funds that have been directed toward alleviating the problem, nothing seems to have long-term impact.
There are deeper systemic issues at play here that have to do with the income inequalities that exist in our society and need to be solved at the federal level. Until that happens (and I’m not holding my breath), local efforts will continue to have limited effect.
John Beckman, Chino Hills
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To the editor: Cities can’t remove encampments unless there is a place for unhoused residents to go.
A few months ago, The Times reported on a study that found there were more than 100 vacant, government-owned parcels in L.A. that could be used for housing. These properties could provide toilets, water, electricity and even a physical address where one could get mail.
A Record Number of Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters Hit the U.S. in 2023
Yale Environment 360 – December 20, 2023
Billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S. by year. Climate Central
In 2023, the U.S. experienced a record 25 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters — three more than the previous record, set in 2020.
As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, extreme events — hurricanes, severe storms, heavy rainfall, flooding, wildfires, extreme heat, and drought — are becoming ever more frequent, intense, and dangerous. Between 1980 and 2022, the U.S averaged eight billion-dollar weather disasters each year, according to NOAA. Between 2018 and 2022, it recorded 18 such disasters on average. This year saw an unprecedented 25 billion-dollar disasters.
Not surprisingly, the average time between billion-dollar disasters has dramatically shrunk. In the 1980s, according to an analysis of government data by Climate Central, there was an average of 82 days between such disasters. Between 2018 and 2022, with more carbon in the atmosphere and more people and property in harm’s way, the lull between billion-dollar disasters dropped to an average of just 18 days. In the first eleven months of 2023, that lull was just 10 days.
Average number of days between billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. Climate Central
Today’s climate impacts reflect around 1.1 degrees C of global warming, said Climate Central, noting that impacts worsen with every bit of additional warming. But “if we commit to rapid and sustained cuts in carbon pollution, it could set younger generations on a path toward a far safer future with less warming and fewer risky extreme events.”
More Than Half of Children Losing Medicaid Coverage Live in Just 5 States
Michael Rainey – December 19, 2023
Getty Images
As individual states continue to disenroll millions of people from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) now that pandemic-era suspension of participation guidelines has come to an end, new data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that more than 50% of the children who have lost health coverage this year come from just five states.
From March 2023, when the disenrollment process began, to the end of September, 2.2 million children were removed from Medicaid and CHIP, two programs that overlap and are typically lumped together. The five states with the largest total declines in enrollment – Texas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Arkansas – accounted for 54% of the reductions, or more than 1.2 million children.
All five states are led by Republicans, and the first three have refused to expand their Medicaid systems as allowed by the Affordable Care Act. In terms of total disenrollment, the 10 states that have refused Medicaid expansion – Texas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas, Wisconsin and Wyoming – have removed more children from coverage than all of the expansion states combined, HHS said.
Echoing the worries of many healthcare experts, the Biden administration has expressed concerns that some states have been too aggressive in removing beneficiaries from their Medicaid and CHIP rolls, with many people losing coverage simply because they failed to complete various kinds of paperwork. HHS said Monday that Secretary Xavier Becerra has sent letters to the nine states with the highest disenrollment rates urging them to “adopt additional federal strategies and flexibilities to help prevent children and their families from losing coverage due to red tape.”
Among other things, Becerra called on governors to remove barriers to participation such as CHIP enrollment fees and premiums; to make it easier to automatically renew children for coverage; to expand efforts to contact families facing renewal; and to expand their Medicaid programs so that children do not fall into a coverage gap. “I urge you to ensure that no eligible child in your state loses their health insurance due to ‘red tape’ or other bureaucratic barriers during the Medicaid enrollment process,” he wrote.
Trump would install loyalists to reshape U.S. foreign policy. Diplomats gird for “doomsday”
Gram Slattery, Simon Lewis, Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart – December 18, 2023
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Trump campaigns in Reno
WASHINGTON (Reuters) –Donald Trump in a second term would likely install loyalists in key positions in the Pentagon, State Department and CIA whose primary allegiance would be to him, allowing him more freedom than in his first presidency to enact isolationist policies and whims, nearly 20 current and former aides and diplomats said.
The result would enable Trump to make sweeping changes to the U.S. stance on issues ranging from the Ukraine war to trade with China, as well as to the federal institutions that implement – and sometimes constrain – foreign policy, the aides and diplomats said.
During his 2017-2021 term, Trump struggled to impose his sometimes impulsive and erratic vision on the U.S. national security establishment.
