The Dictatorship
Biden isn’t escalating the war in Ukraine — he’s doing the right thing
This week, President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to strike inside Russia using longer-range American missiles. It’s an overdue, relatively small escalation after Russia’s bigger escalations and relentless attacks, letting Ukraine partially take the gloves off. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy officially requested this in May, and presumably asked in private before that. It will help Ukraine hinder Russia’s war machine by striking ammunition depots, weapons manufacturing, airfields and other military targets.
The apparent cause is the U.S. election. President-elect Donald Trump has long shown a strong affinity for Russian leader Vladimir Putinand reacted to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 by gushingly calling it “savvy” and “genius.” In subsequent years, Trump, his incoming Vice President-elect JD Vance and top surrogate/donor/adviser Elon Musk have all advocated a “peace plan” for Ukraine that amounts to “give Putin what he wants.” While Biden’s lifting restrictions on Ukraine is probably too late to make a big difference, it could cause some disruption to Russia’s war effort and improve Ukraine’s position before Trump tries to force them into a Russia-friendly deal.
It’s an overdue, relatively small escalation after Russia’s bigger escalations and relentless attacks, letting Ukraine partially take the gloves off.
Knowing that the United States is about to have a pro-Putin president makes Biden’s caution look awful in hindsight, but it looked excessive at the time as well. Caution made sense early in the war, since we didn’t have a good read on Russian capabilities. And keeping NATO forces out of direct combat with Russia still makes sense, since that could trigger an escalatory spiral that spins out of control, or at least undermine political support for Ukraine in NATO countries. But in early 2024, after two years of war, it was apparent Russia was doing everything it could think of to defeat Ukraine, and wasn’t keeping a large military capacity in reserve.
Except, of course, for nuclear weapons, but those are checked by mutually assured destruction and the global nuclear taboo. Russia fears World War III, just like everyone else, as well as alienating the large countries it still gets along with, namely China and India. Russia has never attacked weapons shipments on their way to Ukraine, showing that no matter their rhetoric, their actions respect NATO deterrence. By contrast, Israel has bombed Hezbollah-bound weapons shipments inside Syria for years.
But Russia bluffs a lot. They annexed occupied parts of Ukraine, and declared that any counterattack would cause nuclear war. Ukrainian forces kept coming, took some territory back, and Russia did little in response.
They convinced Elon Musk that a Ukrainian attack on Russian ships off the coast of Crimea would cause WWIII, and Musk cut off Starlink internet services to thwart a Ukrainian sea drone attack in progress. Shortly after, Ukraine hit Russian ships near Crimea without using Starlink, and Russia did little in response.
Ukraine has used U.S.-provided missiles to attack Russian military targets in occupied parts of Ukraine. They’ve used Ukrainian-made drones to attack inside Russia, including an airbase nearly 2,000 kilometer (about 1,243 miles) from the Ukrainian border. In response, Russia didn’t do anything it wasn’t already doing.
There is a possibility that longer-range strikes with U.S. missiles would require U.S. satellites for targeting, but since Russia didn’t offer a response to U.S. missile strikes on Russian forces in Ukraine or Ukrainian strikes inside Russia, it’s unlikely that Ukrainian strikes with U.S. missiles inside Russia represents such a red line that they’d risk everything over it.
As a matter of international law, Ukraine using U.S. missiles to attack inside Russia is cut-and-dry. Russia started the war without provocation, and could stop at any time but chooses to continue. As the clear aggressor, Russia is in material breach of the U.N. charter, and under the right of self-defense, Ukraine is legally allowed to fire at Russian military targets, including inside Russia.
And Russia is responsible for a much bigger escalation this year, with thousands of North Korean troops joining their war effort. Russia had already been using Iran-provided drones and North Korea-provided artillery shells in Ukrainemuch as Ukraine is using weapons from NATO countries. But the North Korean troops are the only foreign state forces to directly intervene.
