Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

blatham, if I am not terribly mistaken I think that snood is correct in that Republicans are trying to use that definition in particular. They are trying to marginalize and demonize the Black communities with their usage of the word - "woke", any way they can. It is part of the evolution of the word.

As you know, I try to write this record of modern America from the perspective of what stories will matter in 150 years (about the span between the present and the Civil War).

So, for all the chop in the water about the former president facing indictments, the story that really seems uppermost to me today is the visit China’s president Xi Jinping made today to Moscow for a meeting with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.

National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told reporters today that China and Russia would both like “to see the rest of the world play by their rules rather than the ones that…are enshrined in the U.N. Charter and what everybody else is…following.” Kirby said the White House sees the relationship of Xi and Putin as a “marriage of convenience.” He explained:

“In President Putin and Russia, President Xi sees a counterweight to American influence and NATO influence certainly on the continent and elsewhere around the world. In President Xi, President Putin sees a potential backer.” Putin needs Xi’s support because of his misadventure in Ukraine. There, Kirby said, Putin is “blowing through inventory. He’s blowing through manpower. His military is getting embarrassed constantly. They’ve lost greater than 50 percent of the territory that they took in the first few months of this war. He needs help from President Xi, and that’s what this visit was all about.”

“Now,” he added, “whether it results in anything, we’ll see.”

When a reporter asked Kirby if Xi would provide lethal aid to Russia, Kirby answered, “We don’t think that China is taking it off the table, but they haven’t moved in that direction. We’ve seen no indication that they’re about to or — or fixing to provide lethal weapons.”

The Institute for the Study of War concluded that the outcome of the meeting was likely less than Putin wanted. It noted that Putin represented the meeting as showing the two countries working together against an adversarial West, while Xi only said the two countries were working together. This is a significant step down from the stance China took before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, in which it declared it had a “no limits partnership” with Russia, suggesting China is not inclined to give Russia all the support it needs for that war.

Putin has been trying to rally states in Africa to his cause and likely hoped Xi would help that effort, but he did not.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia put out a statement deepening their cooperation, but Sam Greene, Director for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and Professor of Russian Politics at King's College London, noted that the economic benefits of the statement all flowed from Russia to China, including Russia’s announcement that it will use yuan for foreign transactions with Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

“This summit…brings home exactly how much Putin has lost,” Greene wrote. “Prior to the war—even after 2014—Putin occupied a position of strategic maneuverability. He could arbitrage between east and west, reaping windfalls for his regime along the way. That’s all gone now. Putin tells his people he's fighting for Russia's sovereignty. In truth, he’s mortgaged the Kremlin to Beijing.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky today in a surprise trip to Ukraine at Zelensky’s invitation. It is the first visit of a Japanese prime minister to a country at war since World War II and demonstrates Japan’s growing international foreign policy presence. Last month, when Japan pledged $5.5 billion in humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Kishida said: “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is not just a European matter, but a challenge to the rules and principles of the entire international community.” Today, he confirmed Japan’s “solidarity and unwavering support for Ukraine.”

The next most important issue of the day, to my mind, was President Joe Biden’s designation of two new national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906: Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada and Castner Range in Texas. These are Biden’s second and third new monument designations. Last fall he created the Camp Hale–Continental Divide National Monument in Colorado, and in 2021 he restored the protections to Bears Ears, Grand Staircase–Escalante, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monuments that Trump had removed. Both of the new monuments cover land sacred to Indigenous American tribes. Together, they protect nearly 514,000 acres.

Biden also directed Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to start the process of designating a marine sanctuary in the Pacific covering 777,000 square miles.

Biden is advancing his promise to conserve American lands, but he is also answering criticism of his administration’s approval of the controversial Alaska Willow oil drilling project on March 13. ConocoPhillips had existing leases for the project, and it has bipartisan support in Alaska, where locals expect it will bring jobs and income, so after debate, the administration let the project move forward. But environmentalists and those who recognize the immediate need to address climate change vehemently opposed the project, launched lawsuits immediately, and criticized the president.

“Our national wonders are literally the envy of the world,″ Biden said as he announced the new monuments. “They’ve always been and always will be central to our heritage as a people and essential to our identity as a nation.″

But while conservation groups and tribal members cheered the new designations, the new Republican governor of Nevada, Joe Lombardo, said that the federal government was confiscating Nevada land—a red-hot issue in the home state of the Bundy ranchers who have engaged in armed standoffs with law enforcement officers over public land—and said the new Nevada monument is “a historic mistake that will cost Nevadans for generations to come.”

