“Up until (Senator Chuck) Schumer’s Thursday night floor speech, it was a pretty fluid situation, with the vote scheduled for Friday afternoon. But this is what is likely to happen now that Schumer has come out in support of the six-month funding bill: Ascendant Republicans, who control the Senate and House, made clear that they intend to push through this CR—they call it a clean CR, but let’s brand it the dirty CR, since it has awful provisions, including a snuck-in cruelty that would cut $1 billion from the budget of Washington DC, increase military spending, and cut nonmilitary programs to keep the government open until next September. Neither the House nor Senate have negotiated with any Democrats on any of the provisions of this resolution. Still, the Democrats could have leveraged their position: As it stands, Senate majority leader John Thune needs 60 votes, which means winning over at least eight Democrats, since Kentucky’s Rand Paul has said he’s a no. The Brooklyn Democrat’s choice would have seemed a no-brainer. Oligarch Elon Musk and his acolyte Donald Trump are already shutting down the government, illegally, unconstitutionally, in pieces. This bears repeating because any attempt to paint the Democrats as the ones responsible for the government shutting down overlooks the first two months of Trump’s return to the White House. Clearly, the Senate minority leader should have told the American people exactly that: Republicans hold all the power, and they are bringing on a government shutdown all on their own.” (Joan Walsh/The Nation)
“The irony is that (Senator Chuck) Schumer had spent much of the past five years patching up his relationship with the Democratic Party’s left flank. Once known as a friend of Wall Street interests and an ally of moderates, he faced similar criticism as minority leader during the first Trump term, then retooled his reputation after becoming Senate majority leader in 2021 — embracing the expansive pandemic-era spending plans of President Joe Biden and winning converts among liberals. Now Schumer is facing sharp backlash from some of Biden’s top advisers. His former top domestic policy adviser, Susan Rice, told Schumer to ‘please grow a spine. And quickly’ … A leader of the Democratic left in the House was not as oblique. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — often mentioned as a potential primary rival for Schumer — said on CNN Thursday that Schumer had made a ‘tremendous mistake.’ ‘To me, it is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to hand [one of] the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free,’ she said.” (Brakkton Booker, Lisa Kashinsky and Jordain Carney/Politico)
“We are ushered into a room located in the Kyiv area. There is a long table that dominates the room. On one side of the table is a single nameplate with my name on it. On the other side, the entire length of the table has an extended line of nameplates. In the very centre is the name of the man I have come to see. Budanov. Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov is the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. He has been in this position for almost five years, and has a reputation for creative, outside the box thinking and daring strike operations occupied territories and deep inside Russia. He is also well known for his personal courage and has been wounded several times on operations … I have come here as part of my ongoing research into the changing character of modern war, and to learn how Ukraine has sustained and adapted its war effort over time. Battlefield operations are impossible without strategic endeavours such as logistics, procurement, research and development, and crucially, intelligence and long range strike … Budanov confirms that Russia has learned to learn much more quickly than it was able to at the beginning of the war. In the past three years Russia’s intelligence apparatus has improved and has evolved its planning and conduct of long range strike to adopt similar methods to NATO. The Russians have also improved their ability learn from Ukrainian strike operations inside Russia. They have a sophisticated approach that constantly changes the disposition of their air defence network to confuse Budanov’s planners. The Russians have also become adept at using decoys, smoke and fogging machines to confuse those interpreting satellite imagery in the lead up to, and after, Ukrainian strikes … According to Budanov’s deputy, Major General Skibitskyi, the North Koreans are also learning. Indeed, the Ukrainians have seen a fast-learning curve from the North Koreans over the past several months. Their tactics have evolved and they have learned to employ drones and to counter them better. At the same time, North Korean weapons such as the KN23 ballistic missiles have had their accuracy improved by Russian engineers.” (Mick Ryan/Futura Doctrina)
Total lunar eclipse March 2025 above Appin, Scotland. (Image credit: Josh Dury)
