Editors’ Blog

TPM Reader PT has some thoughts and questions on two versions of the Ukraine War he’s seeing from the Times on the one hand and various government analyses, outside expert analyses and comments from military analysts.

I’ve mainly been following the Russia-Ukraine war via various sources on Twitter, including the UK’s MOD and US DOD updates, plus some maps, knowledgeable sources, etc. From these I’ve learned that Russia has barely advanced at all in several days, that they appear to be unable to advance into the country because they’re limited by round-trip distance their supply trucks can cover on 1 tank of fuel, that their logistics and armor are getting picked off, that their Air Force has underperformed to a degree that nobody can really explain, that they’re losing an average of over 1000 soldiers per day (where losses include injuries and defections as well as deaths). CW in these sources is that Russia’s forces will probably lose all capacity for offensive action in the next couple of weeks unless something changes drastically in their favor. In other words, what Ukraine is doing in combat, and what the rest of the world is doing to assist them, is working.

Then I go to the NYTimes website. None of the above is reported.

Rep. Don Young (R) of Alaska has died at age 88.

We’re trying for a strong close to week one of our annual TPM membership drive. I’ve spoken to a number of you who had been planning on signing up or were on the fence and have now taken the plunge during this drive. I totally get this. I have places I want to subscribe to or sign up for and I’ve been meaning to do it for months and still somehow haven’t. So if this is you, please stop what you’re doing for just a minute, like right now. Actually take out your wallet and click this link and sign up. Like this moment. Three minutes later you’ll be back to whatever you were doing before. But please, if this is you, just do it this moment. You’ll feel good about it and, really, Prime and Prime AF, are pretty awesome.

One of the continuing ironies of the current political moment is the extent to which it is now the norm for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), despite her name, to break with her party on a number of issues, especially to critique Trumpian lines of thinking from the far-right faction.

Today she went after Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), criticizing the QAnon congresswoman for giving fresh air to the stale Kremlin talking points about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Catch up on the latest news on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court with my latest installment of Judicial Review.

We’re off to a solid start with our annual TPM membership drive. Thank you to everyone who has become a member so far. If you’re on the fence can you make today the day? Maybe you’ve been thinking you would but just take a moment literally right now, click this link, take our your wallet and the whole thing will just take a couple minutes. It means the world to us. And it really sustains this whole operation. Just take that minute right now. Thank you.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss President Zelensky’s address to Congress and a new push from state legislatures to police culture war issues outside of their jurisdictions.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

I’m scrambling between the Ukraine war, this absurd story of Matt Shea and the Ukrainian “orphans” in Poland and our membership drive (please become a member … it’s important!!!). But for a couple days I’ve been meaning to do a short post on the signs that COVID is coming back. Yep, I don’t mean to bum you out. But yeah. Not necessarily another wave. But a rise off the levels we’ve been relieved to have in recent weeks. One sign of this are increasing signals from wastewater analysis around country. They’ve started tipping higher in most of the country. (If you’re not familiar with this it’s what it sounds like: analysis of sewage for COVID levels. A bit icky, yes, but also a fascinating and incredibly important tool since it’s not dependent on testing levels or behavior or symptoms. It’s a critical early warning system.) Numbers have also been going up rapidly in Europe, which is often a precursor for rises in the United States.

I think we’ll have more on this today. But because I was hunting around on this last night I wanted to give you a quick update because it’s a pretty insane story, intersects with a story we’ve been following on and off for years and is directly tied to the war in Ukraine.

Back about four years ago a state legislator from Washington State got in trouble for writing a plan for the mass killing of liberals in order to usher in a theocracy in the United States. He got booted out of Washington electoral politics for being involved with “domestic terrorism.” So, kind of a problem. Here’s one of our many pieces on disgraced former Rep. Matt Shea from 2018. So this week he showed up in Poland with a few dozen alleged orphans from the besieged city of Mariupol in Ukraine which he planned to bring to America to give away for adoption to American families.

Critics agree — the American installment of Canada’s trucker “Freedom Convoy” protests have been, as is often the case on Netflix, a sad adaptation of the original foreign series.