-Lauren Boebert, absolutely nailing Joe Biden to the wall

The 14th day of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine brought a brutal attack on a hospital and more cause for concern at Chernobyl, as the Biden administration continued to rule out interventions that might bring the U.S. into a direct confrontation with Russia.
 

• Russian forced bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Russian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday, calling the strike an “atrocity.” At least 17 people were wounded, according to Ukrainian officials. Earlier on Wednesday, the World Health Organization said it had verified 18 attacks on health facilities in Ukraine. Russia announced new temporary ceasefires on Wednesday to provide evacuation corridors from several hard-hit cities, but it’s not clear that many civilians were able to safely leave.
   
• Ukraine also warned that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has been disconnected from the power grid by Russian forces. The outage could jeopardize the site’s systems for cooling nuclear material, and make it impossible to put out a future fire. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that it saw “no critical impact on safety” because the plant’s cooling pools had sufficient water, but also noted that it had lost communications with its sensors at the plant, meaning there would be no great way of detecting rising radiation levels. 
   
• White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki addressed Russian propaganda, which alleges “U.S. biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine,” a false claim that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) amplified on Wednesday. (Massie was one of three House Republicans who voted against a resolution supporting Ukraine last week.) Psaki warned that Russia may use those accusations as a pretext to deploy chemical weapons in Ukraine. 

While the Kremlin accuses the U.S. of waging “economic war” on Russia, President Biden remains intent on steering clear of the other kind.

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  The Pentagon has rejected Poland’s surprise offer to deliver its MiG-29 fighter planes to a U.S. air base for use in Ukraine as “untenable,” saying that it would raise “serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.” Vice President Kamala Harris embarked on a trip to Poland and Romania on Wednesday amid that awkward disagreement. Meanwhile, congressional leaders have reached a bipartisan deal to provide $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine as part of a $1.5 trillion government-funding plan. (Alas, that bill no longer includes Biden’s $15 billion COVID relief package.)
   
• The leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have both reportedly declined calls with Biden, as the White House tries to minimize the U.S. fallout of banning Russian oil by asking other questionable oil producers to boost their output. (One neat side-effect of shifting to renewable energy: Not having to do this!) The Saudis have indicated that they won’t help unless Biden backs them in the Yemen war and provides legal immunity for the journalist-murdering Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the U.S. The UAE said Wednesday that it would call on its fellow OPEC+ members to crank open the oil taps, but its allies may not be on board. 

The war in Ukraine is a non-stop horror show, ordinary people on multiple continents will suffer as a result of it, and direct NATO action to intervene could quickly make the situation unthinkably worse. If there’s one upside to a completely lose-lose clusterfuck, it’s that Putin ultimately loses, too.

Check out the latest episode of Keep It! This week Kristin Chenoweth joins to talk about her new picture book What Will I Do With My Love Today?, Nora Ephron’s iconic dinner parties, and more. Plus, Ira and Louis discuss The Batman, Madonna’s actress boot camp, Katy Perry’s Vegas residency, Beyoncé’s acting skills, and the latest drama with the Oscars. Listen to new episodes of Keep It! every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts.

A Missouri Republican thinks she’s figured out a way to restrict out-of-state abortions, just in time for the Supreme Court’s expected torching of Roe v. Wade. State Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman has introduced a provision that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident get an abortion in a different state, attaching it as an amendment to several abortion-related bills that have passed out of committee. The amendment would also make  it illegal to manufacture, transport, possess, or distribute abortion pills in Missouri. The proposal is flatly unconstitutional—states don’t get to regulate what their residents do in other states—but once enacted, it could still deter abortion providers in surrounding states who are worried about getting buried in lawsuits before the courts (...hopefully???) overturn it. 

• Stephen Miller has sued the January 6 committee to block the release of his phone records, revealing that he’s still on his parents’ family plan. No word yet on whether Miller's role in the insurrection has earned him a time-out.
   
• You will be shocked—shocked!—to learn that Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) won’t face any punishment from GOP leadership for attending a white-nationalist conference.
   
• The Justice Department has charged a dual U.S.-Russian citizen with illegally acting as a Russian agent in the U.S. As part of her work, Elena Branson allegedly tried to arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and a top Putin aide at the World Chess Championship in November 2016.
   
• Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced Wednesday that Disney will oppose the “Don’t Say Gay” bill after all, a day after the bill passed the Florida Senate, and said that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) assured him that the anti-LGBTQ+ bill would not be “weaponized in any way” against the LGBTQ+ community. Okey-dokey!
   
• Robert Regan, a deranged GOP candidate running for the Michigan House, said he tells his daughters to “just lie back and enjoy it” if raped. Here’s Regan’s daughter on Twitter during his 2020 campaign: “If you’re in Michigan and 18+ pls for the love of god do not vote for my dad for state rep. Tell everyone.”
   
• Childhood exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the I.Q. of about half the U.S. population, according to a new study. Americans born in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when leaded gas was in its heyday, may have lost up to six or seven IQ points. 
   
• Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) has been charged for driving with a revoked license, for a second time, and faces up to 20 days in jail.
   
• The first person to receive a pig-heart transplant has died two months after the operation. University of Maryland doctors haven’t announced the exact cause of death. 
   
• Scientists have found the wreckage of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, 106 years after it sank in the Antarctic.
   
• A power outage across Taiwan last week was caused by a power plant operator who flipped a switch labeled “Do Not Operate,”  like some sort of Taiwanese Homer Simpson. 
   
• If you enjoyed millions of screaming cicadas emerging from the ground, you’ll love the huge invasive spiders that are about to parachute out of the sky. The East Coast: It’s Where The Bugs Are.™

Even mild coronavirus cases may cause brain-tissue damage and cognitive decline, according to a large new study. The study was the first to compare brain scans that participants underwent both before and after they were infected with COVID; other participants in the study who were never infected formed a control group. Researchers found a greater loss of gray matter and tissue damage in those who had been infected, primarily in areas related to sense of smell, as well as diminished ability on a certain cognitive assessment. All participants were over age 50 and all who tested positive were infected between March 2020 and April 2021, before vaccines were widely available and when different variants were dominant. The researchers cautioned that the implications of the observed brain changes aren’t clear, and the takeaway certainly isn’t “everyone who gets COVID will have profound, lasting brain damage,” but the findings are more evidence that measuring the pandemic’s harm in deaths alone misses a huge piece of the picture.

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The federal deficit has been shrinking under the Biden administration, according to the Congressional Budget Office

President Biden announced that two Americans who were detained in Venezuela have been released, following a visit from a U.S. delegation. 

New York State will reserve its first 100 or more retail licenses to sell marijuana for people with marijuana convictions or their family members. 

The Hill’s horseshoe bat, a critically endangered and very weird-looking little guy, has been found in Rwanda after 40 years without a sighting.