Opinion

Going into the weekend, Donald Trump and his allies were feeling themselves, after Russia's President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Clearly, Trumpists thought this was the moment to press their advantage, praising Putin and doubling down on overt white nationalist and fascist sentiment at home.

Trump spent the week gushing over Putin, calling him a "genius" and insisting he's "playing Biden like a drum." Tucker Carlson of Fox News argued that the only reason Americans hate Putin was because they were victims of a propaganda campaign and that the real enemy was liberals at home. Anchors on Fox News repeatedly contrasted the supposed decadence of a "woke" American culture with the "serious civilization" of Russia's authoritarian government. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., made a surprise appearance at a white nationalist event Friday night. Right before and after her speech, the openly racist organizer, Nick Fuentes, led the crowd in a chant of "Putin, Putin" and praised Adolph Hitler.

It was late when we returned to the hotel. We parked the rental cars in the back lot, nearest the entrance that opened to the shortest walk to our block of rooms. A sign posted on that door directed that the rear entrance not be used after 9 p.m. My coworkers were fatigued from a long workday followed by an evening out with drinks. One objected to walking around the building to the front of the hotel. While we all stood in the dark, she exclaimed that we should disregard the sign because, after all, "We are free, White, and over 21." The ease with which the phrase fell from her mouth left no doubt that she had uttered it comfortably many times before. However, on that occasion, her mouth spoke before her mind caught up.

I was the only one who did not fit her description. I was born with a permanent early summer tan and tight curl to my hair. Her declaration of privilege was based on her membership in a group to which I do not belong. Admittedly, after dusk and from a distance, my African ancestry might not be noticed. That was not the case that evening; these colleagues knew me. Everyone grew silent. The offender noticed the change in the group's disposition. Then, as responsible U.S. Department of Justice employees in town on official business, we all walked to the front door.

Supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz can be forgiven if they’re confused by a fund-raising email sent to them today by the man dubbed “Lyin Ted” by Donald Trump.

Cruz exploited a February 20 appearance on Fox News to raise money off of a distorted claim that Trump was spied upon by opponent Hilary Clinton. For those who read the first part of the email, Cruz expressed no doubt about an allegation from Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation.

Right-wing personality Candace Owens traveled to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando to host a town hall panel titled, "Pupil Propaganda," and began by talking about bear sex.

This article first appeared in Salon.

There was a time when the annual gathering of young activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was so hawkish you would have thought they were all going to rush out the door and enlist in the Marines demanding to be sent into the most dangerous foreign war zone they could find to fight for God, Mother and Ronald Reagan. Even though they rarely actually enlisted, they believed that it was their duty to pound their chests and insist that we needed to "fight 'em over there, so we don't have to fight 'em over here" whether it was Communists or terrorists. Those days are over, I'm afraid.

It's not that the attendees have transformed into peace-loving flower children. They are as hostile and aggressive as ever. But today's CPAC activists have turned their focus inward and are convinced they are literally fighting for their lives here at home against what they see as a Communist 5th column (also known as the Democratic Party) and the "invasion" allegedly being waged daily along the southern border.

Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance came under fire Saturday after saying he's "sick" of being told to care about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"I've gotten a lot of flak in the last week because I had the audacity to suggest that before our leaders obsess over a Ukrainian and Russian border 6,000 miles away, maybe they ought to guarantee the sovereignty of their own country and their own border first," Vance said during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando. "I’m sick of being told that we have to care more about people 6,000 miles away than we do people like my mom."

By fumbling and bumbling and hesitating and stalling and arguing and fiddling and politicking and treating the world like everything was peachy keen, Europe and the U.S. and the NATO alliance missed its chance to include Ukraine as a member, and now they are all alone against the third or fourth biggest military in the world.

Numerous comparisons have been made by historians and experts between Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Hitler's taking of the Sudetenland in 1938. Hitler claimed repeatedly that ethnic Germans in the eastern part of Czechoslovakia were being mistreated and attacked and that the region had to be taken over "to protect Germany." "It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe," he said in September of 1938. The Sudetenland was ceded to Germany less than a month later.

Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida on Friday and offered a vision of the United States that at face value is antithetical to the principles of freedom and democracy.

Cawthorn – a freshman lawmaker embroiled in efforts to bar him from office for supporting the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection led by former President Donald Trump – revealed to the event's right-wing attendees that his ideal commander in chief is an individual who instills fear into the hearts and minds of the global population.

After a truly miserable news week, President Joe Biden graced us all with one bit of good news going into the weekend: His nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who he appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court last year.

Biden had promised to nominate a Black woman to the court. And despite right-wing media's disdain for the idea, there were a number of eminently qualified judges and lawyers whose names were being circulated on shortlists. Republicans nuked the filibuster for Supreme Court judges to seat Donald Trump nominees, so it's generally believed that whoever Biden nominated will secure the necessary 50 Democratic votes to be seated. The only real question was whether or not the fear of right wing backlash would push Biden towards a more conservative choice, or whether he would expand his progressive court agenda to the highest court in the land.

We must do what we can to contain Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. But we also need to be clear-eyed about it, and face the costs. As I’ve said before, economics can’t be separated from politics, and neither can be separated from history. Here are eight sobering realities:

1. Will the economic sanctions now being put into effect stop Putin from seeking to take over all of Ukraine? No. They will complicate Russia’s global financial transactions but they will not cripple the Russian economy. After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the U.S. and its allies imposed economic sanctions which slowed the Russian economy temporarily, but Russia soon rebounded. Since then, Russia has taken steps to lessen its reliance on foreign debt and investment, which means that similar sanctions will have less effect. In addition, the rise of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets allow Russia to bypass bank transfers, which are the control points for sanctions. Bottom line: The sanctions already imposed or threatened could reduce Russia’s gross domestic product, but only by a few percentage points.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked the world, but in many ways Vladimir Putin has been building up to this for some time.

For Putin and at least some Russians, the villains of the crisis are not only Ukrainian nationalists, but also western governments. The West is seen as having one set of standards for itself, and another for countries like Russia.

On the surface, it seems like Republicans can't decide how they feel about Russian President Vladimir Putin invading the sovereign country of Ukraine. On one hand, the more old guard GOP leadership is formally denouncing Putin and trying to score their political points against Joe Biden by claiming that this is evidence that the U.S. president is "weak." But both their de facto leader, Donald Trump, and their de facto party agenda-setter, Tucker Carlson, have been out there making their love and support of Putin known. As with every internal conflict in the GOP, the smart bet is the Trumpian wing will win over the traditional conservatives, even though it once again means that Republicans will be siding against America and democracy in favor of the forces of authoritarianism.

It's tempting to write this off, as so many in the mainstream media like to do, as evidence that the Republican party is "afraid" of Trump as if they were setting aside good intentions out of fear of crossing the orange mob boss who runs their party. The darker truth, however, is that this is part of a larger turn in the GOP towards anti-democratic, even fascist politics. As journalist Stephen Marche told Salon's Chauncey DeVega, "a huge number of Americans want such a dictatorship," and it's important to ask why, even though the answers don't "feel good."