He often voiced frustration at top officials who slow-walked, shelved, or talked him out of some of his schemes. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in his memoir that he twice raised objections to Trump’s suggestion of missile strikes on drug cartels in Mexico, the U.S.’s biggest trade partner. The former president has not commented.
“President Trump came to realize that personnel is policy,” said Robert O’Brien, Trump’s fourth and final national security adviser. “At the outset of his administration, there were a lot of people that were interested in implementing their own policies, not the president’s policies.”
Having more loyalists in place would allow Trump to advance his foreign policy priorities faster and more efficiently than he was able to when previously in office, the current and former aides said.
Among his proposals on the campaign trail this year, Trump has said he would deploy U.S. Special Forces against the Mexican cartels – something unlikely to get the blessing of the Mexican government.
If he returns to power again, Trump would waste little time cutting defense aid to Europe and further shrinking economic ties with China, the aides said.
O’Brien, who remains one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers and speaks to him regularly, said imposing trade tariffs on NATO countries if they did not meet their commitments to spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense would likely be among the policies on the table during a second Trump term.
The Trump campaign declined to comment for this article.
Unlike in the lead-up to his 2016 election, Trump has cultivated a stable of people with whom he speaks regularly, and who have significant foreign policy experience and his personal trust, according to four people who converse with him.
Those advisers include John Ratcliffe, Trump’s last Director of National Intelligence, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, and Kash Patel, a former Trump staffer who held several positions in the intelligence and defense communities.
None of those people responded to interview requests.
While the specific policies of these informal advisers vary to some degree, most have been vocal defenders of Trump since he left office and have expressed concerns that America is paying too much to support both NATO and Ukraine.
“DOOMSDAY OPTION”
Trump has a commanding lead in the Republican presidential nomination race. If he becomes the Republican nominee and then defeats Democratic President Joe Biden next November, the world will likely see a much more emboldened Trump, more knowledgeable about how to wield power, both at home and abroad, the current and former aides said.
That prospect has foreign capitals scrambling for information on how a second Trump term would look. Trump himself has offered few clues about what kind of foreign policy he would pursue next time around, beyond broad claims like ending the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
Eight European diplomats interviewed by Reuters said there were doubts about whether Trump would honor Washington’s commitment to defend NATO allies and acute fears he would cut off aid to Ukraine amid its war with Russia.
One Northern European diplomat in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said he and his colleagues had kept talking to Trump aides even after the former president left the White House in 2021.
“The story from there was, ‘We were not prepared (to govern), and next time it has to be different,'” the diplomat said. “When they got into the Oval Office in 2017, they didn’t have any idea what the hell to do with it. But this won’t happen again.”
The diplomat, whose country is a NATO member, and one other diplomat in Washington said their missions have outlined in diplomatic cables to their home capitals a possible “doomsday option.”
In that hypothetical scenario, one of multiple post-election hypotheses these diplomats say they have described in cables, Trump makes good on pledges to dismantle elements of the bureaucracy and pursue political enemies to such a degree that America’s system of checks and balances is weakened.
“You have to explain to your capital. ‘Things might go rather well: the US keeps on rehabilitating herself’ (if Biden is re-elected),” said the diplomat, describing his mission’s view of American politics. “Then you have Trump, a mild version: a repetition of his first term with some aggressive overtones. And then you have the doomsday option.”
RETREAT FROM GLOBALISM
Michael Mulroy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East under Trump, said the former president would likely appoint individuals who subscribed to his isolationist brand of foreign policy and were unlikely to confront him.
All U.S. presidents have the power to name political appointees to the most senior jobs in the federal bureaucracy, including the State Department, Pentagon and the CIA.
“I think it will be based primarily on loyalty to President Trump,” Mulroy said, “a firm belief in the kind of foreign policy that he believes in, which is much more focused on the United States, much less on a kind of globalist (policy).”
Trump clashed with his own appointees at the Pentagon on a number of issues in his first term, from a ban on transgender service members that he supported to his 2018 decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria.
When his first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, resigned in 2018, the former four-star general stated he had significant policy differences with Trump. While Mattis did not explicitly lay them out, he stressed in his resignation letter the need to maintain an ironclad bond with NATO and other allies, while keeping enemies, like Russia, at arms-length.
Ed McMullen, Trump’s former ambassador to Switzerland and now a campaign fund-raiser who is in contact with the former president, stressed that most foreign service personnel he knew served the president faithfully.
