Rational Sources and no grifter ADs

[Emil El Zapato]

‘Horrifying’ mistake to take organs from a living person was averted, witnesses say Note where these incidences occurred...It might be helpful when forming general impressions about life in these United States.

Natasha Miller says she was getting ready to do her job preserving donated organs for transplantation when the nurses wheeled the donor into the operating room. She quickly realized something wasn’t right. Though the donor had been declared dead, he seemed to her very much alive. “He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” Miller told NPR in an interview. “And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.”

The donor’s condition alarmed everyone in the operating room at Baptist Health hospital in Richmond, Ky., including the two doctors, who refused to participate in the organ retrieval, she says.

“The procuring surgeon, he was like, ‘I’m out of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it,’ ” Miller says. “It was very chaotic. Everyone was just very upset.” Miller says she overheard the case coordinator at the hospital for her employer, Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), call her supervisor for advice.

“So the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time. And she was saying that he was telling her that she needed to ‘find another doctor to do it’ – that, ‘We were going to do this case. She needs to find someone else,’ ” Miller says. “And she’s like, ‘There is no one else.’ She’s crying — the coordinator — because she’s getting yelled at.”

"Everybody's worst nightmare"
The organ retrieval was canceled. But some KODA workers say they later quit over the October 2021 incident, including another organ preservationist, Nyckoletta Martin. “I’ve dedicated my entire life to organ donation and transplant. It’s very scary to me now that these things are allowed to happen and there’s not more in place to protect donors,” says Martin.

Martin was not assigned to the operating room that day, but she says she thought she might get drafted. So she started to review case notes from earlier in the day. She became alarmed when she read that the donor showed signs of life when doctors tried to examine his heart, she says. “The donor had woken up during his procedure that morning for a cardiac catheterization. And he was thrashing around on the table,” Martin says.

Cardiac catheterization is performed on potential organ donors to evaluate whether the heart is healthy enough to go to a person in need of a new heart. Martin says doctors sedated the patient when he woke up and plans to recover his organs proceeded.

KODA officials downplayed the incident afterwards, according to Martin. She was dismayed at that, she says. “That’s everybody’s worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery and knowing that someone is going to cut you open and take your body parts out?” Martin says. “That’s horrifying.”

Donna Rhorer of Richmond, Kentucky, told NPR that her 36-year-old brother, Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, was the patient involved in the case. He was rushed to the hospital because of a drug overdose, she says. Rhorer was at the hospital that day. She says she became concerned something wasn’t right when TJ appeared to open his eyes and look around as he was being wheeled from intensive care to the operating room.

“It was like it was his way of letting us know, you know, ‘Hey, I’m still here,’ ” Rhorer told NPR in an interview. But Rhorer says she and other family members were told what they saw was just a common reflex. TJ Hoover now lives with Rhorer, and she serves as his legal guardian. Hoover danced with his sister, Donna, on her wedding day in May 2023. Donna has long blond hair and is wearing a white wedding dress. TJ is wearing a pink dress shirt and black pants. She has a bouquet in her hands. They are outside, dancing on green grass near trees. More than a year after he was mistakenly declared dead.

The general outline of the incident was disclosed in September by a letter Nyckoletta Martin wrote to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which held a hearing investigating organ procurement organizations. She later provided additional details about the case to NPR. “Several of us that were employees needed to go to therapy. It took its toll on a lot of people, especially me,” Martin told NPR.

Investigations underway
The Kentucky state attorney general’s office wrote in a statement to NPR that investigators are “reviewing” the allegations. The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which helps oversee organ procurement, said in a statement to NPR that the agency is “investigating these allegations.” And some people involved in the case told NPR they have answered questions from the Office of the Inspector General of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, though no federal official from that office has commented on the case.

Baptist Health Richmond, the Kentucky hospital where that incident allegedly occurred, told NPR in a statement: “The safety of our patients is always our highest priority. We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure our patients’ wishes for organ donation are followed.”

KODA, the organ procurement organization, confirmed that Miller was assigned to the operating room for the case. But the organization told NPR in a statement that “this case has not been accurately represented.

“No one at KODA has ever been pressured to collect organs from any living patient,” according to the statement from Julie Bergin, president and chief operating officer for Network for Hope, which was formed when KODA merged with the LifeCenter Organ Donor Network. “KODA does not recover organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured its team members to do so.”

Organ procurement system officials, transplant surgeons and others said that there are strict protocols in place to prevent unsafe organ retrieval from happening.

“Incidents like this are alarming. And we would want them to be properly reported and evaluated,” Dorrie Dils, president of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, told NPR in an interview. “And obviously we want to ensure that individuals are, in fact, dead when organ donation is proceeding. And we want the public to trust that that is indeed happening. The process is sacred.”

The accusations that emerged at the congressional hearing in September undermine trust in the organ donation system and have led to a drop in people signing up to be donors, according to an open letter released Oct. 3 by the organization.

“For over five years, our nation’s organ procurement organizations (OPOs) – the non-profit, community-based organizations that work with grieving families every day to save lives through transplantation – have been subject to malicious misinformation and defamatory attacks based on hearsay, creating a false narrative that donation and transplant in the U.S. is untrustworthy and broken,” the letter reads.

Others also fear such unnerving reports could undermine the organ transplant system.

“These are horrifying stories. I think they need to be followed up carefully,” says Dr. Robert Truog, a professor of medical ethics, anesthesia and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School who works as a critical care physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“But I really would not want the public to believe that this is a serious problem. I believe that these are really one-offs that hopefully we’ll be able to get to the bottom of and prevent from ever happening again,” Truog says.

Some critics of the organ procurement system say they weren’t entirely surprised by the allegations. With more than 103,000 people on the waiting list for a transplant, organ procurement organizations are under enormous pressure to increase the number of organs obtained to save more lives. In addition, there is an ongoing debate about how patients are declared dead.

“I hope that a case like this really is extreme, but it does reveal some of those underlying issues that can arise when there are disagreements about the determination of death,” says Dr. Matthew DeCamp, an associate professor of Medicine and bioethicist at the University of Colorado.

But some wonder how rarely this happens.

“This doesn’t seem to be a one-off, a bad apple,” says Greg Segal, who runs Organize, an organ transplant system watchdog group. “I receive allegations like that with alarming regularity.”

Likewise, Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul who studies organ donation, cites similar accusations reported elsewhere.

“This is not a one-off,” Pope says. “It has been alleged to happen before.”

Dr. Robert Cannon, a transplant surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, described a similar incident during the congressional hearing where Martin’s letter was disclosed. It happened at a hospital outside of Alabama.

“We actually were in the operating room. We had actually opened the patient and were in the process of sort of preparing their organs, at which point the ventilator triggered and so the anesthesiologist at the head of the table spoke up and said, ‘Hey, I think this patient might have just breathed,’” Cannon later told NPR in an interview. “If the patient breathes, that means they’re not brain dead.”

Nevertheless, a representative from the OPO wanted to proceed anyway, Cannon says. He refused.

“We were kind of shocked that an OPO person would have so little knowledge about what brain death means that they would say, ‘Oh, you should just go ahead.’ And we thought, ‘No. We’re not going to take any risk that we murder a patient.’ Because that’s what it would be if that patient was alive.”

Since TJ’s release from the hospital, his sister, Donna Rhorer, says her brother has problems remembering, walking and talking. When she asks TJ about what happened, she says he says: “Why me?”

“I do feel angry,” says Rhorer.

“I feel betrayed by the fact that the people that were telling us he was brain dead and then he wakes up,” Rhorer says. “They are trying to play God. They’re almost, you know, picking and choosing — they’re going to take this person to save these people. And you kind of lose your faith in humanity a little bit.”

[Emil El Zapato]

The following are the overall bias and reliability scores for Politico according to our Ad Fontes Media ratings methodology.

Reliability: 42.31
Bias: -5.56


Not saying I agree/believe in the following just letting the netizens appreciate their own thoughts:


Four years ago, a sitting president — rejected by American voters — attempted to seize a second term anyway, plunging the nation into confusion, conflict and, in its last gasp, violence. Now, Donald Trump’s political comeback has revived a sense of dread among the officials and institutions who stood in his way last time: Could it happen again?


Dozens of interviews with people deeply familiar or involved with the election process point to a clear consensus: Not only could Trump make a second attempt at overturning an election he loses, he and his allies are already laying the groundwork. “The threat remains,” said Tim Heaphy, who led the investigation into Trump’s election subversion efforts for the House’s Jan. 6 select committee.

2024 is not 2020. Trump’s path to pulling it off this time is even narrower and more extreme. For one thing, Trump lacks some of the tools he threatened to wield four years ago to upend the transfer of power; today, the military and Justice Department answer to Joe Biden. Trump also needs allies to win elections that would put them in a position to reverse a defeat: Overturning a Kamala Harris victory would require an enormous amount of help from Republican power brokers in statehouses and Congress, some of whom spurned him four years ago.

Trump’s first attempt to exploit the neglected machinery of American democracy also spurred real action by congressional Democrats. Updates to the Electoral Count Act in the wake of Trump’s 2020 gambit aimed to bind vote counters, election officials and even Congress to the results certified by state governments, all of which makes it tougher, in theory, to steal an election.

But Trump is heading into the 2024 election informed by his failure to overturn the results four years earlier. And his incentive to obtain the powers and protections of the White House is likely stronger than ever: If he loses, Trump will face an avalanche of criminal proceedings that could last the rest of his life. If he wins, they are likely to go away.

“No one knows exactly what Trump’s attack on the electoral system will be in 2024,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 select committee. “What will he do this time?”