None of this is to say that Trump’s troubles are not important. Indeed, the indictment of a president is unprecedented, and there is good reason to watch it closely, not least because the Republican Party has tied itself to him so completely it is now responding to the growing tide of legal news by calling for the investigation or even the arrest of those handling Trump’s many lawsuits– an alarming development.

Right now, though, much of what we are seeing is being churned up by Trump himself, and it feels far less important than the fact it appears that neither the legal nor the political momentum is in his favor.

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Blatham, did you read the article b4 you tried to correct the wording of that sentence?

Yes I did.

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The phrase “stay woke” started and lived for half a century as a reference to staying vigilant about the harm that could come from white people.

Yes, that's understood. And it has been long understood within the progressive community that racism has uniquely harmed blacks. But that origin of the term is not relevant to how the word is presently being used. "Gay" once meant something quite different that how it is now used.

We may stop using it temporarily, or use it very infrequently, but when we DO use it it still means the same as it always has.

Former President Donald Trump had said he was going to be indicted on Tuesday by a New York grand jury investigating him. The probe remains open.

Former President Donald Trump was not indicted Tuesday by a New York grand jury, despite his prediction that he would face arrest that day. The panel will reconvene Wednesday morning.

If the grand jury does vote to charge him, he would become the first former president to be indicted in American history. Some media reports, citing unnamed sources, said an indictment could come Wednesday.

On Tuesday, New York Police Department officers patrolled the perimeter of the Manhattan Criminal Court, where barriers were erected in anticipation of protests and possible violence.

Bomb threats temporarily halted operations at some Manhattan courthouses, including the one where a grand jury has been hearing evidence against Trump in a criminal probe.

“Affected buildings swept and normal operations resumed after a brief period,” said Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the court system. “No mention of Trump that I am aware.” An email was received about 11 a.m. claiming bombs had been planted in courthouses, but the threat was deemed not credible, according to the NYPD.

A New York grand jury has been meeting in secret for months, hearing allegations that Trump violated campaign laws in the state and committed fraud by authorizing hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult entertainment actress who claimed she had an affair with Trump before he ran for president.

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said he never had a sexual relationship with Daniels.

Over the weekend, Trump claimed on social media that he would be arrested on Tuesday and called on his supporters to “Protest, take our nation back.”

His representatives later said he was citing media reports and leaks. The grand jury investigating him heard Monday from a witness favorable to Trump, apparently a move by prosecutors to give the panel an opportunity to hear testimony that could be seen as exculpatory.

Attorney Robert Costello, who is close to several Trump aides, said Monday he had come forward to say he did not believe former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal crimes and served time in prison over the hush money paid to Daniels.

Cohen was a key witness in the Trump investigation and testified several times before the grand jury. He claims he made the payments on behalf of Trump just before the 2016 presidential campaign. Cohen has admitted paying $130,000 to Daniels to stop her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump.

Trump and his top advisors have said Cohen took it upon himself to pay Daniels, and denied any involvement in the payment.

In a conference call with reporters Monday, Costello said he told jurors, “If they want to go after Donald Trump and they have solid evidence, so be it. But Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence,” said Costello, who was also a former legal adviser to Cohen. "He is totally unreliable."

The former president has repeatedly accused New York prosecutors of conducting a "witch hunt" against him, a phrase he has often used in connection with several ongoing investigations into his actions as president.

Trump's criticism of the New York investigation has been particularly hostile toward Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, who heads the probe. Trump has called the district attorney, who is Black, a "racist."

My argument with you is that you appear to allow for some legitimacy around the bastardization of "woke" by the right

surely, those watching haven't forgotten so soon "lock her up?"

I do understand what you're saying. And, yes, "gay" is not an exact analogy for the reasons you state.

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My argument with you is that you appear to allow for some legitimacy around the bastardization of "woke" by the right

To deem this a matter of legitimacy is a problem because it becomes irrelevant. When many millions of people come to understand the word in a new and ahistorical way, that is what it means to them.

I mean, look at what you're saying. White people took a phrase that was invented by Black people, misconstrued it, lied about it, and twisted it to mean something entirely other than what it was intended to mean. You're saying oh well, that's the way of things - that's what it means to them now. What about the twisting, the lying, the intentional obfuscation?

You say legitimacy is irrelevant in the case of the use of "woke" , because whatever they've bastardized it to mean, well that's what it means to them now. Maybe I should have picked a better word than legitimacy to convey the worth of something that belonged to us, but was stolen.

The disrespect. The disenfranchisement.

Most people recognize the difference between rhetoric and spending millions to find a viable case —which we could have done against all former presidents if the other party had wanted to.