“A lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, Earth, and moon align in such a way that Earth casts its shadow on the moon. During totality, the moon moves through Earth’s umbra, the darkest part of its shadow, creating the deep red hue of a ‘Blood Moon.’ The March full moon is traditionally known as the ‘Worm Moon’ because this is the time of year when the ground softens and earthworm casts reappear. For these reasons, this total lunar eclipse in March is sometimes referred to as the ‘Blood Worm Moon’ … Landscape astrophotographer Josh Dury has sent us some breathtaking photos of the total lunar eclipse from his vantage point at Castle Stalker, Appin, Scotland.” (Space)
“The phrase ‘money is the mother’s milk of politics,’ coined in the 1960s by legendary California politician Jesse Unruh, referred, at that more innocent time, to wealthy people funding campaigns. Nowadays it comes with an additional meaning, as some of our leaders deploy their political power to enrich themselves and their families. The Trumps are especially adept at this. And if you want to see how this works, you should be reading Zach Everson, a Forbes staff writer who has been deftly covering the Trumps’ Venn diagram overlap of political and financial power for years. Not only is he authoritative, he’s prolific. In just the past few weeks, Everson has written about how Don Jr. was paid $813,000 as a Trump Media and Technology Group director despite attending only two meetings; how insiders at a firm called Dominari Holdings loaded up on company shares just as Don Jr. and Eric Trump were announced as advisory-board members, leading to a stock surge; how Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes earned $47 million last year, even as the company lost $401 million; and how the older Trump sons made a big bet on AI data centers a few weeks after their dad pushed for billions of dollars to be invested in the industry. This isn’t a new beat for Everson. You might remember him from his Substack, 1100 Pennsylvania, which meticulously chronicled the comings, goings, and $15 bowls of cereal at the hotel that Donald Trump used to own, just a few blocks from the White House. The hotel is now a Waldorf Astoria, but the Trumps are apparently looking to reclaim it, so maybe that old beat of Everson’s can come back to life.” (Bill Grueskin/CJR)
Veronique de Viguerie/Paris Match via Getty Images
“In April 2024, Rwandan-backed armed group M23 seized one of the world’s most productive coltan concessions, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, a UN report estimates that 120 tonnes of the precious mineral are mined every month and then exported to Rwanda. By taking control of Rubaya in North Kivu, the M23 now has its hands on one of the richest coltan deposits in the world, whose production is estimated to account for 15% of the world’s supply and half of Congolese exports. The ore – from which tantalum is made – is used to manufacture the capacitors used in most smartphones and computers. The armed group has thus taken over a site as strategic as it is profitable. Since it took over the mining town on 30 April, the M23 has controlled ‘the monthly trade and transport of 120 tonnes of coltan, earning at least $800,000 a month’ by imposing taxes on miners and traders, according to the latest report by the United Nations Group of Experts on the situation in eastern DRC, published 7 January. Supported by testimonies, satellite images and documents, the UN report shows how some of the precious metal extracted from the Rubaya mine is then exported to Rwanda, where it is mixed with national production. The experts believe that this setup constitutes ‘the greatest contamination ever recorded of mineral supply chains in the Great Lakes region’. The report also says that it can ‘attest to’ the involvement of the Rwandan authorities, both through military support for the M23 and through this smuggling, which it says is a de facto benefit for Rwanda’s economy.” (Marie Toulemonde/The Africa Report)
“Earlier this week, we learned that a senior State Department official called Secretary of State Marco Rubiostupid. The insult was delivered using peculiar phrasing — ‘low IQ’ — that’s actually quite telling about the nature and ideas of the American right today. The official in question, Darren Beattie, is the acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy — a fairly important job. He is also a creature of the internet fever swamps with a history of offensive behavior: He was fired from his speechwriting job in the first Trump administration for giving a talk at a white nationalist conference. On Monday, CNN’s KFile went through some deleted tweets from Beattie’s X account. Among many inflammatory statements the reporters uncovered, one stood out as especially embarrassing — a 2021 post where he insulted his now-boss in a number of vivid and explicit ways. On the list: a claim that the current secretary of state was ‘low IQ.’ For a normal person whose brain has not been poisoned by the internet, ‘low IQ’ just sounds like an overly complicated way of calling someone stupid. But for those of us familiar with the online world from which Beattie hails, it rang a very specific bell. In those spaces, there is an obsession with the concept of IQ — not just intelligence in general, but this particular means of measuring it. This preoccupation, is at its heart, about race: the idea that genetic racial inequalities in everything from income to incarceration are best explained by Black and Latino people having lower IQs than white and Asian people. This racism, recently repackaged as ‘race realism’ or ‘human biodiversity,’ was once mostly a province of the fringe right — so controversial that Jason Richwine, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation, was forced to resign in 2013 after his history of race-IQ theorizing came to light. But in the Trump era, this kind of thinking has become more mainstream — so commonly accepted, in fact, that insults like ‘low IQ’ are part of the lingua franca of the online right. This is why Trump appointed Richwine to a government post in 2020, and why race-IQ theorists believe they’re winning the war of ideas in Trump’s second term.” (Zack Beauchamp/Vox)
“There is more confusion over United States President Donald Trump’s vision for the future of the Gaza Strip and its people. US and Israeli officials says they have reached out to three East African countries to discuss using their territories as destinations for Palestinians uprooted from the enclave. The news appears to signal that Trump intends pressing ahead with his widely condemned plan to move Gaza’s two million people elsewhere. It comes hours after he told reporters at the White House that ‘nobody is expelling any Palestinians from Gaza’. Palestinian militant group, Hamas, and neighbour Egypt, both welcomed his apparent retreat yesterday on his proposed permanent displacement of Gazans. But US officials are now saying Washington and Tel Aviv have contacted the governments of Sudan, Somali, and the breakaway region of Somaliland to receive them. All three are facing crises of their own, including a civil war, drought, and famine. Israel and the US have a variety of incentives — financial, diplomatic and security — to offer these potential partners.” (AfricaNews)
“Three days after Hitler seized power, Mr. S., about sixty years old, the owner of a midsize factory, had a dream in which no one touched him physically and yet he was broken. This short dream depicted the nature and effects of totalitarian domination as numerous studies by political scientists, sociologists, and doctors would later define them, and did so more subtly and precisely than Mr. S. would ever have been able to do while awake. This was his dream:
Goebbels came to my factory. He had all the employees line up in two rows, left and right, and I had to stand between the rows and give a Nazi salute. It took me half an hour to get my arm raised, millimeter by millimeter. Goebbels watched my efforts like a play, without any sign of appreciation or displeasure, but when I finally had my arm up, he spoke five words: “I don’t want your salute.” Then he turned around and walked to the door. So there I was in my own factory, among my own people, pilloried with my arm raised. The only way I was physically able to keep standing there was by fixing my eyes on his clubfoot as he limped out. I stood like that until I woke up.” (Charlotte Beradt/The Paris Review)
“Many Americans have tried to forget the pandemic – the deaths, the disruptions, the disturbances to every aspect of life. But many others believe it's important to remember, and major news outlets have published a raft of excellent five-year anniversary stories (and charts and photoslideshows) to help. This column by Washington Post contributor Kate Cohen is a great place to start. Here is a gift link. Cohen says ‘study after study after study has confirmed what everyone I know has expressed: that the pandemic altered our sense of time, which has in turn warped our memory.’ She theorizes that the pandemic was ‘almost perfectly designed to be forgotten’ because ‘it had two modes,’ one horrific and the other mundane, ‘both of which resist memory.’” (Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources)
“Rostislav Panev, a 51-year-old dual Russian-Israeli national, who is accused of being a key developer for the notorious LockBit ransomware gang, has been extradited from Israel to the United States, the Department of Justice announced on Thursday. Panev was arrested in Israel in December, becoming the thirdperson arrested for their role in LockBit. Since then, he had been awaiting extradition in Israel. Prosecutors allege Panev was a developer working for the LockBit ransomware group from its beginnings in 2019 and until at least February 2024. Panev and other LockBit developers designed the gang’s malware and maintained its infrastructure, and split the criminal proceeds with the gang’s affiliates, who were the ones carrying out cyberattacks and extorting victims, according to the DOJ.” (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)
