-Thom Thillis, on  Republicans' SCOTUS confirmation hearing etiquette

The U.S. formally accused Russia of committing war crimes during its invasion of Ukraine, as President Biden headed to Europe in an attempt to prevent the crisis from spiraling further out of control.
 

• “Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia's forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Wednesday statement. “Our assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources.” Blinken highlighted Russia’s attacks on civilian targets in Mariupol, where local officials say that more than more than 2,400 civilians have been killed. 
   
• Biden has arrived in Brussels, where he’ll meet with NATO allies and European leaders to agree on new sanctions and discuss how they would respond if Russian President Vladimir Putin busts out a chemical, biological, or (knock on everything) nuclear weapon. Earlier on Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance was doubling its battlegroups along its eastern flank by sending four new ones to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. 
   
• The U.S. has already targeted dozens of Russian oligarchs with sanctions, but prominent billionaire Roman Abramovich has been conspicuously left off the list. That’s reportedly at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: Treasury had drafted a set of sanctions to punish Abramovich earlier this month, but put them aside after Zelensky advised Biden in a phone call that Abramovich could be important as a mediator in peace negotiations in Russia. It’s not clear that Abramovich has proved himself particularly useful thus far.

A month into the invasion that was supposed to take just three days, Putin has begun to lose the support of senior Kremlin officials. 
 

• Russian climate envoy Anatoly Chubais has resigned and left the country, becoming the highest-level official to break with Putin over the war in Ukraine. Chubais had been a Russian government insider for decades, served as former President Boris Yeltsin's chief of staff, and gave Putin his first Kremlin position in the mid-’90s. In other Kremlin intrigue, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reportedly hasn’t appeared in public since March 11, despite theoretically being in charge of the invasion.
   
• Russia’s heavy military losses haven’t exactly made Putin’s war easy to rally around. NATO said Wednesday that up to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or are missing in Ukraine, based on its estimate that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian troops have been killed since the invasion began. A U.S. defense official said that Russian forces were now struggling with frostbite because they hadn’t brought adequate cold-weather gear, adding to the setbacks that have driven down morale.

Western leaders’ harsh sanctions and war-crime accusations have isolated Putin internationally, while the war’s duration and mounting casualties could have him shedding support among Kremlin insiders and supporters. The U.S. and its allies will need to be on the same page about how to respond if and when he lashes out about it.  

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Senate Republicans continued to turn Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings into a racist QAnon symposium on their second day of questioning. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Jackson to answer for the grave injustice of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process and once again tried to link her to pedophilia, repeatedly interrupting her when she tried to respond. After Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) took up the pedophilia-and-disrespectful-interruption baton, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) made an important point for the folks at home: “I think we should recognize that the jackassery we often see around here is partly because of people mugging for short-term camera opportunities.” (Cruz may have missed this burn while he was searching his own name on Twitter.)

When Republicans aren’t pandering to far-right conspiracy theorists, they’re winking to the anti-abortion crowd: Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) on Tuesday evening asked Jackson her thoughts on fetal personhood, the concept that a sufficiently vile Supreme Court could use to ban abortion nationwide after overturning Roe v. Wade. In a rare substantive development, Jackson said Wednesday that she plans to recuse herself from a Harvard affirmative-action case if confirmed, since she serves on the school’s governing board.

• The Supreme Court has thrown out a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that selected a legislative map proposed by Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI), which increased the number of majority-Black districts from six to seven. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. In a second unsigned order, the Court rejected a GOP bid to block Wisconsin’s new congressional map.
   
• The Court wouldn’t say on Wednesday whether Justice Clarence Thomas was still in the hospital. Its last statement said that Thomas expected to be released on Monday or Tuesday of this week.
   
• Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state, has died. She was 84.
   
• Gov. Brad Little (R-ID) has signed a six-week abortion ban modeled after the vigilante-enforced Texas law, while the Oklahoma House has passed a near-total abortion ban that would fuck over not only Oklahomans, but also Texans traveling to Oklahoma to access the care they can no longer get at home. 
   
• Former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt (R-NV), who’s now running for Senate, is laying the groundwork to try to overturn Nevada’s election results with pledges to fight imaginary voter fraud months before anyone’s actually voted. 
   
• Meanwhile, Debra Meadows, the wife of former White House Chief of Staff and current Man Under Investigation For Voter Fraud Mark Meadows, seems to have filed at least two false voter forms.
   
• The Taliban abruptly decided against allowing Afghan girls above the sixth grade to return to school on Wednesday, reneging on a promise to the international community. 
   
• After conducting a review, the Postal Service Office of Inspector General “identified several clear benefits of adopting electric vehicles into the postal delivery fleet, including improved sustainability and environmental impacts.” Electric vehicles would also save the USPS money in the long run, the OIG concluded.
   
• The French carmaker Renault has resumed production at its Moscow plant, after suspending operations last month. More like Re-naupe!
   
• Former Trump advisor Paul Manafort was pulled off a flight to Dubai on Sunday because he was carrying an invalid passport. 
   
• Stephen Wilhite, the inventor of the GIF, died of COVID complications last week at age 74. Let us all honor his memory by spending a few solemn moments with his favorite GIF. 

It’s another great day for the January 6 committee to reconsider its decision not to subpoena members of Congress! Disgraced former president Donald Trump on Wednesday rescinded his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) in the Alabama Senate race, citing (in his usual pithy, articulate way) his loyal ally’s chutzpah in saying that it was time to move on from the 2020 election. (Trump probably also wants to avoid the humiliation when Brooks, who’s taken a nosedive in the polls, loses the primary, and to take the credit when his next endorsee wins.) In response, Brooks released a statement asserting that “President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency,” and that he repeatedly told Trump that what he was requesting was illegal and unconstitutional. Brooks told reporters that Trump had continued to push the issue over the last six months. The January 6 committee hasn’t yet asked Brooks for his testimony, but now would be a good time, as would a healthy mix of carrots and sticks. 

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Moderna said Wednesday that it will ask the FDA to authorize its low-dose COVID vaccine for kids under age six.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has signed a law that will make abortions cheaper for people on private insurance plans. 

MacKenzie Scott has donated $275 million to Planned Parenthood, the largest donation from a single donor in the organization’s history. 

If you’ve recently watched a Republican question Ketanji Brown Jackson and feel like bathing your brain in acid, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has a much-needed antidote.