-Donald Trump, ruling out his bloodthirsty mob's target as a running mate

President Biden answered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s impassioned plea to do more with additional defense assistance, as both Russian and Ukrainian officials expressed optimism that a ceasefire agreement could be close at hand.
 

• In a virtual address to Congress on Wednesday, Zelensky reiterated his call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and invoked the memories of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as he appealed to lawmakers to provide more military aid and to continue to announce new financial sanctions on Russia. “To be the leader of the world is to be the leader of peace,” Zelensky said, in a direct message for Biden.
   
• The White House continued to reject the idea of a Western-enforced no-fly zone, which would amount to a declaration of war against Russia, but President Biden announced after Zelensky’s address that the U.S. would send $800 million in additional military assistance to Ukraine. The new funds will go towards 800 anti-aircraft systems, 9,000 anti-armor systems, and 7,000 small arms. Biden later called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” for the first time publicly, a comment that the Kremlin called “unacceptable and unforgivable.”
   
• Goodness knows where Biden got that idea! A Russian airstrike on Wednesday destroyed a theater in Mariupol where about 1,000 civilians had taken shelter, according to Ukrainian officials. “It is still impossible to estimate the scale of this horrific and inhumane act, because the city continues to shell residential areas,” the city council said. Satellite images showed that the word “children” had been painted in Russian on the ground outside. In the northern city of Chernihiv, Russian shelling killed more than 10 people who had been waiting in line for bread.

Both Moscow and Kyiv said they were making progress toward an end to the war, but Putin appears to have shredded the memo.
 

• Zelensky said Wednesday that negotiations were beginning to “sound more realistic,” while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the proposals under discussion were “close to an agreement.” The Financial Times reported that negotiators had drawn up a  tentative 15-point peace plan that would involve Kyiv giving up its ambitions to join NATO and accepting limits on its armed forces, but Ukraine's chief negotiator said that draft represented Russia’s positions, “nothing more.”
   
• In any case, Western onlookers are skeptical. House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff said he hadn’t seen anything to suggest that a peace deal was imminent: “I don’t think Putin is negotiating in good faith.” Goodness knows where Schiff got that idea! In a televised speech on Wednesday, Putin said that Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine and that all was going according to plan, and continued to characterize Ukrainian leaders as neo-Nazis.

Zelensky’s successful efforts to rally the support of Western leaders and Ukrainians’ resistance have kept Kyiv under Ukrainian control into the fourth week of Russia’s invasion. But after starting the war unilaterally without a thought to the consequences, Putin seems inclined to continue it indefinitely in spite of them.

Check out a new episode of Tommy Gets Redpilled! This week Tommy dives deep into Fox News's attempt at late night comedy: Gutfeld! Subscribe to the Crooked YouTube channel to never miss an episode.

The RNC has sued Salesforce, its own email vendor, in a last-ditch effort to block it from turning over internal data to the January 6 committee. House investigators are seeking that information as part of its inquiry into the use of 2020 election lies in Republicans’ political fundraising. The RNC said in its Tuesday evening filing that Salesforce had notified party leaders that it would start producing documents on Wednesday unless a court intervened, after initially promising to withhold them while the RNC’s initial legal challenge played out. The January 6 committee on Wednesday agreed to extend the deadline for Salesforce to comply until March 30. Meanwhile, the committee has reportedly decided (for now) not to issue subpoenas for members of Congress, in part because they would inevitably lead to lengthy legal battles. While the panel continued mulling that over, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) led a group of far-right antivax truckers on a tour of the Capitol, prompting a senior congressional aide to notify the Justice Department out of concern that the tour could help them plan a breach of the building.

• The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates for the first time since 2018 and projected six more hikes by the end of the year, in an effort to rein in inflation. 
   
• This week in the ever-expanding Anti-Abortion House of Horrors, Tennessee Republicans have advanced an unconstitutional abortion ban modeled after the Texas law that would, as written, allow any family member of a rapist to sue a rape survivor for getting an abortion.
   
• Texas tossed out nearly 23,000 mail ballots—roughly 13 percent of all mail ballots returned—in the March 1 primary, according to an Associated Press analysis.
   
• Last Friday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told a room full of oil and gas executives that they should demand “a return on investment” when they donate to politicians, forgetting that the first rule of Corruption Club is not talk about Corruption Club.
   
• Dr. Oz announced that he'll renounce his Turkish citizenship if he wins his Senate election in Pennsylvania, a day after saying he would keep it and forego security clearances. 
   
• Herschel Walker, the leading GOP Senate candidate in Georgia, has found a fatal flaw in Darwin’s theory of evolution: “If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.” 
   
• A 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Fukushima in Japan on Wednesday, triggering a tsunami advisory in the region where a 2011 quake caused a devastating tsunami and nuclear power plant meltdowns.
   
• Russian ballerina Olga Smirnova has quit the Bolshoi Ballet after denouncing the invasion of Ukraine, and joined the Dutch National Ballet. 
   
• North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile that exploded shortly after launch, amid reports that the country was preparing to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time since 2017.
   
• Armenia said it was ready to establish diplomatic relations and reopen its border with Turkey after the first formal meeting between the countries’ foreign ministers since 2009.
   
• Disney employees will stage a series of walkouts to protest the company's pathetic response to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill.
   
• Building off the success of last year’s international sensation Big Stuck Boat, the shipping industry is thrilled to present, for your consideration, Big Stuck Boat: Chesapeake Bay Edition.

Mississippi’s GOP House leadership has killed a bill that would have extended postpartum Medicaid benefits, for the second year in a row. Under the state’s current Medicaid provisions, health insurance benefits for new mothers end abruptly after two months, cutting many low-income people off from care during a dangerous period. Deaths from pregnancy-related causes in Mississippi are twice as high as the rest of the country, and 60 percent of deliveries are funded by Medicaid—much higher than the national average. Black women in Mississippi were almost three times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy than white women, according to a Mississippi State Department of Health report. The vast majority of maternal deaths in the state happen after giving birth, and 37 percent occur after six weeks postpartum. Making it difficult for new mothers to see a doctor is insane for all kinds of reasons, but add in the fact that the Supreme Court is about to uphold a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks, and you’ve got the GOP-engineered conditions for some unacceptable outcomes.

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The Biden administration announced that it will make tens of thousands of Afghans in the U.S. eligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS). 

The NIH has launched a clinical trial for three mRNA HIV vaccines. 

Poet Reginald Dwayne Betts has begun installing libraries in 1,000 prisons nationwide through his organization Freedom Reads. 

A very satisfying wave of yacht seizures continues.