It’s unlikely that Ukrainian strikes with U.S. missiles inside Russia represents such a red line that they’d risk everything over it.
After Biden’s announcement and Ukraine’s first use, Russia launched a new ballistic missile at the densely populated Ukrainian city of Dnipro, which Putin claimed was in retaliation for Ukraine shooting American (and British) missiles into Russia. It reportedly injured at least three people and damaged some buildings. The Ukrainians are unsurprisingly shrugging, since Russia shoots missiles, kamikaze drones and glide bombs at them every night, usually causing more damage. Two days before the ballistic missile attack, Russian drones killed 12 civilians and injured 13 more.
So while the missile technically represents an escalation, it’s mostly more of the same: attacking Ukrainians in an attempt to terrorize them into submission. For mourners, the weapon Russia used to kill their loved ones doesn’t matter. And if Russia could use these weapons to defeat the Ukrainian military and enable Russian ground forces to overrun the country, they would.
The new weapon is an intermediate range (about 620 miles to 1,860 miles) ballistic missile called an Oreshnik, capable of carrying nuclear warheads (though this one wasn’t), and was at least as much nuclear saber-rattling against the West as an attack on Ukraine. For that reason, Russia probably would’ve used it anyway at some point, finding some excuse. There’s no intimidation factor from a new weapon if you don’t show it off.
A day after the launch, Putin announced that Russia will mass produce the Oreshnik, and develop a “whole line” of similar missiles. That’s mostly a bluff, at least in the short term, since Russian defense manufacturing is already strained trying to feed the war in Ukraine, but it does represent yet another nuclear threat.
The response has to be a hard no. The U.S. has nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, too, and Russia knows it. Giving in to these sort of threats shows that nuclear extortion works, encouraging more.
If the West bends now, and later tries to take a stand, that raises the risk of an accidental spiral, because the earlier acquiescence could make Russia think that if it goes closer to the brink, the West will back down again. Calling the bluff is nerve-wracking, but a necessary strategic choice.
Russia’s loud rhetoric — but relatively small action in response to Ukraine’s attack inside Russia with U.S. missiles — suggests that this red line was always fake. The ability never would’ve handed Ukraine victory on its own, but it would have improved their military position. If Trump cuts U.S. aid to Ukraine and pushes them to surrender to Russia as expected, Biden’s hesitancy to authorize it will go down in history as a painful what-if.
Nicholas Grossman is a political science professor at the University of Illinois, editor of Arc Digital and the author of “Drones and Terrorism.”
The Dictatorship
A forced-labor crackdown or an end-run around Congress? Dissecting Trump’s new tariffs
NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration has imposed double-digit tariffs on more than 60 countriesusing a legal justification that permits the president to levy import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices.
The new tariffs announced in recent days take effect just as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs expiredand critics say they are less about cracking down on forced labor than they are a way to replace those tariffs. The expired tariffs were themselves a temporary replacement for worldwide tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February.
The tariffs were levied on countries that the U.S. says either don’t have or don’t effectively enforce a forced-labor import ban. The affected countrieswhich account for 99% of U.S. imports, were quick to protest, calling the Trump administration’s claims unfounded and arbitrary, as nations with vastly different records on forced labor received the same tariff level. The U.S. spent four months investigating but gave few details on how it arrived at the tariff rates, which are either 10% or 12.5%.
Sidestepping Congress
The tariffs were levied under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 on countries that the U.S. determined had failed “to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”
During President Donald Trump ‘s first term, he cited Section 301 to impose sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports amid a dispute over the sharp-elbowed tactics Beijing was using to challenge America’s technological dominance. The U.S. is also using 301 powers to counter what it calls unfair Chinese practices in the shipbuilding industry.
“The 301s allow a permanent tariff without going to Congress to settle the dispute,” said Barry Appleton, a law professor and co-director of New York Law School’s Center for International Law. “That’s what all of this is about. The president doesn’t want to knock on the front door of Congress, so he’s trying every side door and every unlatched window to get in.”