But, he said, Trump was aware of the need to avoid choosing disloyal or disobedient officials for top foreign policy posts in a second term.
“The president is very conscious that competency and loyalty are critical to the success of the (next) administration,” he said.
Outside of Trump’s top circle of advisers, a potential Trump administration plans to root out actors at lower levels of the national security community perceived to be “rogue,” according to Agenda47, his campaign’s official policy site.
Such a step would have little precedent in the United States, which has a non-partisan bureaucracy that serves whichever administration is in office.
Trump has said he plans to reinstate an executive order he issued in the final months of his first term, which was never fully implemented, that would allow him to more easily dismiss civil servants.
In a little-reported document published on Agenda47 earlier this year, Trump said he would establish a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” which would, among other functions, publish documents related to “Deep State” abuses of power. He would also create a separate “auditing” body meant to monitor intelligence gathering in real time.
“The State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Establishment will be a very different place by the end of my administration,” Trump said in a policy video earlier this year.
NATO PULLOUT? NEW TRADE WAR
During a second term, Trump has pledged to end China’s most favored trading nation status – a standing that generally lowers trade barriers between countries – and to push Europeans to increase their defense spending.
Whether Trump will continue vital U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia is of particular importance to European diplomats in Washington trying to prepare, as is his continued commitment to NATO.
“There are rumors that he wants to take the US away from NATO or withdraw from Europe, of course it sounds worrying but … we are not in a panic,” said a diplomat from one Baltic state.
Despite worries about the future of NATO, several diplomats interviewed for this article said pressure from Trump during his first term did lead to increased defense spending.
John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser who has since become a vocal critic of the former president, told Reuters he believed Trump would withdraw from NATO.
Such a decision would be earth-shaking for European nations that have depended on the alliance’s collective security guarantee for nearly 75 years.
Three other former Trump administration officials, two of whom are still in contact with him, played down that possibility, with one saying it would likely not be worth the domestic political blowback.
At least one diplomat in Washington, Finnish Ambassador Mikko Hautala, has spoken to Trump directly more than once, according to two people with knowledge of the interactions, which were first reported by The New York Times.
Those discussions centered on the NATO accession process for Finland. Hautala wanted to make sure Trump had accurate information about what Finland brings to the alliance and how Finland joining benefits the U.S., one of the people said.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery, Simon Lewis, Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay, Arshad Mohammed and Steve Holland; editing by Ross Colvin, Don Durfee and Daniel Flynn)
Is SCOTUS Finally Losing Patience With the Far Right’s Bogus Cases?
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern – December 17, 2023
Last week, the Supreme Court made two big moves in hot-button cases with major consequences for civil liberties in the United States. On Monday, the court refused to take up Tingley v. Ferguson, a First Amendment challenge to Washington state’s ban on LGBTQ+ conversion therapy for minors. Then, on Wednesday, the court agreed to hear a case that seeks to ban mifepristone, the “abortion pill,” in all 50 states—making the most common method of abortion inaccessible throughout the country.
On Saturday’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the court’s flurry of activity as the year draws to a close. Their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dahlia Lithwick: The court’s decision not to take this case means Washington state’s restrictions on conversion therapy can stay in place. And I think the move was a bit of a surprise, right?
Mark Joseph Stern: Yes, absolutely. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have enacted some form of a ban on conversion therapy for minors. And while the court turned away these challenges in the past, the conservative majority has been dropping hints in recent years that it might be ready to abridge or abolish these laws. So when Tingley hit the docket, a lot of us thought it was time for a showdown. But that didn’t happen. Three justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh—would’ve taken up the case. And since it takes four votes to hear an appeal, that means John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett voted against taking it up. That’s quite surprising, again, because those three justices are pretty far right when it comes to these First Amendment protections for religious speech and for laws that allegedly target conservative Christians. This case seemed to serve up those issues on a silver platter.
That, of course, leads to the question of why. Before I get into my theory, what’s yours?
I’m just going to keep saying, till the cows come home, that I just do not believe at any given moment that there are five, much less six, votes on the current Supreme Court to be justices in 2027 sitting on the smoldering dumpster fire of what’s left of all constitutional theory and history. I think they’re exercising caution. That’s my working theory.
