At the Munich Security Conference, where leaders from more than 70 countries gather annually in Germany to discuss international security policy, Vice President Kamala Harris today responded to Trump’s recent attacks on America’s global leadership with a full-throated defense of global engagement.
People around the world have reason to wonder if the United States is committed to global leadership, she acknowledged. Americans, she said, must also ask themselves “[w]hether it is in America’s interest to continue to engage with the world or to turn inward. Whether it is in our interest to defend longstanding rules and norms that have provided for unprecedented peace and prosperity or to allow them to be trampled. Whether it is in America’s interest to fight for democracy or to accept the rise of dictators. And whether it is in America’s interest to continue to work in lockstep with our allies and partners or go it alone.”
Harris spoke at least in part to people at home, saying that upholding international rules and democratic values “makes America strong, and it keeps Americans safe.” Isolating ourselves and embracing dictators while we “abandon commitments to our allies in favor of unilateral action” is “dangerous, destabilizing, and indeed short-sighted,” she said. “That view would weaken America and would undermine global stability and undermine global prosperity.”
The Biden administration’s approach to global engagement is not “based on the virtues of charity,” Harris said, but rather is based on the nation’s strategic interest. “Our leadership keeps our homeland safe, supports American jobs, secures supply chains, and opens new markets for American goods. And I firmly believe,” she added, “our commitment to build and sustain alliances has helped America become the most powerful and prosperous country in the world—alliances that have prevented wars, defended freedom, and maintained stability from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. To put all of that at risk would be foolish.”
Turning to the defense of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion, she said: “we have joined forces with our friends and allies to stand up for freedom and democracy…. The world has come together, with leadership from the United States, to defend the basic principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity and to stop an imperialist authoritarian from subjugating a free and democratic people.”
The European Union has recently committed $54 billion to support Ukraine in addition to “the more than $100 billion our European allies and partners have already dedicated,” she said, noting that that support makes it clear that Europe will stand with Ukraine.
“I will make clear President Joe Biden and I stand with Ukraine,” Harris said. “In partnership with supportive, bipartisan majorities in both houses of the United States Congress, we will work to secure critical weapons and resources that Ukraine so badly needs. And let me be clear: The failure to do so would be a gift to Vladimir Putin.”
“If we fail to impose severe consequences on Russia” for its invasion of Ukraine, she warned, “other authoritarians across the globe would be emboldened, because you see, they will be watching…and drawing lessons. “In these unsettled times, it is clear,” she said. “America cannot retreat. America must stand strong for democracy. We must stand in defense of international rules and norms, and we must stand with our allies.”
“[T]he American people will meet this moment,” Vice President Harris said, “and America will continue to lead.”
News that arrived just before Harris began to speak underscored her argument: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in a Russian prison a day after being recorded on video in court, seemingly healthy. Navalny’s crusade against Putin’s corruption had led Putin to try repeatedly to murder him, then finally in 2021 to imprison him on trumped-up charges. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, took the stage after Harris and vowed that Vladimir Putin and his allies “will be brought to justice, and this day will come soon.”
Russian elections will be held next month, and while Putin is assumed to be the certain victor, his recent disqualification of Boris Nadezhdin, who was running on a platform that opposed the Ukraine war, suggests he is concerned about opposition. Eliminating Navalny at this moment sends a warning to other Russians that, as Anne Applebaum noted in a piece today in The Atlantic, courage in opposing Putin is pointless.
In the U.S., Navalny’s apparent murder creates a political problem for Republicans. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) yesterday recessed the House for two weeks without taking up the national security supplemental bill that would support Ukraine in its fight against Russia, just as its supplies are running out.
On Saturday, former president Trump told an audience he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that are not devoting 2% of their gross domestic product to building up their militaries. Meanwhile, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson has been in Moscow, interviewing Putin and favorably comparing Russia to the United States.