The answer, according to lawmakers, congressional investigators, party operatives, election officials and constitutional law experts, goes something like this:

— He will deepen distrust in the election results by making unsupported or hyperbolic claims of widespread voter fraud and mounting longshot lawsuits challenging enough ballots to flip the outcome in key states.
— He will lean on friendly county and state officials to resist certifying election results — a futile errand that would nevertheless fuel a campaign to put pressure on elected Republican legislators in statehouses and Congress.
— He will call on allies in GOP-controlled swing-state legislatures to appoint “alternate” presidential electors.
— He will rely on congressional Republicans to endorse these alternate electors — or at least reject Democratic electors — when they convene to certify the outcome.
— He will try to ensure Harris is denied 270 votes in the Electoral College, sending the election to the House, where Republicans are likely to have the numbers to choose Trump as the next president.

Some of the necessary ingredients for this extraordinary campaign are in place. Trump has already embarked on a clear mission to stoke as much uncertainty as possible about the results of the election. He claims that the only way he can lose to Harris is if Democrats cheat — despite no evidence that any significant fraud occurred in 2020 or is underway in 2024. Dutiful allies have amplified these messages. And many of the officials who stood in Trump’s path four years ago have been ousted or retired, ceding power to more compliant Trump-aligned successors. Meanwhile, threats against election officials and growing fears of civil unrest have intensified — potentially at polling places, ballot counting facilities and Electoral College ceremonies — which Trump detractors worry could bolster any election subversion campaign.

Trump allies say the former president is singularly focused on winning the election outright and has not personally engaged in the war-gaming scenarios he might look to if Harris wins. The Trump campaign declined repeated requests for comment about Trump’s plans for the post-election period and whether he has deputized allies to consider all contingencies. Meanwhile, Trump refused again this week to publicly say he would back a peaceful transfer of power.

It’s possible Trump and his allies won’t make a sustained effort to overturn his election defeat. An overwhelming Harris victory would make it harder for Trump to rally Republicans to his side. (If Trump wins, no one expects a comparable effort by Democrats to subvert the election.) But to a person, election observers, elected leaders and some of Trump’s own allies agree on one operating premise: On election night, no matter what the results show, how many votes remain uncounted and how many advisers tell him otherwise, Donald Trump will declare himself the winner. And from there, he could embark on a risky but plausible challenge to overturn the legitimate election results and install himself in the White House.
Here’s how it could happen.

Former Trump official agrees with John Kelly: Trump ‘does not operate by the rule of law’

Sowing distrust about the results and ramping up pressure during state certification

Breeding Distrust
What Trump will do first is what he’s already doing: stoking deep, unfounded doubts about the integrity of the election. Trump has spent weeks promoting unsupported claims of mass voter fraud by Democrats, suggesting they’re illegally registering thousands of non-citizens to vote and soliciting unlawful votes from foreigners. He’s also raised doubts about the Postal Service’s ability to process mail ballots, even as he’s worked to reverse Democrats’ edge in the format. “They are getting ready to CHEAT!” Trump blared in a Sept. 23 Truth Social post.

Trump’s GOP allies in Congress and the states have echoed the claims — and they’ve received the loud support of X CEO Elon Musk, who has broadcast rumors and conspiracy theories to his 200 million followers. Their doubts have largely drowned out claims by some Republican leaders — including at the RNC — who insist this election is more secure because of their years-long steps to litigate ballot access issues and train poll workers.

Trump’s adversaries and independent election experts say his goal isn’t to correct fraud — the claims simply aren’t true — but rather to soften the terrain for radical efforts to resist the results as they move through the long and byzantine process that leads to Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, 2025. “I think they are sowing doubt. They have been sowing doubt and preparing the ground for an outcome they are not happy with and then finding an easy scapegoat to blame,” said Arizona State Sen. Priya Sundareshan, a Democrat from a Tucson-based seat.

At a recent event, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, described Trump’s allegations about noncitizen voters as a “myth” but said “seeds are being planted” that could fuel post-election challenges. Already, polling shows that Republicans, at sharply higher rates than Democrats and independents, lack faith that the vote tally in the 2024 election will be accurate.

Pressuring County and State Election Boards
That partisan disparity is the backdrop for the next phase of the process: county and state proceedings to finalize the results of the election. This process is one of the first checks on the accuracy of the election — and it’s decentralized by design, with each state setting its own procedures and deadlines, and county officials running initial counts. Once counties and states complete this process, governors send the certified results to Congress, indicating which candidate should receive their states’ Electoral College votes.

In 2020, Trump leaned on state and county election officials, pressuring them to refuse to certify the results. He personally called officials in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan but made little headway. Since that failed attempt, Trump allies have won seats on county and state election boards across the swing states likely to decide the 2024 contest. He recently identified by name three members of the Georgia State Elections Board at a rally, calling them “pitbulls” fighting for his “victory.” (In recent weeks, the board adopted a slew of changes to election procedures that state officials warned could wreak havoc on the counting of votes on Election Day, including requiring poll workers to hand-count ballots within hours of the polls closing. Democrats are suing to block some of those policies, and earlier this week, a state judge struck down the changes as unconstitutional.)

In this new atmosphere, it’s easy to envision a perilous scenario:
A key swing state takes several days to finish counting votes. Harris edges Trump by a few thousand ballots, appearing to clinch the election. Trump then blankets the state with ads exhorting officials to “stop the steal,” sends top allies to rail daily outside counting facilities about a crooked process, files a blizzard of litigation urging judges to throw out ballots being counted after Election Day and spreads claims that the vote was swung by non-citizens. Threats rain down on election officials and vote counters, with protests driving up the local and national temperature. Then, Trump allies on a handful of county election boards resist certification, threatening to disenfranchise thousands of voters and disrupt the state’s effort to finalize an accurate count.

That alone won’t overturn legitimate election results. Election officials have been contemplating scenarios like this for years and say rogue county and state boards will not be able to prevent certification. “We would immediately take them to court,” Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Al Schmidt said at a recent election-related event in Michigan.

In fact, in every swing state, election officials can go to court to force rebellious county officials to certify the results. (Most swing states require counties to certify the results by late November, and all states must send their certified results to Washington by Dec. 11, a deadline set by federal law.) Several secretaries of state, including Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, have said this option would ultimately compel recalcitrant county boards to act. And a judge in the state recently ruled that certification by county and state boards is mandatory.

But in 2024, noise may be all Trump needs.

If Trump-friendly local officials are stymied in their efforts to impede unfavorable election results, it would become an immediate rallying cry to the same “Stop the Steal” forces who mobilized for Trump in 2020. That, in turn, would drive up pressure and fear among the Republican state and federal lawmakers who govern the next phases of the process. “Those seeking to wreak havoc with respect to the 2024 election are way ahead of where they were in 2020 in terms of laying the groundwork for and widespread dissemination of the theories and talking points and lies they will use to challenge the results of the election,” said Marc Harris, former senior investigative counsel to the Jan. 6 committee.

The Role of Lawsuits
Ahead of the election, both parties have been jockeying in dozens of lawsuits across the country seeking every possible advantage in the intricate processes of casting and counting votes. These more-traditional battles over the contours of the voting process could determine whether entire categories of votes will be counted in states that could be decided by just a few thousand. Both parties have marshaled their fiercest litigators.

But in the event of a Trump defeat, another category of lawsuits is likely to emerge. In 2020, as the Trump campaign’s lawsuits failed or stalled, he increasingly pinned his hopes on fringe lawyers who mounted improbable, easily refuted claims of fraud — a bid to keep his election hopes alive months after Election Day.

In those cases, the points won or lost in the courtroom are beside the point. In 2020, as courts turned aside Trump and his allies’ litany of lawsuits, they became fuel for his attacks on the legal system and traditional processes for resolving disputes, further evidence for his supporters that the only path to power was through statehouses and Congress.

Convincing Republican-led state legislatures to appoint alternate electors to send to CongressWith election officials having certified the results and courts unlikely to provide relief, Trump’s battle will quickly move to Republican-led state legislatures.

Republicans control both chambers in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania’s legislature is split, but both chambers are in play this November — and new members take their seats on Dec. 1, right in the middle of the transfer of power. All told, those states control 72 electoral votes, more than the margin of all but one election since 2000 — and almost certainly enough to tip the scales in 2024.

The Constitution empowers state legislatures to deliver the electoral votes for their state in whatever manner they choose. And every swing state has, by law, chosen to designate their presidential electors according to the results of the statewide popular vote.

In 2020, however, some Trump allies argued that legislatures have unilateral, incontestable power to change their minds — and could simply claim lack of faith in the results to snatch the decision back for themselves. Conservative attorneys like John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, who have both been criminally charged for their roles in the 2020 election process, developed this theory and lobbied for such an outcome. Under their theories, state legislatures would send their own competing slate of electors to Congress — alongside the slates submitted by governors — and urge Congress to choose between them. Trump increasingly leaned on these fringe ideas as his traditional routes to power began to close.

At the time, Republican-led legislatures in six swing states rebuffed Trump’s entreaties, though some showed signs of softening after weeks of pressure. Some of the leaders who resisted him — like Arizona’s then-House Speaker Rusty Bowers — are no longer in office.

In hindsight, the resistance of Republican state legislators may have been the most significant bulwark against Trump’s bid to subvert the election in 2020. After they balked, the Trump campaign assembled informal slates of electors and had them sign paperwork claiming to be the legitimate slate.

Then-Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over Congress’ counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, refused to consider those fake slates of electors because they hadn’t been endorsed by a government authority. But a little-noticed memo sent by Pence’s top legal adviser suggested Pence’s choice might have been different — in fact, it may have had to be — if legislatures had endorsed the pro-Trump slates.

“A reasonable argument might further be made that when resolving a dispute between competing electoral slates, Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution places a firm thumb on the scale on the side of the State legislature,” Pence’s top legal adviser Greg Jacob wrote in the Jan. 5, 2021, memo.

For now, Trump and his allies aren’t telegraphing their plans. Republican legislative leaders in the states did not respond to requests for comment about whether they’ve had any contact with Trump, his lawyers, the RNC or state parties about these scenarios. The Trump campaign declined to comment. RNC Co-Chair Michael Whatley said at a recent event in New Hampshire that the party had not considered whether alternate slates of electors are on the table in 2024: “We haven’t had any discussions like that.”