Little evidence that countries failed to enforce import bans
The office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) said it consulted with all 60 economies under investigation and held two rounds of public hearings, elicited more than 2,100 public comments, and had “engagement” with its trading partners about what they were doing to combat forced labor bans.
It didn’t detail its talks with the countries, saying those were confidential. Experts say it is fairly straightforward to investigate whether a country has a ban or not, but it is difficult to determine the government’s exact rationale for each country’s failure to enforce import bans.
“There’s not a lot of hard evidence there,” said Scott Lincicome, vice president for general economics and trade policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “It’s pretty laughable on its face to think that a country like the ones in Europe or in Norway or Switzerland aren’t doing enough to police forced labor.”
And even if countries do enact and enforce the forced-labor import bans the U.S. wants, they would still need to prove that they’re enforcing them to Washington’s satisfaction before the tariffs would be removed, said lawyer Patrick Childress, a partner at Holland & Knight and a former U.S. trade official.
“This suggests that no short-term path for countrywide relief from the new Section 301 tariffs will be available,” he said.
Sign up for Morning Wire: Our flagship newsletter breaks down the biggest headlines of the day.
Countries and industries reject the forced labor argument
Many countries have pushed back against the Trump administration’s findings.
Brazil, which faces a 12.5% forced-labor tariff, called the U.S. move “arbitrary and unjustified.” The U.S. “chose to manipulate an issue of great importance to human rights and the struggles of workers worldwide in order to accuse 59 countries and the European Union of unfair practices,” it said in a statement.
Australia also questioned the justification for its 12.5% tariff.
“We believe that amongst all of the countries in the world, Australia does take the issue of slavery, modern slavery, seriously, and will continue to do that,” Trade Minister Don Farrell told reporters in Adelaide.
Carve-outs have riled some industries. The National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO), which describes itself as the voice of the American textile industry, protested a mechanism that exempts the Section 301 tariffs for textile and apparel imports from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Malaysia based on those countries’ imports of U.S. cotton and textiles.
“No other industry has been more disadvantaged by forced labor than the U.S. textile industry, which employs 453,000 workers and has lost 41 plants over the past two plus years,” NCTO chief executive Kim Glas said in a statement. “We remain strongly concerned that USTR’s textile mechanism will harm the very domestic manufacturers the administration seeks to help.”
US forced-labor bans don’t always work
The U.S. has two major pieces of legislation related to forced-labor import bans. The Tariff Act of 1930 gave Customs and Border Protection the authority to seize shipments where forced labor was suspected and to block further imports. But it had a big carve-out: If there was “consumptive demand,” meaning there wasn’t sufficient supply to meet domestic demand, imports were allowed regardless of how they were produced. The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act that took effect in 2016 eliminated that loophole.
In 2021, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act was passed. It blocks imports from China’s Xinjiang region unless businesses can prove the items were made without forced labor.
But goods made with forced labor can still make it into the U.S. In 2015, an Associated Press investigation found that slave labor was used in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia. The seafood they caught made its way to supermarkets and pet food providers across the U.S.
An investigation by The Associated Press in 2020 into the $65 billion palm oil industry found labor abuses among an invisible workforce consisting of millions of men, women and children in Asia. The fruit they harvested made its way into the supply chains of major companies, including Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble.
Calls for a more comprehensive approach to combat forced labor
During hearings on the tariffs this month, National Retail Federation vice president Jonathan Gold, who was representing the business coalition the Joint Association Forced Labor Working Group at the hearing, said that in order for the import bans to work, they would have to be much more extensive.
He said there need to be “clear, measurable benchmarks” tied to tariffs for countries to hit, and that the U.S. should help countries build enforcement programs.
Kenya Davis, a partner at the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm, said an effective ban needs a “comprehensive approach” that provides transparency about what the investigations consisted of, along with programs that provide countries aid in enforcing bans.