On Monday, in Dubai, Egyptian journalist Emad El Din Adeeb asked Carlson why, when interviewing Putin, he “did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about restrictions on opposition in the coming elections.” Carlson replied by equating Russia and the U.S., saying: “Every leader kills people…. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people.”
The death of Navalny at just this moment appears to tie the Republicans to Putin’s murderous regime, and party leaders scrambled today to distance themselves from Putin. House speaker Mike Johnson, who has resisted passing aid to Ukraine and insisted the House would not be “rushed” into passing such a measure, released a statement saying that “as international leaders are meeting in Munich, we must be clear that Putin will be met with united opposition…. [T]he United States, and our partners, must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states.”
Republicans trying to carve out distance between themselves and Trump’s MAGA Republicans used the occasion to call out MAGAs, saying, as former vice president Mike Pence did, “There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin.” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who has pushed hard for Ukraine aid, wrote: “Putin is a murderous, paranoid dictator. History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”
Navalny attacked the Putin regime by calling attention to its extraordinary corruption, and somewhat fittingly, the corruption of former president Donald Trump, who won the White House with Putin’s help, was also on the docket today.
In Manhattan, in the case concerning Trump and the Trump Organization’s manipulation of financial statements in order to get better loan terms and to pay fewer taxes, Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and the Trump Organization to disgorge about $355 million in ill-gotten gains as well as more than $98 million in interest on that money from the time Trump obtained it through fraud. The total came to just under $454 million. Engoron also barred Trump from running a business or applying for a loan in New York for three years. The judge ordered Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric to pay more than $4 million each and barred them from serving as officers or directors of any New York corporation or legal entity for two years.
“[D]efendants submitted blatantly false financial data to…accountants,” Engoron wrote, “resulting in fraudulent financial statements. When confronted at trial with the statements, defendants’ fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality, and defendants failed to accept responsibility….” Engoron detailed the reluctance of the Trumps, including Ivanka, to tell the truth on the witness stand, and concluded: “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”
New York attorney general Letitia James, who brought the lawsuit, commented: “Donald Trump is finally facing accountability for his lying, cheating, and staggering fraud. Because no matter how big, rich, or powerful you think you are, no one is above the law.”
In his 2022 documentary about Alexei Navalny, director Daniel Roher asked Navalny what message he would leave for the Russian people if he were killed. “Listen,” Navalny answered. “I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are.”
Trump Allies Plan New Sweeping Abortion Restrictions
His supporters are seeking to attack abortion rights and abortion access from a variety of angles should he regain the White House, including using a long-dormant law from 1873.
Allies of former President Donald J. Trump and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country.
Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.
“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan F. Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”
Mr. Mitchell, who represented Mr. Trump in arguments before the Supreme Court over whether the former president could appear on the ballot in Colorado, indicated that anti-abortion strategists had purposefully been quiet about their more advanced plans, given the political liability the issue has become for Republicans.
“I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”
The New York Times reported on Friday that Mr. Trump had told advisers and allies that he liked the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban but that he wanted to wait until the Republican primary contest was over to publicly discuss his views.
It’s unclear whether Mr. Trump will pursue turning that idea into a more concrete proposal. He has not publicly embraced a national ban, which would be unlikely to win sufficient support in Congress. Such legislation would also affect only a small fraction of abortions, given that nearly 94 percent happen in the first trimester, before 13 weeks of pregnancy, and would present obstacles for women who experience severe complications later in pregnancy.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the Dobbs decision in 2022, many leading anti-abortion groups have pushed Mr. Trump to endorse a national abortion ban at 15 weeks of pregnancy, which they are casting as a politically moderate position. Some anti-abortion activists, who have been among Mr. Trump’s strongest supporters, privately say that although they would support a federal abortion ban, they see little chance that such legislation would become law in the next few years. They are examining other options.
In policy documents, private conversations and interviews, the plans described by former Trump administration officials, allies and supporters propose circumventing Congress and leveraging the regulatory powers of federal institutions, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Justice and the National Institutes of Health.