This year, if Republican-led legislatures appoint alternate electors, then pro-Trump slates could move ahead to Congress alongside the pro-Harris slates approved by governors. (Five of the seven swing states have Democratic governors. And in a sixth state, Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s results in 2020.)

That would be a direct challenge to the post-Jan. 6 effort intended to prevent this kind of constitutional clash. In 2022, Biden and Congress passed a law reforming the Electoral Count Act of 1887, intended to clarify that only governors — not legislatures — are empowered to send certified slates of electors to Congress, unless a court steps in to override the results. Harris has pledged that when she presides over the counting of presidential electors on Jan. 6, 2025, she will follow this law. But if any legislatures send her an alternate slate, there is an open constitutional question as to whether she must also offer it to Congress for consideration. What Congress would do with the slates backed by legislatures is equally uncertain, but their very existence would cast a cloud over the proceedings and, like everything else, fit neatly into a Trump pressure campaign.

Eastman, who had his law license suspended because of his role in the last election, told POLITICO that the theory he espoused in 2020 remains viable — and perhaps has even been strengthened — by the legal battles and law changes of the last four years. He has long argued that when it comes to the Electoral College process, state legislatures cannot be bound by federal law, since the U.S. Constitution grants them “plenary” — absolute — authority to choose electors. He says the law enacted by Biden actually makes the Electoral Count Act “more unconstitutional, not less.”

“The Article II power remains what it was (and could never have been restricted by statute, in any event),” Eastman said in an email. Whether any GOP congressional leaders agree with him on Jan. 6, 2025, will determine whether Trump can make a last-ditch effort to reverse the outcome.

One significant shift from 2020: Without the backing of legislatures, don’t expect groups of pro-Trump “fake” electors to convene in states where Harris is the certified winner. Dozens faced criminal charges for signing fraudulent certificates, and those who orchestrated the effort have been investigated and charged in multiple states.

Some state parties are openly wary of being roped into another legal morass over electors. Wisconsin Republicans, for example, preemptively signaled at an Oct. 1 news conference that the party doesn’t intend to use its electors unless Trump and Vance are the certified winners.

“If J.D. Vance and Donald Trump win the most votes in the state of Wisconsin, then our electors will be convening on December 17,” Wisconsin GOP spokesperson Matt Fisher told POLITICO. “But if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, or by some miracle a third-party ticket wins, then our list of electors will be irrelevant and have no purpose.”

Of course, it’s easier to stake out such a position now before the votes are tallied and before Trump launches any pressure campaign against state Republicans.

Presidential electors meet in an atmosphere of threats
Once governors have delivered their certified election results to Congress, the next task is for presidential electors for the winning candidate — and perhaps those certified by GOP state legislatures — to meet and cast ballots that will also be sent to federal lawmakers. Here, the prospect of disruption, and even violence, is at its peak.

These constitutionally mandated proceedings were once sleepy, boilerplate affairs, with party loyalists or political celebrities rewarded with a chance to cast a symbolic ballot to be recorded in the history books.

This year is likely to be different — especially if two slates of electors have teed up a potential conflict for Congress to resolve on Jan. 6, 2025.

State election officials across the country say they are already bracing for the possibility of unruly protests and violence at every phase of the election process — but especially when it’s time for the electors to meet. Given the tight deadlines set out in state and federal law to finalize and deliver election results, disruptions that cause state officials or electors to miss key steps in the process could cast a cloud over the results.

“Regrettably, we have had to focus more on security this year than ever before,” said Steve Simon, Minnesota’s Democratic secretary of state. Simon said the state has previously hosted the Electoral College in the rotunda of the state capitol but organizing it in an open public space this year is “just not practical today, given this environment.”

Civil unrest could have a direct impact on election procedures before Dec. 17 as well. Special counsel Jack Smith’s evidence against Trump included a text conversation between an unnamed Trump campaign aide and an ally inside a Detroit ballot-counting facility. The campaign aide, described as one of Trump’s alleged co-conspirators, encouraged the other to “make them riot” after he was told the scene was a tinderbox. This year, law enforcement at all levels have described unprecedented levels of threats targeting every phase of the process. These days, the Justice Department routinely announces arrests of people sending vile messages to lawmakers, election officials and judges.

“Anybody involved in certifying Trump’s defeat should he lose is a potential target,” said Tom Joscelyn, a senior adviser to the Jan. 6 committee. “The extremists or even just rabid wackadoodles firmly believe it’s being stolen yet again.” (Political violence can cut both ways of course. In July, Trump was the target of an attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania. Last month, another potential assassin was arrested with a loaded rifle outside of Trump’s Florida golf course.)

“The thing that’s going to be bad is the thing we’re not thinking of,” said Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer in the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Sterling said his biggest concern was a lone wolf who had been “radicalized by disinformation on the left or right.”

Persuading a GOP-led Congress to endorse Trump’s electors and spurn Harris’ set
If Trump attempts to reverse a defeat at the polls, he will need the GOP to retain, and perhaps even expand, its narrow hold on the House of Representatives. Without it, any effort to flip the outcome will effectively be dead the moment states send their certified results to Washington.

That’s because all roads lead to Jan. 6, 2025, the day the House and Senate must fulfill their constitutional requirement to meet jointly and count the votes cast by the Electoral College — and just three days after the newly elected Congress takes office.

In 2020, Democrats and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi controlled the House, so Trump pinned his hope to subvert the election on the fact that Pence would be presiding over the joint session of Congress. Eastman, Chesebro and others had helped develop a theory that Pence could unilaterally refuse to count Biden’s votes, either delivering the election to Trump or forcing a delay that might give Republican state legislators more time to appoint pro-Trump electors.

Pence spent weeks refusing to declare his intentions but ultimately resisted, and Trump supporters rioted at the Capitol.

This time, the person presiding over the proceeding will be Harris herself — and she has pledged to adhere to the Electoral Count Act’s description of her duties as “ministerial,” with no room to exercise power over the outcome.

Under the Electoral Count Act, Congress convenes in the House chamber at 1 p.m. with Harris presiding. With the assistance of House and Senate “tellers,” the vice president then opens envelopes containing the certified electoral ballots from each state alphabetically and tallies the votes. If there are no objections, a winner is announced.

In previous years, a single member of the House and Senate could join together to challenge the electors certified by any state, forcing the session to recess for a two-hour debate and vote on whether to count the challenged electors. The updated Electoral Count Act raised that threshold to one-fifth of each chamber — 87 House members and 20 senators. Still, it may not be hard for a group of pro-Trump Republicans to reach those thresholds. The law also requires both chambers to agree to an objection for it to succeed — though a split Congress would present messy constitutional questions. No challenge under this process has ever succeeded.

Even if they manage to mount challenges, Republicans will not have a chance at overturning the election results unless they have a majority in the House. In the event of a Democratic House takeover, the House would brush aside challenges to Harris’ electors and, if necessary, shoot down alternate slates.

Likewise, if Democrats hold the Senate, they’ll easily approve the slates of electors for Harris. And even if Republicans narrowly take the upper chamber, at least a few key GOP senators seem certain to resist any effort to depart from the state certified results. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), for example, helped author the Electoral Count Act reforms meant to prevent a repeat of Trump’s 2020 gambit.

But if Republicans retain the House and affirm their grip on key state legislative chambers in the swing states, a slim and dangerous path remains.

Leading up to Jan. 6, Trump and his allies would be engaged in a relentless pressure campaign to convince House GOP lawmakers to block Harris’ victory. The existence of alternate slates of electors sent by Republican-led legislatures would be a tool in their arsenal.

Some Democrats are nervous that even if they narrowly appear to take back the House, enough races could remain locked in recounts or legal protest to ensure that Republicans hold the majority when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2025.

Though Congress was the target of violence after the 2020 election, federal officials have taken pains to avoid a recurrence. The Biden administration recently labeled the Jan. 6, 2025, session of Congress a “National Special Security Event,” which unlocks resources akin to the Super Bowl or presidential inauguration. Expect the U.S. Capitol to look like a fortress soon after Election Day.

The final move to seize power at the joint session of Congress

The Speaker Maneuvers
Now imagine the House remains in Republican hands. Trump has spent November and December pressuring state legislatures in Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina to send alternate slates of electors to Congress. They acquiesce. Those slates are delivered to Harris, but this time they have the backing of a government authority.

Here is where Trump loyalists could try to seize power for their defeated candidate.
It begins with whoever is the speaker of the House. Though Rep. Mike Johnson holds the job today, he’s no lock to win renewed support from his restive Republican conference. Trump would once again likely play kingmaker, with the power to extract promises for his endorsement. In a scenario in which Trump is still challenging the election, a commitment to side with him during the Jan. 6 session of Congress would be at the top of his list.

If Republicans can’t resolve the speaker fight before Jan. 6 — which was nearly the case in 2023, when Kevin McCarthy claimed the gavel after 15 votes and three days of infighting — it would usher in another kind of unprecedented crisis: a leadership vacuum that would complicate the ability of Congress to convene on Jan. 6 altogether. No one knows what would happen in that scenario, but congressional aides and lawyers are beginning to contemplate strategies for even the wildest contingencies.

Now assume Johnson retakes the gavel. Though Harris will preside, the session occurs in Johnson’s chamber, where the speaker holds significant sway.

Johnson has not yet telegraphed how he will handle the joint session. Johnson was a key ally in Trump’s 2020 bid to reverse the election results — including on Jan. 6, 2021, when Johnson backed challenges to Biden’s presidential electors. In recent interviews, the Louisianan has said he intends to “follow the Constitution” and federal law. Left unsaid: whether Johnson’s interpretation of the Constitution would comport with Eastman and Chesebro or with the mainstream legal community. His office has declined repeated requests to clarify his view on the Electoral Count Act and whether he considers it binding on Congress.

