This is one of those posts where I am not reporting news but rather walking you through my own efforts — thus far incomplete — to do so. You’ve likely heard that Ukraine attacked and sank the Russian missile cruiser Moskva off Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. In the modern Russian Navy the Moskva was essentially a capital ship though I don’t know if it was technically considered one. So this was a big big deal. How was Ukraine able to pull it off? What now seems largely undisputed is that Ukraine fired two Neptune anti-ship missiles (produced by Ukraine itself) which struck the Moskva and (possibly along with detonation of the ship’s own armaments and ammunition) sank the ship.

TPM Reader RS pointed something out to me which I think may answer some of the questions I had about the sinking of the Moskva (see this post from yesterday). As I mentioned, I was trying to understand what specific insights Ukraine might have had about the Moskva’s technology or operational practice that may have helped with its successful missile strike against the ship. Here is maybe part of that answer.

A number of you have written in to say that comments are currently down along with some other small site glitches. We did a site/software upgrade over the weekend and as often happens there are some small breakages that came with that. Our team is working to get everything ironed out as soon as possible. To respond to some of your questions: no, there is no change in commenting policy or anything about commenting. This is simply a tech issue which we will have resolved shortly. We appreciate your patience.

According to Ukrainian defense officials, Russia has begun a major new offensive in the east of the country. So far these statements are from the head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council and also the General Staff.

There seems to be some definitional disagreement on this. The U.S. appears less clear that this is actually the beginning of the major offensive, as opposed to preliminaries to set the stage for it. Again, perhaps a definitional or semantic question.

If you’re a lifer, you probably know Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) origin story, at least as it relates to TPM.

A few days ago, investigative journalist Vicky Ward published an account which claimed to explain just why Jared Kushner was able secure that $2 billion investment from a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund for his freshly hatched investment fund, Affinity Partners. Her explanation also claims to explain why Kushner was successfully prevented from receiving a top level security clearance while he was in government.

At the moment some Prime AF and Inside members are getting ads on the site. This is a site glitch tied to the publishing software switchover over the weekend. In fact, I’m getting ads myself at the moment. Annoying! (Technically my account is an Inside account.) In any case, this is a technical glitch we are working to resolve absolutely as soon as possible. For the moment if you log out and log back in that will likely resolve it. But again, you shouldn’t have to do that and I assure you were are working to resolve this as our top priority.

Not to boast but on this day, April 19, 2022, I, Nicole Lafond, was awarded the ride-sharing apps’ most coveted distinction for a passenger: I am now a 5-star rider.

My robot cab app of choice, Lyft, sent me an email just this afternoon to inform me that a “badge” had been added to my profile. Apparently enough drivers have given me five-star ratings in a row that I now deserve this flashy honor:

Getting a lot of questions like this one from TPM Reader NL …

Help me out here. Why on earth are Democrats/Biden beating this drum? It seems like the right and politically convenient thing to do. We are in a fight to save our democracy and many others around the world. Why are people not calling this shit out and putting MBS and Jared in the spotlight?

As you can see here, pre-Jan 6th text from Oath Keepers paramilitaries show they were actually afraid a massive Antifa army of feral Portlanders descending on Washington, D.C. It’s a fascinating prism into the Trump/alt-right/fascist paramilitary world. But we should remember that this is par for the course with coups, fascist takeovers, genocidal violence. It’s how incitement works. You can seldom get large numbers of people to do really bad things without getting them to believe that those people are getting ready to do something similar to them.