-Kyrsten Sinema, of all people, whining about the Senate's voting process

The Biden administration has deployed additional troops to Eastern Europe amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, rudely ignoring GOP suggestions to simply give Vladimir Putin whatever his rotten little heart desires. 
 

• President Biden will send 2,000 U.S.-based troops to Poland and Germany, and move another 1,000 troops that are already in Europe to Romania, the Pentagon said Wednesday. No U.S. troops will be sent to fight in Ukraine; the military reinforcements in neighboring countries are meant to reassure NATO allies (which do not include Ukraine) that the U.S. would defend them, and deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from launching a broader attack. The Senate is also working to finalize new sanctions as an invasion deterrent.
   
• The White House said Wednesday that it has stopped using the word “imminent” to describe a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, explaining that it mistakenly gave the impression that U.S. officials were certain that Putin had made up his mind. It also thoroughly ticked off Ukrainian leaders, who have been trying to set more of a “nothing to see here” mood. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that Russia could still invade “at any time.”
   
• Putin promisingly signaled in a Tuesday press conference that he’s open to more diplomatic talks—while falsely blaming the U.S. for escalating the crisis in the first place, natch—but there’s still a huge distance between Putin’s demands and what the U.S. and NATO are willing to consider. Russia primarily wants guarantees that Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO, and for NATO to immediately pull back all troops from eastern member countries, two big fat nonstarters.

What the authoritarian wing of the Republican Party wants to know is, what if Biden just…agreed to them anyway? :)
 

• While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Biden’s decision to deploy additional troops (and criticized him for not doing it earlier, haha), Republicans weren’t united on the matter. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken arguing that the U.S. should drop its longstanding support for Ukraine’s prospective membership in NATO, and focus on countering China.“Well, if you are just digesting Russian misinformation and parroting Russian talking points, you are not aligned with long-standing, bipartisan American values,” Psaki said in response to the letter.
   
• Hawley may be an outlier among Senate Republicans, but he speaks for a large portion of the GOP base that’s inhaled a steady diet of Tucker Carlson’s pro-Putin content. In a shocking coincidence, authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister (and Carlson’s personal hero) Viktor Orbán took the same position on Tuesday, despite being the leader of a NATO member country. “The president was very calm and said that Russia’s demands for security guarantees are normal and should be the basis for negotiations,” Orban said after meeting privately with Putin. “And I agree with that.”

Absolutely no one is psyched about the prospect of a military confrontation with Russia, or harsh economic sanctions that could have ripple effects for Europe and the U.S. But Biden’s broad options are to stand with America’s NATO allies or abandon them to appease a repressive autocrat; it doesn’t bode well that Republicans are increasingly inclined towards the latter.

Check out the latest episode of Keep It! This week, Ira, Louis, and Aida discuss Lifetime’s less than revealing Janet Jackson doc, Rihanna’s baby reveal, Selling Tampa, Euphoria, and more. Plus, Moses Sumney joins to discuss his new art exhibition at Nicola Vassell Gallery, his love of photography, and the Netflix series Ozark. New episodes of Keep It! drop every Wednesday. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The January 6 committee is reportedly investigating Donald Trump’s involvement in proposals to seize voting machines by mobilizing national-security agencies, which seems like a good call! Meanwhile, committee member Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) said on Wednesday that Trump was “absolutely” tampering with witnesses by promising pardons to January 6 defendants if he returns to the White House—a promise that Trump reiterated on Tuesday, while lashing out at Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for politely calling it “inappropriate.” It wasn’t a new idea: Trump reportedly considered blanket pardons for insurrectionists before he left office in 2021. In other perfectly ethical tactics to stop people from testifying, Trump’s PAC gave $1 million to a nonprofit where former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is a senior partner just a few weeks after the House voted to establish the January 6 committee. And on the retaliation front, the RNC will debate this week whether to endorse a (symbolic) resolution to oust Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) from the House GOP conference.

• CNN President Jeff Zucker announced his resignation on Wednesday after his undisclosed, consensual relationship with a colleague came to light during the company’s investigation into former anchor Chris Cuomo. 
   
• Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump, Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and former Trump White House staffers, alleging they conspired to intimidate and retaliate against him for testifying during the first Trump impeachment inquiry. 
   
• Senate Republicans are all in a knot about how nasty to be during the confirmation of President Biden’s eventual Supreme Court nominee. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), head of the As Nasty As Possible Contingent, told reporters, “No. 1, I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog. No. 2, I want a nominee who’s not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a ‘woke agenda.’”
   
• Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL), who’s under investigation for bribing a political rival not to run against her with the promise of a job, did in fact hire him as a highly-paid foreign policy adviser.
   
• ABC suspended Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks after she apologized for saying the Holocaust was “not about race.”
   
• A Democratic-controlled Virginia state Senate committee rejected Trump EPA chief Andrew Wheeler as the state’s next secretary of natural and historic resources, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) is expected to pursue workarounds. 
   
• The FBI secretly bought and tested Israeli Pegasus spyware with plans to use it for domestic surveillance, before deciding last year not to use the cyberweapon.
   
• The Taliban has reopened universities for women in six of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, as it presses for international recognition for its government.
   
• Washington’s NFL team has unveiled “Commanders” as its inoffensive new name, in a strange but beautiful tribute to the Bidens' new puppy. 
   
• New impossibly-light-material-that's-twice-as-strong-as-steel just dropped. (Without breaking.)

State-funded “crisis pregnancy centers” have proliferated in Texas, and are now well-positioned to manipulate vulnerable people into missing the six-week deadline to get an abortion. There are now nearly 200 crisis pregnancy centers in the state, compared to the 20 or so abortion clinics that remain. That’s the most CPCs in any state, and they include about 60 that receive taxpayer funds and aren’t regulated by the Texas health commission. Between 2006 and 2021, GOP lawmakers have steadily increased state funding for CPCs from $5 million to $100 million per biennium. To add an extra layer of cruelty, some of the funds subsidizing CPCS were siphoned from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. CPCs have always used false advertising, medical disinformation, religious proselytizing, and intentional delays to shame and trick people out of getting abortions, and under the extreme restrictions of S.B. 8, they’ve become even more dangerous. If you’re able, here’s where you can help Texans access abortion care.

Have you ever really thought about where toilet paper comes from? 

For the most part, it’s coming from North American old-growth forests and every day we’re cutting down thousands of trees to make something that we use one time then throw or flush away. 

Reel Paper uses fast-growing bamboo in their paper products instead of virgin tree fibers from our forests. Just like the grass on your lawn, bamboo regrows onto itself. So they’re able to harvest the same plant over and over, instead of cutting down trees. 

Reel paper is available in easy, hassle-free subscriptions or for one-time purchases on their website. All orders are conveniently delivered to your door in 100% recyclable, plastic-free packaging.  Even the tape on the box!
 

President Biden has relaunched the White House’s “Cancer Moonshot” initiative, with a goal of cutting the cancer death rate by 50 percent over the next 25 years. 

On that note, two leukemia patients who received a promising immunotherapy treatment in 2010 went into remission that year and still show no signs of the disease.

The majority-Democratic Pennsylvania Supreme Court has wrested control of the state’s congressional redistricting from a Trumpy lower-court judge. 

Stacey Abrams has raised more than $9.25 million from more than 100,000 separate donors since she announced her candidacy for Georgia governor.