If Johnson believes, like Eastman, that the laws governing the joint session are unconstitutional, he could assert unprecedented authority to affect the process — all under the guise of following the Constitution. That could include taking steps to ensure that pro-Trump electors embraced by state legislatures get an up-or-down vote, even if they conflict with slates endorsed by governors. It could include permitting hours of floor time to air theories of voter fraud, while holding the presidency in limbo. It could also include lobbying allies to reject pro-Harris electors in order to prevent either candidate from receiving 270 Electoral College votes. And it could also include simply gaveling the House out of session to prevent the joint session from continuing. Each move would likely trigger intense legal battles, putting the courts — and most likely the Supreme Court — in the position of deciding how to resolve unprecedented power plays by the most prominent actors in government.

This phase would mark the culmination of Trump’s ceaseless campaign to cast doubt on any election defeat and lay the groundwork for an alternative reality. After all, Republicans would say, there’s real uncertainty about the outcomes in the swing states, with millions of voters convinced Trump was the rightful winner — the very uncertainty Trump had been stoking all along.

The House Picks a President
If Republicans, through the speaker’s maneuvering, prevent either candidate from garnering an Electoral College majority, it would trigger what’s known as a contingent election in the House, with each state delegation getting a single vote. Republicans control 26 state delegations to Democrats’ 22, with two others evenly split. The GOP is favored to maintain that advantage, and Republicans would almost certainly choose to elect Trump president.

Democrats are already gaming out these scenarios, with the level of concern dependent on how big Republicans’ margin might be when Congress meets — and whether the GOP ranks include enough moderates willing to buck Trump.

Ultimately, a handful of key pieces would have to fall into place to prevent the certification of a Harris victory: It would require a good election night for Republicans and significant complicity among Trump allies at virtually every level of government.

And it would be a brazen display of power that would outstrip the multifaceted gambit of 2020.

“Then you’re really getting into the realm of lawlessness,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA. “If people are going to be willing to just ignore the law and declare someone the winner, then you’re talking about a real coup.”

[Aianawa]

Feel nOV 5th will be a quiet election, feel massive moves are in place to negate any terror etc happenings by any group, feel also that while there will be a fast effective positive vibrant and ( omg revealations continuing ) collective awareness changes n know thyself heavyness, there will also be reconnections with enemies agreeing to truces ( maybe children related, or not ).

Ta for the rundown on what mainstream news is spouting, so so interesting, oh i heard they finalllly did indeed find an alive Hitler.

[Emil El Zapato]

I ain't feared of no ghosts. It should be obvious that the left's support of Ukraine is counterproductive given the extant circumstances but it is still justifiably pursued. I find it interesting that South Africa seems to want to go white or go broke. It is their only possible motivation to move away from American interests. Of course, Putin pushes hard in Africa presumably the shove is intended for the southernmost tip as well as the rest of it. Of course, it should be noted that more western friendly interests say it is more of a stalemate than anything else. Honestly, I believe it is a case of everyone wanting the biggest share and invasion rights on anyone, anywhere with impunity. That's the way I be seeing it.

KAZAN, Russia (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin closed a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies on Thursday, praising its role as a counterbalance to what he called the West’s “perverse methods.”

The three-day summit in the city of Kazan was attended by leaders or representatives of 36 countries, highlighting the failure of United States-led efforts to isolate Russia over its actions in Ukraine.
The conflict came up repeatedly at the meeting, which saw the first visit to Russia from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in more than two years and drew an angry reaction from Kyiv. Guterres called for “a just peace” in Ukraine, in line with the U.N. Charter, international law and General Assembly resolutions. He also urged an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza, Lebanon and Sudan.

At a news conference Thursday night, Putin was asked about former U.S. President Donald Trump’s promise to end the fighting in Ukraine.

“What Mr. Trump said recently, what I heard, (is) he spoke about the desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine,” Putin said. “It seems to me that he said it sincerely. We certainly welcome statements of this kind, no matter who makes them.”

Putin also was asked about whether any North Korean troops were in Russia, which he neither confirmed nor denied. The U.S. said Wednesday that 3,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia and are training at several locations.

“Images are a serious thing, if there are images, then they reflect something,” he said when asked about satellite photos of troops.
Putin noted that lawmakers in Moscow earlier in the day ratified a pact with North Korea on mutual military assistance as part of a “strategic partnership” with Pyongyang.
“We have never doubted that the North Korean leadership takes our agreements seriously. What and how we will do within the framework of this article (of the agreement) is our business,” he said.

The summit covered the deepening of financial cooperation, including the development of alternatives to Western-dominated payment systems, efforts to settle regional conflicts and expansion of the BRICS group of nations.
The alliance that initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa when it was founded in 2009 has expanded to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have formally applied to become members, and several other countries have expressed interest in joining.

The Kremlin touted the summit as “the largest foreign policy event ever held” by Russia.

Speaking at what was dubbed the “BRICS Plus” session, which included countries that are considering joining the bloc, Putin accused the West of trying to stem the growing power of the Global South with “illegal unilateral sanctions, blatant protectionism, manipulation of currency and stock markets, and relentless foreign influence ostensibly promoting democracy, human rights, and the climate change agenda.”

“Such perverse methods and approaches — to put it bluntly — lead to the emergence of new conflicts and the aggravation of old disagreements,” Putin said. “One example of this is Ukraine, which is being used to create critical threats to Russia’s security, while ignoring our vital interests, our just concerns, and the infringement of the rights of Russian-speaking people.”

Russia has specifically pushed for the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network SWIFT and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.
In a joint declaration Wednesday, participants voiced concern about “the disruptive effect of unlawful unilateral coercive measures, including illegal sanctions” and reiterated their commitment to enhancing financial cooperation within BRICS. They noted the benefits of “faster, low-cost, more efficient, transparent, safe and inclusive cross-border payment instruments built upon the principle of minimizing trade barriers and non-discriminatory access.”

China’s President Xi Jinping has emphasized the bloc’s role in ensuring global security. Xi noted that China and Brazil have put forward a peace plan for Ukraine and sought to rally broader international support for it. Ukraine has rejected the proposal.

“We should promote the de-escalation of the situation as soon as possible and pave the way for a political settlement,” Xi said.
Putin and Xi had announced a “no-limits” partnership weeks before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in 2022. They already met twice earlier this year, in Beijing in May and at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan in July.

Russia’s cooperation with India also has flourished as New Delhi sees Moscow as a time-tested partner since the Cold War despite Russia’s close ties with India’s rival, China. While Western allies want New Delhi to be more active in persuading Moscow to end the fighting in Ukraine, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has avoided condemning Russia while emphasizing a peaceful settlement.

Addressing the BRICS Plus session, Guterres urged an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Sudan. “We need peace in Ukraine, a just peace in line with the U.N. Charter, international law and General Assembly resolutions,” he said.

Russia’s Kremlin-controlled media touted the summit as a massive policy coup that left the West fearing the loss of its global clout. State TV shows and news bulletins underscored that BRICS countries account for about half the world’s population comprising the “global majority” and challenging Western “hegemony.”

TV hosts elaborately quoted Western media reports saying that the summit highlighted the failure to isolate Moscow. “The West, the U.S., Washington, Brussels, London ended up isolating themselves,” said Yevgeny Popov, host of a popular political talk show on state channel Rossiya 1.

[Emil El Zapato]

This video is not intended for anyone on the forum, it is intended and aimed at society en toto. I think it is worth being aware of principled philosophies and opinions:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIqd8ABi6YA

[Emil El Zapato]

Please pay attention...Listen very carefully to every word: - That bold is for you Wanna...El Zapato. Pay attention to the part that is appropriate.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIqd8ABi6YA

[Emil El Zapato]

About Us: Support Українська Русский

Open letter to Jeffrey Sachs on his position regarding Russian war on Ukraine

Dear Dr. Sachs,
We are a group of economists, including many Ukrainians, who were appalled by your statements on the Russian war against Ukraine and were compelled to write this open letter to address some of the historical misrepresentations and logical fallacies in your line of argument. Following your repeated appearances on the talk shows of one of the chief Russian propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov (apart from calling to wipe Ukrainian cities off the face of the earth, he called for nuclear strikes against NATO countries), we have reviewed the op-eds on your personal website and noticed several recurring patterns. In what follows, we wish to point out these misrepresentations to you, alongside our brief response.

Pattern #1: Denying the agency of Ukraine
In your article “The New World Economy” from January 10, 2023, you write: “It was, after all, the US attempt to expand NATO to Georgia and Ukraine that triggered the wars in Georgia (in 2010) and in Ukraine (2014 until today).” Similarly, in your article “What Ukraine Needs to Learn from Afghanistan” from February 13, 2023, you write: “The proxy war in Ukraine began nine years ago when the US government backed the overthrow of Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych’s sin from the US viewpoint was his attempt to maintain Ukraine’s neutrality despite the US desire to expand NATO to include Ukraine (and Georgia).”

Let us set the record straight on the historical events from 2013-2014, at which you hint in the aforementioned misinformative statements: The Euromaidan had nothing to do with NATO, nor the US. Initial protest was sparked by Viktor Yanukovych’s decision not to sign the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement, despite said agreement passing the Ukrainian Parliament with an overwhelming majority and enjoying broad support among the Ukrainian population. Yanukovich’s regime’s choice to respond by brutally beating peaceful protesters (mostly students) on the night of November 30, 2013, only further alienated the population and intensified the protests. After the adoption of a set of laws forbidding the freedom of press and assembly (commonly termed the “dictatorship laws”) by Yanukovych in January 2014, the Euromaidan turned into a broader movement against government abuse of power and corruption, police brutality, and human rights violation – which we now refer to as the Revolution of Dignity. Ukraine’s accession to NATO was never a goal of this movement. Hence, your attempts to trace the beginning of the war to “NATO” are historically inaccurate. Furthermore, treating Ukraine as a pawn on the US geo-political chessboard is a slap in the face to millions of Ukrainians who risked their lives during the Revolution of Dignity.

Pattern #2: NATO provoked Russia
You repeatedly emphasize that the expansion of NATO provoked Russia (e.g., “NATO should not enlarge, because that threatens the security of Russia,” from your interview to Isaac Chotiner at the New Yorker from February 27, 2023).