ByI dig Shroff
During the make-up White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Friday, the President of the United States tried to take a swipe at an old foe. “Even Rosie O’Donnell reached out from Ireland,” he told the room. “She was desperate to come back to the United States and pay her respects to Donald J. Trump. But that didn’t work out, unfortunately, because nobody wanted her to come back.”
The joke wasn’t merely unfunny, it was also inaccurate. O’Donnell already came back to the country. Two nights before Trump’s speech, she opened her new comedy showwhich centers on her life and feud with Trump, at Manhattan’s Daryl Roth Theatre. On Thursday, she appeared on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”And next month, she will guest host“Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Two decades and two presidential inaugurations later, Trump still hasn’t let it go – and O’Donnell hasn’t backed down.
After the 2024 presidential election, O’Donnell actually did what many Americans threatened to do – leave the country. But now she is back, and that matters – because the story was never just about O’Donnell herself. It was also about the rest of us, the people watching Trump attack her.
While co-hosting a 2006 episode of “The View,” then one of the biggest daytime platforms in America, O’Donnell said that Trump was not self-madeand was in no position to lecture anyone about morality. At the time, the landlord-turned-game show host was furiousbut the feud was tabloid fodder rather than national news.
Two decades and two presidential inaugurations later, Trump still hasn’t let it go – and O’Donnell hasn’t backed down. There were years of insults, including the 2015 primary debate where moderator Megyn Kelly asked Trump about women he’d called pigs and slobs and he cut her off with three words: “only Rosie O’Donnell.” He brought her up again in his first debate with Hillary Clinton. And on Friday, in a ballroom filled with media elite who have yet to call him out as bluntly and forcefully as O’Donnell has, Trump called her a “a sick young woman. Sick older woman, I guess now I have to say.”
The two-time president of the United States, in other words, has spent twenty years returning to the same woman. She was among the first with a national platform to publicly refuse the premise his whole life is built on, and he has never been able to get over it.
Which is what makes his threat last summer worth remembering: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.” It wasn’t a serious legal proposal – the president cannot revoke a native-born American’s citizenship – as much as it was a MAGA theory of belonging. In threatening O’Donnell, Trump threatened to make citizenship a privilege he extends and can revoke (based on mere speech, no less). It was a warning to any critic whose passport is the only thing standing between them and a very different life and who doesn’t have O’Donnell’s resources or profile.
In the context of a twenty-year battle with the now-most-powerful man in the world, a regrouping abroad is not surrender.
Of course, there is an obvious objection to holding Rosie up as any kind of resistance example: she left. Staying carries real moral weight. Many people who have absorbed this past decade of Trump’s politics did not have an Irish grandmotheror the means to build a life somewhere else. There is something a little uncomfortable about resistance broadcast from another country, particularly when only some can afford it. But in the context of a twenty-year battle with the now-most-powerful man in the world, a regrouping abroad is not surrender.
And the impetus for her decision is crucial: “I knew, after reading Project 2025, that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my non-binary child to leave the country,” she told CNN last year. After years of being Trump’s favorite target, O’Donnell had better reason than almost anyone alive to know his obsession with settling scores and having things his way. Indeed, she knew better than much of institutional Washington, which was still reassuring itself about guardrails, norms, and adults in the room. Many institutions folded alarmingly quickly this time around: the museums, the law firms, the universities. O’Donnell did not wait for them to capitulate.
Yet she did not disappear. Now she is telling her story on her own terms, projecting Trump’s own words onto a theater wall for audiences that laugh at them instead of with them. While on Friday, the president described a broken woman pleading across the Atlantic, the actual Rosie was onstage a short train ride away, turning his words into part of her act. Twenty years after he decided she would be the punchline, she is still standing.