The effect would be to create a second Trump administration that would attack abortion rights and abortion access from a variety of angles and could be stopped only by courts that the first Trump administration had already stacked with conservative judges.
“He had the most pro-life administration in history and adopted the most pro-life policies of any administration in history,” said Roger Severino, a leader of anti-abortion efforts in Health and Human Services during the Trump administration. “That track record is the best evidence, I think, you could have of what a second term might look like if Trump wins.”
Policies under consideration include banning the use of fetal stem cells in medical research for diseases like cancer, rescinding approval of abortion pills at the F.D.A. and stopping hundreds of millions in federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Such an action against Planned Parenthood would cripple the nation’s largest provider of women’s health care, which is already struggling to provide abortions in the post-Roe era.
The organizations and advocates crafting these proposals are not simply outside groups expressing wish lists of what they hope Mr. Trump would do in a second administration. They are people who have spent much of their professional careers fighting abortion rights, including some who were in powerful positions during Mr. Trump’s administration.
In his first term, Mr. Trump largely outsourced abortion policy to socially conservative lawyers and aides. Since he left office, some of those people have remained in Mr. Trump’s orbit, defending him in court, suggesting policy plans well beyond issues like abortion and attending events at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.
Frank Pavone, an anti-abortion activist whom Pope Francis removed from the priesthood for “blasphemous communication,” said he had discussed abortion policy at several poolside receptions at Mar-a-Lago.
“When I’m there at Mar-a-Lago,” he said, “I get strong affirmation from everyone I meet there for my work.”
Mr. Trump has not publicly addressed the extensive list of possible anti-abortion executive actions or the enforcement of the Comstock Act. Yet, Mr. Trump’s official blessing may not matter if his former aides and their networks are returned to key positions in the federal bureaucracy.
“The question will then become what can be done unilaterally at the executive branch level, and the answer is quite a bit,” Mr. Mitchell said. “But to the extent to which that’s done will depend on whether the president wants to take the political heat and whether the attorney general or the secretary of Health and Human Services are on board.”
Abortion opponents are enmeshed throughout the ecosystem of organizations that are suggesting policies for the next conservative administration. Russell T. Vought, a former senior Trump administration official who ran the Office of Management and Budget, is celebrated by the anti-abortion movement for successfully blocking funds for Planned Parenthood during the Trump administration. He now runs a think tank with close ties to the former president that has backed arguments in a Supreme Court case attempting to undo the 2000 approval of mifepristone, a widely used abortion medication.
Some activists and former aides have tried to downplay their plans. Speaking at a church in Gallup, N.M., last spring, anti-abortion activists rallied the crowd to support a local ordinance that would require compliance with the Comstock Act but referred to the law solely by its statute number, 18 U.S.C. 1461 and 1462.
In a plan released by a coalition that has been drawing up America First-style policy plans, nicknamed Project 2025, the Comstock Act is also referred to only by the statute number.
“Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, there is now no federal prohibition on the enforcement of this statute,” the plan states. “The Department of Justice in the next conservative Administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills.”
The plan also cites the statute number in a footnote justifying its recommendation that the F.D.A. stop “promoting or approving mail-order abortions in violation of longstanding federal laws that prohibit the mailing and interstate carriage of abortion drugs.”
Students for Life, an anti-abortion group, is not actively pushing Mr. Trump for a gestational ban, at any number of weeks. The group is instead focused on executive actions and changing policies though federal agencies, which they view as both more effective and more politically achievable. “This is probably the first election where D.O.J., H.H.S., F.D.A. are big-ticket items,” said Kristi Hamrick, a strategist for the group.
When a donor in Ohio recently expressed concern that Mr. Trump personally did not care about ending abortion, Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life, offered reassurance. “We haven’t come across a campaign staffer yet who doesn’t share our values,” she said of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Some allies think a second Trump administration could move even faster than before to advance anti-abortion measures because Roe is no longer a roadblock.