We want to alert you to a few facts. In 1939, it was the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that invaded Poland. In 1940, it was the Soviet Union that invaded the Baltic countries. In 1940, it was the Soviet Union that annexed parts of Romania. In 1956, it was the Soviet Union that invaded Hungary. In 1968, it was the Soviet Union that invaded Czechoslovakia. Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Hungary or Czechoslovakia did not invade Russia or the Soviet Union. No threat emanated from these countries. But these countries were attacked by the USSR/Russia. This is why these countries wanted to join NATO. Since joining NATO, none of these countries have been attacked by Russia again.

Just like these countries, Ukraine (whose military budget was a mere $2.9 bn in 2013, prior to Russia’s military aggression against it) wants to have security and peace. It does not want to be attacked again by Russia (whose military budget in 2013 stood at $68 bn). Given that Ukraine’s agreement to give up its nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for security “assurances” from the US, UK and Russia (!) did nothing to prevent Russian aggression, currently the only credible guarantee is NATO membership.

We also want to draw your attention to the fact that Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership in response to Russian aggression, and yet Russia did not complain about these two countries joining NATO. You do not seem to be particularly concerned about these two countries joining NATO either. This differential treatment of Ukraine vs. Finland/Sweden legitimizes “spheres of influence,” a notion that seems appropriate for the age of empires and not for the modern era.

Pattern #3: Denying Ukraine’s sovereign integrity
In your interview to Democracy Now! on December 6, 2022, you said: “So, my view is that […] Crimea has been historically, and will be in the future, effectively, at least de facto Russian.”

We wish to remind you that Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 has violated the Budapest memorandum (in which it promised to respect and protect Ukrainian borders, including Crimea), the Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation (which Russia signed with Ukraine in 1997 with the same promises), and, according to the order of the UN International Court of Justice, it violated international law. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia was supposed to protect peace, but instead Russia violated the foundational principle of the UN (Article 2 of the UN Charter: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”). Indeed, the entire world security architecture after WWII is based on the assumption that country borders (regardless of historical background) cannot be changed by force in order to preserve peace, as Kenya UN ambassador highlighted in his famous speech. If a nuclear power is allowed to annex territories of another country as it wishes, then no country in the world can feel safe.

By insisting that Russia can keep Crimea, you are making an implicit assumption that if Russia is allowed to do that, it will leave the rest of Ukraine in peace. However, this is demonstrably not true, as Russia’s “de facto” ownership of Crimea over 2014–2022 did nothing to preclude its current aggression. The aim of Putin is to “ultimately solve the Ukrainian question,” i.e. to completely destroy Ukraine and annex its entire territory. Thus, by annexing Crimea he did not “restore the historical justice” — he just prepared a springboard for further military attacks on Ukraine. Therefore, restoring Ukraine’s control over its entire territory is crucial not only for the security of Ukraine but also for the security of all other nations (by reinforcing the lesson that aggressors should not get away with land grabs!).

Also, you state that “Russia certainly will never accept NATO in Ukraine.” For your information, the UN Charter emphasizes the self-determination of peoples as a key principle. It’s not for Russia to decide what alliances or unions Ukraine will or will not join. Ukraine has its own democratically-elected government (not a dictatorship, like in Russia), and this government, after consultation with Ukrainian people, will decide whether Ukraine will or will not join NATO. Likewise, NATO countries have every right to decide for themselves whom they would like to welcome in their alliance.

Pattern #4: Pushing forward Kremlin’s peace plans
In the aforementioned article “What Ukraine Needs to Learn from Afghanistan,” you write: “The basis for peace is clear. Ukraine would be a neutral non-NATO country. Crimea would remain home to Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet, as it has been since 1783. A practical solution would be found for the Donbas, such as a territorial division, autonomy, or an armistice line.”

While your suggestion is perfectly aligned with that of Russian propagandists, it leaves unanswered the key question from the Ukrainian perspective: Based on what evidence do you trust a serial warmonger, who has stated on multiple occasions that Ukraine does not exist, to be satisfied with Crimea and Donbas and not try to occupy the entire country? Until you find a convincing answer to this question, we would kindly ask you to refer to the 10-point peace plan proposed by President Zelensky and fully backed up by the Ukrainian people. Regurgitating Kremlin’s “peace plans” would only prolong the suffering of Ukrainian people.

Writing that if Ukraine offered Putin Crimea and Donbas in December 2021 or March 2022 then “the fighting would stop, Russian troops would leave Ukraine, and Ukraine’s sovereignty would be guaranteed by the UN Security Council and other nations” is just wishful thinking. Peace negotiations in early 2022 broke down not because of nonexistent US intervention but because Russia demanded unconditional capitulation of Ukraine (and it still does!). Remember that Russia’s goals in Ukraine were “demilitarization and denazification”. What “denazification” means was explained by one of Putin’s political advisors, Timofey Sergeitsev, in his piece “What Russia should do with Ukraine?” There, he argued for the brutal destruction of the Ukrainian nation involving killing millions of people and “re-educating” others. Russians already started implementing these plans in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

We suggest that you read the entire text by Sergeitsev’s, but a few passages clearly show what he means: “a country that is being denazified cannot possess sovereignty,” “Denazification will inevitably include de-ukrainization — the rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component in the self-identification of the population of the historical Malorossiya and Novorossiya territories, which was started by the Soviet authorities”, “denazification of Ukraine means its inevitable de-europeanization”, [denazification implies…] “the seizure of educational materials and the prohibition of educational programs at all levels that contain Nazi ideological guidelines” (in his article, Sergeitsev repeatedly calls Ukrainians “Nazis”).

You seem to be unaware that, consistent with this rhetoric, Russia commits horrendous war crimes as documented by the UN and many others. We fail to discern any indication of a genuine interest in peace from the ongoing Russian atrocities.

We urge you to reevaluate your stance on thinking that Russia is interested in goodfaith peace talks.

Pattern #5. Presenting Ukraine as a divided country
In “What Ukraine Needs to Learn from Afghanistan,” you also state that “The US overlooked two harsh political realities in Ukraine. The first is that Ukraine is deeply divided ethnically and politically between Russia-hating nationalists in western Ukraine and ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.”

This statement echoes a Russian political technology first applied during 2004 presidential elections and still used by Russians to justify the “denazification” of Ukraine today. We encourage you to take a look at the actual empirical facts and history.

In 1991, all regions of Ukraine voted for independence. Including Crimea.

According to the 2001 Census (the latest data on self-identified ethnicity available for Ukraine), Ukrainian population is the majority in all the regions of Ukraine, except for Crimea. And when we speak about Crimea, we should ask why it has the ethnic composition which it has. It has a Russian majority because of a series of genocides and deportations starting from its first occupation by Russia in 1783 and as recently as 1944 when Crimean Tatars were deported to remote parts of the Soviet Union. Crimea’s indigenous population was deported, killed, and replaced by Russians. A similar tactic was used by Russia during its several genocides of Ukrainians — for example, during the Great Famine of 1932–33, Russians arrived to live in the houses of Ukrainians who died of famine. Russia is using the same tactics of population replacement today, in the current war: it deports the Ukrainian population, forcefully adopts Ukrainian children or “re-educates” (brainwashes) them after forcefully parting them with their families.

Besides cleansing Ukrainian and other indigenous populations, Russia used “softer” tactics, such as Russification, i.e. discouraging the learning and usage of the Ukrainian language in all spheres. Russification has been ongoing for centuries. Its instruments have been quite diverse — from “mixing” people by sending Ukrainians to work to Russia and sending Russians to study or work in Ukraine, to making it close to impossible for Ukrainian speakers to enter universities, to representing Ukrainian language and culture as backward and inferior to the “great Russian culture,” to stealing Ukrainian cultural heritage (e.g. only now world museums started to correctly identify Ukrainian artists presented by Russia as Russian, and hundreds of thousands of artifacts have looted from Ukrainian museums from 2014 and especially during the last year). Thus, the acute language discussions are a natural response to Russia’s historical attempts to suppress any restoration of rights of the Ukrainian language. Despite this history of oppression, Ukrainians have been gradually switching to Ukrainian, and the Russian full-scale invasion intensified this process.

Recent polls show that irrespective of language or location, Ukrainians overwhelmingly (80%) reject territorial concessions to Russia. Polls also show that 85 percent of Ukrainians identify themselves above all as citizens of Ukraine, as opposed to residents of their region, representatives of an ethnic minority, or some other identifier. This is hardly possible in a divided country.

In summary, we welcome your interest in Ukraine. However, if your objective is to be helpful and to generate constructive proposals on how to end the war, we believe that this objective is not achieved. Your interventions present a distorted picture of the origins and intentions of the Russian invasion, mix facts and subjective interpretations, and propagate the Kremlin’s narratives. Ukraine is not a geopolitical pawn or a divided nation, Ukraine has the right to determine its own future, Ukraine has not attacked any country since gaining its independence in 1991. There is no justification for the Russian war of aggression. A clear moral compass, respect of international law, and a firm understanding of Ukraine’s history should be the defining principles for any discussions towards a just peace.