It’s a decent one! But I have another. So, the first thing I want to flag is that this plaintiff, Brian Tingley, was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom. And our dear friends at ADF have concocted a number of other high-profile cases that turned out to be fake—including last year’s 303 Creative v. Elenis, where ADF falsely claimed that a same-sex couple asked this graphic designer to make a wedding website. It was all a lie. The court ruled for her anyway, but it drew a lot of ridicule and scorn in the process.
This case seems equally fake. Brian Tingley, the plaintiff challenging Washington state’s law, refuses to say whether he wants to perform conversion therapy and whether he intends to perform it. Yet, in their filings, ADF scrupulously avoids ever saying that Tingley actually wants to counsel a gay or transgender youth to change their orientation or gender identity. Instead, the complaint is all framed in these abstractions—that he just wants to be able to participate in the debate and speak about the realities of this ongoing controversy, yada, yada, yada. Well, none of that stuff is prohibited under this law. The only thing that’s prohibited is using your time and resources as a professional counselor to try to convert a child in exchange for money.
This particular issue was spotted by Jenner and Block’s Adam Unikowsky, who represented Equal Rights Washington, a group that intervened to defend the law. Adam pointed out the plaintiff, Tingley, does not have standing because he hasn’t said that he intends, or even wants, to violate this law. It’s still completely hypothetical. Adam also made the related point that the case isn’t ripe yet: There’s not an actual dispute here, since Tingley hasn’t said he wants to do a thing that Washington state prohibits. And on top of everything else, there’s no factual record. This was a problem that plagued 303 Creative, one that I think did come back to bite the justices: There was no factual record in that case, and the few “facts” that ADF put forward turned out to be lies or exaggerations.
Adam said, Look, these laws are in almost half the states. Why don’t you just wait until a real conflict comes up, and then you can hear the case with a real factual record that shows how the state applied the law? There will be a genuine controversy for you to resolve then. But there isn’t one here, so just deny this case. And on Monday, that’s what the court did. I think Adam’s argument was powerful for some of the justices who maybe felt like they had been taken in by ADF and decided, You know, we’re not going to play the suckers in this case. Even though Roberts and Gorsuch and Barrett probably want to tackle these conversion therapy bans, maybe they realized this was not the right case to do so because it would look to the public like they were reaching out and grabbing a controversy that does not actually exist for resolution in the courts yet.
That’s a flawless segue into another case where the totality of the injury is “I might have feelings someday”: The abortion pill case that SCOTUS took up on Wednesday, where the complete theory of standing is that a bunch of doctors might someday have sadness over the possibility of future abortion.
Right. The plaintiffs challenging mifepristone, the first drug in a medication abortion, are just doctors who hate abortion. Their theory of standing is as follows: Some woman somewhere is going to be prescribed mifepristone by a different doctor. She is going to have complications. She is going to come to our emergency room. We will have to treat her by completing her abortion. And doing that will make us extraordinarily sad.
We’ll have feelings. We’ll have standing because of our future feelings.
Exactly. Treating this hypothetical future patient will hurt our hearts too badly. The vibes will be off for the rest of the week, if not the month. The office Christmas party will be ruined. And that, they say, gives us standing to sue.
I don’t think that’s what this Supreme Court wants. I think this court is going to rule against the plaintiffs solely on standing grounds and by a lopsided vote. And if it does, I think that’s a point in favor of my theory about Tingley, right? Because guess who represents these anti-abortion doctors? Alliance Defending Freedom. The same lawyers who represent Tingley. ADF fabricated this case too. It seems like maybe ADF’s history of telling shameless lies to the courts, including SCOTUS, is starting to catch up to them. Maybe justices like Roberts and Barrett are getting a little pissed that ADF is creating so much extra work for them just to please donors and achieve victories that they couldn’t through the normal democratic process.
I think it’s worth saying here that if the Supreme Court does toss the mifepristone case on standing, it’ll get headlines that say “Supreme Court Preserves the Right to Medication Abortion,” and that will dampen an immense amount of political enthusiasm around reproductive rights. The conventional wisdom will be that the Supreme Court has taken itself out of the 2024 election, at least on this issue. Which won’t be true, because the court could still invoke the Comstock Act later to make abortion illegal in all 50 states.
But the larger point is that the Supreme Court could manage to deflate all the energy and enthusiasm among women and people who’ve been organizing after Dobbs. And that would be a really big indicator that the Supreme Court keeps gaming the press. It will make the court bottom of mind as we launch into a 2024 election where the court should be top of mind.