As president, Mr. Trump in 2019 announced a 440-page rule that strengthened “conscience protections” for health care workers who opposed abortion on religious grounds. The measure allowed medical providers to refuse care if it conflicted with their personal beliefs, and it took over a year to put in place. But at the time, Mr. Severino said, H.H.S. had to consider comments against the rule noting that abortion was a constitutional right under Roe.
“Those arguments are now gone,” Mr. Severino said. “You cannot say that it is a federal constitutional right to abortion, so that would simplify the rule-making process significantly.”
Similarly, limits to fetal tissue research could also come much more quickly. “It took longer than necessary to get a resolution on that,” he said. “The vetting and the testing and the argumentation has been done already once before.”
Polling indicates that plans banning or severely restricting abortion would most likely be deeply unpopular. Since Roe fell, support for legalized abortion has gained support. Only about 8 percent of American adults oppose abortion with no exceptions.
Biden administration officials say they have reached the limits of their powers to restore federal abortion rights. They have pushed Congress to pass legislation that would restore federal abortion rights, but the legislation has repeatedly failed to garner enough support in the Senate.
For more than a decade, Republicans have been trying to enact a federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks. That legislation, too, has failed to gain enough traction to pass.
“Congress isn’t going to pass a ban, but the Comstock Act is already on the books,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor and a historian of abortion at the University of California, Davis. “As interpreted in this way, it doesn’t have any exceptions — it applies at conception. It’s any abortion, full stop.”
Ms. Ziegler said such an action would certainly face litigation from liberal groups and abortion providers that could end up before the country’s highest court.
Even the advocates are uncertain how far the courts and the public will allow them to go. Some groups have argued for immediate enforcement of Comstock. Others are more cautious about how to enforce it in a politically palatable way. Mr. Mitchell said he believed the enforcement of Comstock would have to ensure provisions to protect the life of a pregnant woman and to address how to care for miscarriages.
The Comstock Act made it a federal crime to send or deliver “obscene, lewd or lascivious” material through the mail or by other carriers, specifically including items used for abortion or birth control. The 1973 ruling in Roe, which recognized a federal right to an abortion, largely relegated the law to constitutional history.
Beyond reactivating the Comstock Act, conservatives believe they can roll back much of what the Biden administration has done to try to protect abortion rights. One example is a plan to eliminate guidance from the Biden administration requiring federally funded hospitals to perform lifesaving abortions, even in the 16 states with near-total bans. They also float ideas about how the Justice Department could direct U.S. attorneys not to prosecute people who violate laws prohibiting the obstruction of clinic entrances.
Republican gains in the courts could help lock in their goals. Many executive actions are undone or redone when a new administration takes power. But former officials, including Mr. Severino, are hopeful that the Supreme Court will rule soon to eliminate the Chevron deference, which he said could allow regulations they enact to remain in place even if a Democratic president were elected in the future.
Abortion rights leaders have little doubt that a second Trump administration would go as far as possible to limit abortion rights and access. While their organizations are publicly hammering Republicans for embracing national bans, they quietly worry more about the damage Mr. Trump could materially do to their cause through executive actions.
“He’s trying to masquerade in public as a moderate,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America. “It’s mind-blowing that anyone would imagine he wouldn’t do worse in a second term.”
She added, “He’s going to do whatever Jonathan Mitchell wants.”
Although few Americans paid much attention at the time, the events of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine would turn out to be a linchpin in how the United States ended up where it is a decade later.
On that day ten years ago, after months of what started as peaceful protests, Ukrainians occupied government buildings and marched on parliament to remove Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych from office. After the escalating violence resulted in many civilian casualties, Yanukovych fled to Russia, and the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, returned power to Ukraine’s constitution.
The ouster of Yanukovych meant that American political consultant Paul Manafort was out of a job.