Kind regards,

Bohdan Kukharskyy, City University of New York
Anastassia Fedyk, University of California, Berkeley
Yuriy Gorodnichenko, University of California, Berkeley
Ilona Sologoub, VoxUkraine NGO
Tatyana Deryugina, University of Illinois
Tania Babina, Columbia University
James Hodson, AI for Good Foundation
Tetyana Balyuk, Emory University
Robert Eberhart, Stanford University
Oskar Kowalewski, IESEG School of Management, France
Jerzy Konieczny, Wilfrid Laurier University and International Centre for Economic Analysis
Mishel Ghassibe, CREi, UPF and BSE
Garry Sotnik, Stanford University
Yangbo Du, INNOVO Group of Companies
Stan Veuger, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Pavel Kuchar, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London
Moshe Hazan, Tel Aviv University
Fabio Ghironi, University of Washington
Harry Pei, Department of Economics, Northwestern University
Matilde Bombardini, UC Berkeley
Oleg Gredil, Tulane University
Andriy Shkilko, Wilfrid Laurier University
Oleksandra Betliy, Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting
Santiago Sanchez-Pages, King’s College London
Vadim Elenev, Johns Hopkins University
Dariia Mykhailyshyna, University of Bologna
Valeria Fedyk, London Business School
Grigory Franguridi, University of Southern California
Andrii Bilovusiak, London School of Economics
Ioannis Kospentaris, Virginia Commonwealth University
Benjamin Moll, London School of Economics
Lubo Litov, Price College of Business, OU
Pavel Bacherikov, UC Berkeley Haas
Robert Scott Richards, Managing Director, CrossBoundary
Samuel C. Ramer, History Department, Tulane University
Olena Ogrokhina, Lafayette College
Michael Landesmann, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies
Matthew Holian, San Jose State University
Petra Sinagl, University of Iowa
Jeanine Miklos-Thal, University of Rochester
Wojciech Kopczuk, Columbia University
Jonathan Meer, Texas A&M University
Tetiana Bogdan, Academy of Financial Management by the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine
Mats Marcusson, Retired EC official
Alminas Zaldokas, HKUST
Christian R. Proaño, University of Bamberg, Germany
Michael Weber, University of Chicago
Daniel Spiro, Uppsala University
Hlib Vyshlinsky, Centre for Economic Strategy
Martin Labaj, University of Economics in Bratislava
Jacques Crémer, Toulouse School of Economics
Marc Fleurbaey, Paris School of Economics
Dmitriy Sergeyev, Bocconi University
Oleksandra Moskalenko, London School of Economics and Political Sciences
Olga Pindyuk, Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies
Swapnil Singh, Bank of Lithuania
Yevhenii Usenko, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Oleksandr Vostriakov, Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman
Julian Reif, University of Illinois
Ernst Maug, University of Mannheim
Olga Shurchkov, Wellesley College
Vladimir Dubrovskiy, CASE Ukraine
Niko Jaakkola, University of Bologna
Anders Olofsgård, SITE/Stockholm School of Economics
Leonid Krasnozhon, Loyola University New Orleans
Jesper Roine, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, SSE
Krassen Stanchev, Sofia University and Institute for Market Economics
Brendan O’Flaherty, Columbia University
Samuel Rosen, Temple University
Francois Joinneau, “Entrepreneurs for Ukraine”/Tuvalu 51
Torbjörn Becker, Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics
Maria Perrotta Berlin, SITE, Stockholm School of Economics
Oleksiy Kryvtsov
Inna Semenets-Orlova, Interregional Academy of Personnel Management
Denis de Crombrugghe, Nazarbayev University
Olena Mykolenko, VN Kharkiv National University
Solomiya Shpak, Kyiv School of Economics
Oleksandr Talavera, University of Birmingham
Kevin Berry, University of Alaska Anchorage
Denys Bondar, Tulane University
Kálmán Mizsei
Artur Doshchyn, University of Oxford
Robert Östling, Stockholm School of Economics
Oleksandr Petryk
Vera Kichanova, King’s College London
Mariia Panga, George Mason University
Oleg Itskhoki, UCLA
Lina Zadorozhnia, Kyiv School of Economics
Dominic Lusinchi, UC Berkeley Extension, instructor (retired)
John S. Earle, George Mason University
Scott Gehlbach, University of Chicago
Konstantin Sonin, University of Chicago
Olena Havrylchyk, University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne
Floyd Zhang, private sector economist
David Zaikin, Founder of Ukraine Momentum, CEO of Key Elements Group.
Piroska Nagy-Mohacsi, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Szymon Sacher, Columbia University
Iikka Korhonen, Bank of Finland
Sebastian Buhai, SOFI at Stockholm University
Sergei Guriev, Sciences Po, Paris
Gerard Roland, UC Berkeley
Daniel Ershov, University College London School of Management
Denis Ivanov, Corvinus University of Budapest
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, Peterson Institute For International Economics
Alexander Rodnyansky, University of Cambridge
Aleksandr Kljucnikov, European Centre for Business Research, Pan-European University, Czechia
Rohan Dutta, McGill University
Nataliia Frantova
Rok Spruk, University of Ljubljana
Bohdan Slavko, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Oleksandr Shepotylo, Aston University
Andrew Kosenko, Marist College
Bart Lipman, Boston University
Yang Xie, University of California, Riverside
James S. Henry, Global Justice Fellow and Lecturer, Yale University
Jan Fidrmuc, Université de Lille
Michal Zator, University of Notre Dame
Nina Baranchuk, University of Texas at Dallas
Jonathan Schulz, George Mason University
Jakub Steiner, Cerge-Ei and Zurich U
Sergey V. Popov, Cardiff University
Heski Bar-Isaac, University of Toronto
Evan Sadler, Columbia University
Christoph Kronenberg, University Duisburg-Essen
Bart Edes, Professor of Practice, McGill University
Lucan Way, University of Toronto
Jerg Gutmann, University of Hamburg
Andy Semotiuk, President – Centre for Eastern European Democaracy
Hanna Vakhitova, Kyiv School of Economics / Syddansk Universitet
Pedro Romero-Aleman, Universidad San Francisco de Quito
Michał Białek, University of Wrocław
James S. Henry, Global Justice Fellow and Lecturer, Yale University
Nik Gabrovšek,
Rudi Bachmann, University of Notre Dame
Alexander Karaivanov, Simon Fraser University
Aniol Llorente-Saguer, Queen Mary University of London
Hanna Onyshchenko, PhD candidate, University of Michigan
Olivier Coibion, University of Texas at Austin
Tomasz Mickiewicz, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
Andriy Tsapin, National bank of Ukraine
Daniel Heyen, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau
Andrey Fradkin, Boston University
Charles Wyplosz, The Graduate Institute, Geneva
Antonio Mele, London School of Economics
Tymofiy Mylovanov, Kyiv School of Economics
Andrii Parkhomenko, University of Southern California
George Loginov, Augustana University
Chris Doucouliagos, Deakin University
Vlad Mykhnenko, Sustainable Urban Development Programme, University of Oxford, UK
Kjeld Schmidt, Copenhagen Business School
Eric Chaney, Institut Montaigne
Ilya Shpitser, Johns Hopkins University
Taras Wolczuk, London School of Economics
Harry de Gorter, Cornell University
Clemens Buchen, WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management, Vallendar, Germany
Piotr Arak, Polish Economic Institute
Greg Wright, UC Merced
Mitja Steinbacher, Faculty of law and business studies, Catholic Institute
Karl T. Muth, Booth School of Business, The University of Chicago
Pedro Bento, Texas A&M University
Danilo Guaitoli, New York University
Rick Della
Alex Eble, Columbia University
Michael Tedesco, Ohio University
Victoria Malko, History Department, California State University, Fresno
Carlos Gomez-Lopez, HSBC
James S. Henry, Managing Director, Sag Harbor Group
Chris Doucouliagos, Deakin University
Reuben Kline, Stony Brook University
Daron Acemoglu, MIT
Martin Kahanec, Central European University, CELSI and EUBA
Vadim Marmer, University of British Columbia
James S. Henry, Managing Director, Sag Harbor Group
Germà Bel, Universitat de Barcelona
Marcel Smolka, University of Flensburg
Anton Sukach
Christopher A. Hartwell, Zurich University of Applied Science
Adrien Couturier, LSE
Vladimir Novak, National Bank of Slovakia
Yuki Takahashi, European University Institute
Philippe Gabriel, Avignon Université et Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche en didactique éducation et formation
Pauric Brophy, GDSI Limited, Galway, Ireland
Mark V. Pauly, University of Pennsylvania
Garance Genicot, Georgetown university
Vitaly Radsky, UNC Chapel Hill
Rune Jansen Hagen, University of Bergen
Olena Ivus, Queen’s University
Lars Handrich, DIW Econ, Berlin/Germany
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Paris School of Economics
Laszlo Halpern, Institute of Economics, Budapest
Nicolas Gavoille, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga
Lyubov Zhyznomirska, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Saint Mary’s University (Canada)
Alex Krumer, Molde University College
Adrian Ivakhiv, University of Vermont
Michael Spagat, Royal Holloway University of London
Cathy Schneider, American University School of International Service
Matthew Pauly, Michigan State University
Florin Bilbiie, University of Cambridge
Irwin Collier, Freie Universität Berlin (ret.)
Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford
Timur Kuran, Duke University
Athena Small, University of Virginia
Lena Edlund, Columbia University
Serhii Abramenko, EIEF
Mauricio Drelichman, University of British Columbia
Raymond Riezman, Aarhus University
Igor Masten, University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business
Joseph Steinberg, University of Toronto
Hans-Joachim Voth, University of Zurich
Edgar Morgenroth, Dublin City University
Vitaliy Ryabinin, Imperial College London
Anna Nagurney, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Serhiy Stepanchuk, University of Southampton
Piotr Zoch, University of Warsaw and FAME | GRAPE
Colin Rowat, University of Birmingham
Jim Leitzel, University of Chicago
Yevgenii Tymovskyi, Student
William Szuch, UkeTube – Ukrainian Video
Ole Agersnap, Princeton University
Clara E. Dismuke-Greer, Health Economics Resource Center, VA Palo Alto Health Care System
Rick Harbaugh, Indiana University
Margarete Biallas
David Jaeger, University of St Andrews
Germán Gieczewski, Princeton University
Jana Kunicova
Lee Ohanian, UCLA
Andy Zapechelnyuk, University of Edinburgh
Mark E. Schaffer, Heriot-Watt University
Jacopo Mazza, Utrecht University School of Economics
Silvester van Koten, University of Jan Evangelista in Ústí nad Labem (UJEP)
Tetiana Albrecht, Student of MA in Security and Diplomacy, Tel Aviv University
Artem Korzhenevych, TU Dresden, Germany
Paul Klein, Stockholm University
Philip Ushchev, Universite Libre de Bruxelles
Julia Korosteleva, Professor in Business Economics, UCL, UK
Giovanni Caggiano, University of Padua
Sergey Alexeev, The University of Sydney
Pawel Bukowski, University College London
Fabian Lange, McGill University
Paul De Grauwe, London School of Economics
Lorenz Kueng, University of Lugano
Andrei Belyi, University of Eastern Finland
Louis Furmanski, University of Central Okalhoma
Maxim Mironov, IE Business school
Benjamin Hilgenstock, KSE Institute
Elina Ribakova
Elodie Douarin, UCL SSEES
Gabriel Lee, University of Regensburg, Germany
Iryna Stewen, University of Mainz and University of Zurich
David Lambert
Ewa Karwowski, King’s College London
Roman Sheremeta, American University Kyiv
Paul Terdal, Portland-Lviv Sister City Association
Dmytro Hryshko, University of Alberta
Anders Aslund, Stockholm Free World Forum
Tomislav Ladika, Associate Professor of Finance
Iryna Franko
Volodymyr Bilotkach, Purdue University
Daniel Philpott, University of Notre Dame
Ian Gaunt, International Arbitrator
Olha Krupa, Seattle University
Olga Slivko, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
Xavier Jaravel, London School of Economics
Franco Bruni, Bocconi University and ISPI
Paul Knight
Roberton Williams, University of Maryland
Gerhard Riener, University of Southampton
Victoria Hui, University of Notre Dame
Olha Markova
Vita Faychuk, Gustavus Adolphus College
Tetyana Shlikhar, University of Notre Dame
Richard Green, University of Southern California
Mykola Riabchuk, Research Fellow, NIAS
Michael Koziupa, Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Inc., – New Jersey Co-ordinating Council
Douglas Almond, SIPA and Economics
Michal Myck, Centre for Economic Analysis, CenEA
Kevin Costa, Massachusetts Democratic State Committee
Myroslav Marynovych, Ukrainian Catholic University
Györgyike Margit Trautmanné Zsigri
Laada Bilaniuk, University of Washington
Bohdan Kordan, University of Saskatchewan
Victor Rodwin, New York University
Mikhail Galashin, UCLA
David Marples, University of Alberta
Michael Alexeev, Indiana University – Bloomington, IN
Zenon Radewych
John Weiss, Cornell University
Ezekiel Emanuel, Iniversity of Pennsylvania
Ben Fitzhugh, University of Wasington
Peter Zalmayev, Eurasia Democracy Initiative, director
Attila Ratfai, Central European University
Myron Spolsky, Plast Conference
Miklós Vörös
Lukasz Rachel, UCL
Lada Roslycky, Black Trident Consulting Group
Peter Terem, Matej Bel University in Banska Bystrica
Lars Svensson, Stockholm School of Economics
Pavel Baev, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
walter gregory kuplowsky, partner – Mitchell Bardyn & Zalucky
Mai’a K Davis Cross, Northeastern University
Mitja Steinbacher, Faculty of Law and Business Studies, Ljubljana
Olivier Simard-Casanova, Economist and data scientist, Aléryon Science
Igor Shevchenko
Ambassador (retired) Allan Mustard, Retired Soviet/Russia specialist, agricultural economist
Laurence Kotlikoff
Christian Moser, Columbia University
Glenn Gibson, University of Ulster
Nataliya Zadorozhna
Talia Zajac, University of Manchester
Danylo Sudyn, Ukrainian Catholic University
Tanya Richardson, Wilfrid Laurier University
Andreas Önnerfors, Linnaeus University, Sweden
Michael J. Orlando, University of Colorado Denver
Dóra Győrffy, Corvinus University of Budapest
Vidvuds Zigismunds Beldavs, Riga Photonics Centre
Claudio Morana, University of Milano-Bicocca
Wlodzimierz Dymarski, PhD, Poznan University of Economics (retired)
Andrey Shulik
Jukka Mäkinen, Estonian Business School
Iryna Dudnyk, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Dasha Safonova
Teng Biao, University of Chicago
Soumya Datta, South Asian University
David Schindler, Tilburg University
Stephenson Strobel, Cornell University
Heiko Pääbo, University of Tartu
Francis Fukuyama, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford
Timothy Frye, Columbia University
Gerald Friedman, Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Craig Kennedy
Michael Grinfeld, University of Strathclyde
Austin Starkweather, University of South Carolina
Andriy Danylenko, Pace University
Sergey Ivanov
Andrei Kozyrev
Clément Mangin, Université du Québec à Montréal
Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University
Larry Epstein, McGill University
Susanne Wengle, University of Notre Dame
Michele Boldrin, Joseph G. Hoyt Distinguished University Professor of Economics, Washington University in Saint Louis