That is why Trump keeps coming back to O’Donnell. His campaign against her only worked if it ended with her gone or begging him for forgiveness. Personal intimidation is never only about the person being targeted. It is a warning to others: cross me and you will regret it. Too many institutions accepted that bargain. Rosie O’Donnell never did. In trying to make an example of her, Trump only made a point – and not the one he intended.
I dig Shroff
Kaivan Shroff is a senior advisor to the Institute for Education and a political commentator. He previously served on the advisory board for Dream for America, a progressive Gen Z-led non-profit. He is an alumnus of the Hillary for America digital team, holds a joint degree from Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA in Political Science from Brown University.
Last week, former Justice Department lawyer Liz Oyer testified in the Senate against the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general. Then came the death threats.
Oyer oversaw the DOJ’s pardon office before President Donald Trump ousted her last year and promptly turned the office into a tool to help out his donors and political allies. She has said she was fired for refusing to restore actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights after his 2011 misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence, a claim the Trump administration has denied.
And she was a key witness urging senators to vote against confirming Blanche, who has already sought as acting attorney general to quash further inquiry into the Epstein files and drew criticism over his softball interview with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
And it seems Republicans are now fueling attacks against Oyer as they try to make Blanche the nation’s top law enforcement official.
“Hey everybody, I started getting death threats after I testified against Todd Blanche last week,” she said, showing images of expletive-riddled messages she received.
Oyer attributed the threats to dubious accusations — peddled by Missouri’s Republican senators, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, and in conservative media — that she was basically an ally to rapists and murderers.
At the Senate hearing, the two senators homed in on President Joe Biden’s decision to commute most federal death sentences. In an effort to undermine Oyer’s credibility, Schmitt and Hawley cherry-picked examples of macabre crimes committed by some of the death row prisoners to suggest she didn’t take the crimes seriously. The attacks were reminiscent of Hawley’s attacks on current Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing.
In her videoOyer explained that her recommendation to reassess the cases of all 40 inmates on federal death row, 37 of whom Biden spared from execution, was in keeping with the administration’s broad opposition to capital punishment. She also dispelled misinformation that commuted inmates will be ever be released from prison, adding:
Biden campaigned on a promise to end the federal death penalty. In light of that promise, some people believe it would have been more principled for Biden to commute all 40 death sentences, not 37. That would have sent a clear message that the president was categorically rejecting the death penalty — not weighing the relative value of people’s lives.
Intent on scoring political points, Hawley and a spokesperson for Schmitt doubled down on their attacks despite Oyer’s post about receiving death threats. In comments to the Columbia MissourianHawley said the “real victims” are the people hurt by those who were spared from execution. And the Schmitt spokesperson said Oyer’s “disgraceful clemency recommendations ignored the victims’ families’ concerns.”
The unavoidable irony here is that Hawley and Schmitt are hardly advocates for victims. They’re basically launching this line of attack to help Blanche — someone who has been rebuked by Epstein victims and their families.
And, of course, Hawley and Schmitt are both staunch allies of Trump’s — someone whose own clemency actions have included scores of Jan. 6 rioters who have gone on to commit assaults and sex crimes after being freed. Hawley, as you likely remember, raised a fist to the Jan. 6 horde right before the insurrection broke out, only to be later seen running for safety.
So when it comes to the topic of placating criminals, Hawley and the GOP have little credibility.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
- Blanche vote could be postponed, Cornyn says
- It’s Newt (and Russ and James)
- A forced-labor crackdown or an end-run around Congress? Dissecting Trump’s new tariffs
- Data center boom sparks lobbying surge
- Kids’ safety advocates draw red lines for Senate online safety package
- Beshear urges McConnell to provide more info on his health or resign
- Trump tried to make an example of Rosie O’Donnell. It backfired.
- Former DOJ lawyer spotlights death threats after Blanche testimony
- Capitol agenda: Graham’s legacy faces uncertain future
- Trump and Democratic states clash in court over who’s too sick to work
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship11 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words