Manafort had worked with Yanukovych since 2004. In that year, the Russian-backed politician appeared to have won the presidency of Ukraine. But Yanukovych was rumored to have ties to organized crime, and the election was full of fraud, including the poisoning of a key rival who wanted to break ties with Russia and align Ukraine with Europe. The U.S. government and other international observers did not recognize the election results, while Russia’s president Vladimir Putin congratulated Yanukovych even before the results were officially announced.
The government voided the election and called for a do-over.
To rehabilitate his reputation, Yanukovych turned to Manafort, who was already working for a young Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska worried that Ukraine would break free of Russian influence and was eager to prove useful to Vladimir Putin. At the time, Putin was trying to consolidate power in Russia, where oligarchs were monopolizing formerly publicly held industries and replacing the region’s communist leaders. In 2004, American journalist Paul Klebnikov, the chief editor of Forbes in Russia, was murdered as he tried to call attention to what the oligarchs were doing.
With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych finally won the presidency in 2010 and began to turn Ukraine toward Russia. In November 2013, Yanukovych suddenly reversed Ukraine’s course toward cooperation with the European Union, refusing to sign a trade agreement and instead taking a $3 billion loan from Russia. Ukrainian students protested the decision, and the anger spread quickly. In 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power and he fled to Russia.
Manafort, who had borrowed money from Deripaska and still owed him about $17 million, had lost his main source of income.
Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed it, prompting the United States and the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia itself and also on specific Russian businesses and oligarchs, prohibiting them from doing business in U.S. territories. These sanctions were intended to weaken Russia and froze the assets of key Russian oligarchs.
By 2016, Manafort’s longtime friend and business partner Roger Stone—they had both worked on Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign—was advising Trump’s floundering presidential campaign, and Manafort was happy to step in to help remake it. He did not take a salary but reached out to Deripaska through one of his Ukrainian business partners, Konstantin Kilimnik, immediately after landing the job, asking him, “How do we use to get whole? Has OVD [Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska] operation seen?”
Manafort began as an advisor to the Trump campaign in March 2016 and became the chairman in late June.
Thanks to journalist Jim Rutenberg, who pulled together testimony given both to the Mueller investigation and the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, transcripts from the impeachment hearings, and recent memoirs, we now know that in 2016, Russian operatives presented Manafort a plan “for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded, and -directed ‘separatists’ were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead.”
In exchange for weakening NATO, undermining the U.S. stance in favor of Ukraine in its attempt to throw off the Russians who had invaded in 2014, and removing U.S. sanctions from Russian entities, Russian operatives were willing to help Trump win the White House. The Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 established that Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Kilimnik, whom it described as a “Russian intelligence officer,” acted as a liaison between Manafort and Deripaska while Manafort ran Trump’s campaign.
Now, ten years later, Putin has invaded Ukraine in an effort that when it began looked much like the one his operatives suggested to Manafort in 2016, Trump has said he would “encourage Russia to do whatever they hell they want” to NATO allies that don’t commit 2% of their gross domestic product to their militaries, and Trump MAGA Republicans are refusing to pass a measure to support Ukraine in its effort to throw off Russia’s invasion.
The day after the violence of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine, then–vice president Joe Biden called Yanukovych to “express grave concern regarding the crisis on the streets” and to urge him “to pull back government forces and to exercise maximum restraint.”
Ten years later, Russia has been at war with Ukraine for nearly two years and has just regained control of the key town of Avdiivka because Ukrainian troops lack ammunition. President Joe Biden is warning MAGA Republicans that “[t]he failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”
“History is watching,” he said.
Muslim ‘cockroaches’
In a 2007 pro-gun rights video, Navalny presents himself as a “certified nationalist” who wants to exterminate “flies and cockroaches” – while bearded Muslim men appear in cutaways.
Why does the US get into business with so many Nazis?
Why does the US get into business with so many Nazis?
I presented this information because Navalny isn’t a saint...
...nor is Putin a gremlin.