Attention
The authors do not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have no relevant affiliations

[Emil El Zapato]

This is a lesson, folks!

Trump has been President-elect for less than five days and the speculators, moneyed, and corporatists are on the march. I say, ask yourself two questions. First, how can an entire financial empire, start moving the economy on a dime? Second, who is demonstrating 'control' of the free market processes and, in effect, manipulating all the people who do not know better than to support such a system? In fairness to myself, I should point out I fully anticipated this and have been laying in wait.

The stock market climbed to another round of records on Friday, as the Dow and S&P 500 wrapped up their best week in a year after Donald Trump’s election win.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 259.65 points, or 0.59%, to close at 43,988.99. The blue chip average traded above 44,000 for the first time ever during the session. The S&P 500 gained 0.38% to close at 5,995.54, after briefly trading above 6,000 for its own milestone. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lagged, up just 0.09% to 19,286.78, but set an intraday record high as well. All three averages finished the week at record closing levels.

The Dow is up more than 16% year to date.
It was a strong week across the board for equities, due in large part to Wednesday’s huge rally following Trump’s victory. The S&P 500 finished up 4.66% for the week, as the Dow was higher by 4.61%. Both indexes notched their best week since November 2023. The Nasdaq outdid even those moves, toting a 5.74% advance, while the small-cap benchmark Russell 2000 surged 8.57%.

“Equities are eager to price in Trump’s domestic growth policies (via small-caps) and hopes for easier regulation relative to the Biden administration,” Barclays strategist Venu Krishna said in a note to clients.

“Whether these moves are sustainable remains to be seen; momentum is extending lofty gains as ‘winners keep winning’, and the sharp post-Election Day moves have pushed major gauges near (or into, in the case of [Russell 2000]) technically overbought territory,” Krishna added.

Investors generally view a Republican-controlled government as more favorable on expectations for deregulation, the potential for more mergers and acquisitions and proposed tax cuts. However, concerns over the large federal deficit and increased tariffs have also sparked fears of an uptick in inflation.

Some stocks associated with Trump performed well again on Friday. Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk campaigned with the president-elect, rose 8.2% and was on track for its fourth straight positive session. The automaker’s market cap surpassed the $1 trillion mark. Law enforcement tech stock Axon Enterprises jumped more than 28% after the company raised its full-year revenue guidance. Trump Media jumped 15% after the president-elect said he had no plans to sell his shares in the social media company.

Stocks also got a boost from the Federal Reserve this week, as the central bank lowered interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Thursday. Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted he is “feeling good” about the economy during a press conference following the change.

While some on Wall Street are worried about the valuations for the stock market, the strength of this week’s move has bolstered confidence that there could still be room to move higher in the final months of the year. “When everything seems like it’s all working well, it’s like, ‘what’s going to hit us?’” Keith Lerner, co-chief investment officer at Truist Wealth, said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Friday. “There’s probably something from left field. Sentiment’s getting a little bit stretched, maybe some choppiness after this round number. But all in all, we still think you want to stick with that primary uptrend,” he continued.

17 Hours Ago
Record closes for Wall Street
The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite all closed at record highs on Friday.

— Jesse Pound

- Sidenote -
17 Hours Ago

Emcor is ‘most sensible swap’ to go into S&P 500, Gordon Haskett says The “most sensible swap” when the S&P 500 is rebalanced later this quarter is for Emcor Group, with a market value of $23 billion, to enter the benchmark stock index, replacing Amentum Holdings, with a capitalization of some $8 billion, according to analysts led by Don Bilson at Gordon Haskett in a note published Friday. Both stocks are engineering companies, and the larger of the two is currently in the S&P Midcap 400 index while the smaller is in the S&P 500, Bilson wrote.

Other companies that might potentially be relegated from the S&P 500 include Match Group, which slumped 18% on Thursday; Qorvo, whose market capitalization has shrunk to $7 billion; FMC; Borgwarner; and Huntington Ingalls Industries, the Wall Street researcher said.

“If S&P were to make a relegation decision today, QRVO is the odds on favorite to pack its bags,” Bilson wrote.

18 Hours Ago Coinbase is heading for its best week since January 2023 Coinbase extended its rally on Friday as most of the crypto sector took a pause following its postelection rocket rally.

Shares of the crypto exchange operator were higher by 5% in afternoon trading and on pace for a weekly gain of about 47%, which would make it its best week since January 2023, when it gained 50%.

Coinbase heads for best week since January 2023
Meanwhile, bitcoin inched higher by less than 1% to new records. It is currently sitting at $77,014.49, after reaching a new high in the same day of $77,158.42. The flagship cryptocurrency is heading for an 11.3% gain, which would be its best week since September, when it gained 11.75%.

"This is Agent Orange's approach to saving the coal miners:
MicroStrategy had a less than 1% gain, while most miners were in the red, including Mara Holdings and Iren, formerly known as Iris Energy.
— Tanaya Macheel, Nick Wells

Gotta take care of the primary manipulators that Agent Orange adores
18 Hours Ago
Tesla shares head for best week since January 2023
Tesla shares have rallied more than 30% since the start of the week and are headed for their best week since January 2023, when shares popped more than 33%. The rally came on the heels of Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential defeat over Vice President Kamala Harris as investors bet the electric vehicle company will benefit from the new administration.

CEO Elon Musk has been a vocal supporter of Trump, donating at least $130 million to the president-elect’s campaign. Shares surged 7% during Friday’s trading session, putting the company above a $1 trillion market value. Shares are already up 27% a little more than a week into the new trading month, and on pace for their best month since June 2023.

— Samantha Subin

20 Hours Ago
Goldman Sachs leads weekly Dow gains
Financials giant Goldman Sachs is more than 13% higher on the week, making it the top performer across the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

There is more, much more, but I would hope to God more would not be necessary for anyone north of a neanderthal (they might have been a more logical bunch than the purported Homo Sapiens Sapiens)

[Emil El Zapato]

How NATO's expansion helped drive Putin to invade Ukraine


Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the U.N. Security Council via a videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow on Friday.


Russian military forces and Russian-backed separatists have invaded Ukraine. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says NATO allies condemn in "strongest possible terms" Russia's "horrifying attack" on Ukraine. With the invasion, a 30-year-old foreign policy debate has made a return to center stage.

The question: Should NATO, the mutual defense pact formed in the wake of World War II that has long served to represent Western interests and counter Russia's influence in Europe, expand eastward?

NATO's founding articles declare that any European country that is able to meet the alliance's criteria for membership can join. This includes Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies in Europe have repeatedly said they are committed to that "open-door" policy.

But in the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO's eastward march represents decades of broken promises from the West to Moscow.

"You promised us in the 1990s that [NATO] would not move an inch to the East. You cheated us shamelessly," Putin said at a news conference in December.

The U.S. says a ban on expansion was never on the table. But Russia insists it was — and now, Putin is demanding a permanent ban on Ukraine from joining the pact.

"Unsurprisingly, when you look at the evidence, what happened is somewhere in between," said Mary Sarotte, a post-Cold War historian whose book about those negotiations, Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, was published last fall.

What is the origin of Putin's "not move an inch" claim?
For the first four decades of NATO's existence, the treaty represented the U.S., Canada and America's closest allies in Western and southern Europe. On the other side of the Iron Curtain were the Soviet Union and its allies in Central and Eastern Europe, including the former East Germany.

But that long-standing divide was challenged in 1989 when anti-communist protests spread across East Germany and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Early in the effort to reunify Germany, U.S. officials wrestled with the question of Soviet control of the east: What could entice Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to withdraw?

"The Americans guess that maybe what Gorbachev wants in exchange for letting Germany unify is a promise that NATO will not expand eastward," Sarotte said. "And so Secretary of State [James] Baker, in a speculative way in an early stage of negotiations, says to Gorbachev, 'How about this idea: How about you let your half of Germany go, and we agree to move that one piece forward?' "

But President George H.W. Bush rejected the idea, and when more formal negotiations began later in 1990, a ban on NATO expansion was never actually offered, Sarotte said.

There is some disagreement about what took place during the Baker-Gorbachev talks in February 1990. Some say that when Baker suggested that NATO shift not "one inch" to the east, he intended to refer only to East Germany, because neither side had begun to think about NATO expansion beyond that.

Seemingly conflicting comments from U.S. officials and Gorbachev made years later do not help clear this up. (Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as recently as Friday that "nobody was even imagining Czechoslovakia or Poland or Hungary at that time.")

The historical record shows otherwise, according to Sarotte. Contemporaneous notes, letters, speeches and interviews show that Western leaders were, in fact, already contemplating NATO enlargement by the time the February 1990 talks took place, she says.

What is not in dispute: Gorbachev later agreed to withdraw from East Germany in exchange for financial concessions, in a treaty that did not place limits on the future expansion of NATO.

"But there's this residual bitterness afterwards. Still, to this day, Putin is saying, 'Look, there was this other offer on the table, right?' " Sarotte said. "And that's sort of factually accurate in a narrow sense, but it doesn't reflect the reality of the treaty."

Why did the West want to enlarge NATO, and how did Russia react?

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the NATO expansion question became more urgent — both for the U.S. looking to cement its influence in Europe and for countries emerging from communist control, like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

How the Soviet Union's collapse explains the current Russia-Ukraine tension

"They believed that the United States could bring them into the West, which was what they wanted. And they believed that the United States could protect them if Russia ever became aggressive again," said James Goldgeier, an American University professor who has written extensively about NATO.

From the beginning, Russia strongly objected to NATO's borders creeping closer to its territory. In 1997, Russian President Boris Yeltsin tried to secure a guarantee from President Bill Clinton that NATO would not add any former Soviet republics. Clinton refused. The U.S. hoped that its financial support, along with diplomatic overtures from NATO, could be enough to counterbalance Russia's displeasure over expansion — but ultimately, that didn't work, Goldgeier said.

Over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, NATO expanded three times: first to add the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland; then seven more countries even farther east, including the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; and finally with Albania and Croatia in 2009. "Obviously, the more it did to stabilize the situation in central and Eastern Europe and bring them into the West, the more it antagonized the Russians," he said.

Why is Ukraine important?

Ukraine, as the largest former Soviet republic in Europe besides Russia itself, has been a key part of alliance talks since it declared independence from the USSR in 1991. In the three decades since, NATO expansion has put four members on Ukraine's borders.

"The Russians were always concerned about how far NATO enlargement was going to go. It's one thing for Poland to come in, or the Czech Republic to come in. That's not such a big deal. But there was always a concern about Ukraine," Goldgeier said. More Ukrainians have been looking toward the West as Russia has become aggressive.

Putin himself has long said that he believes Ukrainians and Russians to be a single people, unified by language, culture and religion. In July 2021, he wrote a long essay about the "historical unity" between the two nations.

For the U.S. and its Western allies, a successful and independent Ukraine was a potent potential symbol that Russia's time as a powerful empire had come to an end.

During the early 2000s, President George W. Bush pushed for Ukraine to become a NATO member. France and Germany opposed it, fearing escalation with Russia. The result was a "worst of all worlds" compromise in 2008, Goldgeier said: a promise that Ukraine would eventually join NATO, but without any concrete timeline or pathway to do so. When the compromise was announced, some analysts were surprised that "there was not this major temper tantrum" from Putin and Russia, said Rose Gottemoeller, an American diplomat who served as deputy secretary general of NATO from 2016 to 2019. "It needed another 15 years before the major temper tantrum ensued. Unfortunately, we're experiencing it now," Gottemoeller said.

Why has this come up again now?

Ukraine cannot imminently join NATO. Aspiring members are asked to meet various conditions before they are allowed to begin the process of joining via a "Membership Action Plan." NATO allies have not yet granted that to Ukraine — and have long appeared uninterested in offering, in part because of political complications with Russia.

Now, Russia's protests over Ukraine's future membership have put the U.S. and NATO in a difficult spot over NATO's "open-door" policy. "The louder Moscow protested, the more determined western capitals became to deny Russia what was seen as a veto over alliance decision-making," Samuel Charap, a Russia specialist at Rand Corp., wrote in the Financial Times earlier this month. And the more Putin has tried to control Ukraine and its foreign policy, the more he has pushed Ukrainians themselves to look toward the West, experts said. Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 was a major turning point. Afterward, popular support for joining NATO rose among Ukrainians, who had once been more ambivalent about the alliance.

"Putin has constructed in his head and in his heart, perhaps, the idea that NATO is encircling him, that that has always been the intention," said Rice, speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations panel on Friday. "Ukraine is moving closer to the West — but it's doing it because the Russians have been annexing Ukrainian territory and threatening the Ukrainians." (In annexing Crimea, Russia itself broke a promise: In the Budapest Memorandum, a treaty Russia signed with the U.S. and U.K. in 1994, it committed "to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine" in exchange for Ukraine's denuclearization.)

Can NATO Find A Way To Contain Russia?

None of that has deterred Putin, for whom Ukraine is "personal," says Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former senior U.S. intelligence officer now with the Center for a New American Security. "Putin, over his 22 years now in power, has tried and failed repeatedly to bring Ukraine back into the fold. And I think he senses that now is his time to take care of this unfinished business," she told NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. With the U.S. internally divided over domestic politics and Germany's new government not yet settled on policy positions after the departure of longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin "senses that this is a good time to push matters," said Sarotte.

"He's basically holding Ukraine hostage to force a do-over of these NATO expansion battles," she said.

[Emil El Zapato]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrrYl2fTGZE

[Emil El Zapato]

The two separatist factions mentioned were never 'heavily Russian' until the Russian empire wrested them from the Ottomans and then again under usurpation by the Soviet Union:

After Georgia agreed to join the CIS, relations between Russia and Georgia began to improve. Free trade agreements between Russia and Georgia were signed in 1993 and 1994. Russia supported economic sanctions on Abkhazia, based on a unanimous decision by the 12 presidents of the CIS member countries in January 1996 to ban trade, financial, transportation, communications, and other ties with Abkhazia at the state level by ministries and state-owned entities in the member countries. Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze persuaded his Russian counterpart Boris Yeltsin to push through that decision, and all the CIS member countries supported it. However, already in November 1997, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin partially lifted sanctions by easing import of curbs of citrus fruits and other foodstuffs from Abkhazia into Russia, which Eduard Shevardnadze denounced by stating that "I want to say to Russian citizens that those tangerines that will appear on their tables were collected in the yards of the burned-down houses of poor refugees".

At the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Istanbul Summit of November 1999, agreement was reached that the Russian military bases in Georgia would all be evacuated by Russia before July 1, 2001.

Vaziani was handed over on June 29, 2001. Akhalkalaki was not handed over until June 27, 2007, and Batumi on November 13, 2007. Being in Abkhazia, the base at Gudauta has never been under the control of Georgia.

Russia dominated the collective peacekeeping missions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia but was criticized by Georgia and several Western diplomats for failing to maintain neutrality in the conflict zones.

Russia accused Georgia of helping Chechen separatists, and some supplies and reinforcements indeed reached the rebels via Georgian territory. The separatists also took refuge in the Pankisi Gorge in eastern Georgia. After Russia threatened to launch cross-border attacks against them in 2002, the Georgian government took steps to establish order there with help from the USA.

Thanks for the history lesson, Fred.