-Barack Obama, clownin' on POTUS at the White House

Stomach-churning new evidence of war crimes has rekindled western resolve to bolster Ukraine and isolate the Russian government. In response, Russia has decided to give redoubling lies and slanders the ol’ college try.
 

• In remarks to the United Nations one day after bearing witness to Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compared invading forces to ISIS terrorists, with the caveat that in this case “it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council.” Zelensky went on to ask the U.N. to hold Russia accountable, including with “maximum access for journalists, maximum cooperation with international institutions, [and] involvement of the International Criminal Court,” in order to “show all the other potential war criminals in the world how they will be punished."
   
• It won’t be as much as Zelensky wants, but the world is listening. The United States will seek to suspend Russia from the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, according to U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. The U.S. has also blocked Russia from servicing its debt with American dollars, which will make it harder for Russia to avoid defaulting, and will join other G7 nations in ratcheting up sanctions, including a ban on all new investment in Russia. 
   
• For its part, NATO will gather evidence of Russian war crimes in the hope of eventually holding Putin and other Russian leaders accountable through proceedings at the International Criminal Court, the U.N. or elsewhere. European countries have expelled Russian diplomats in response to the Bucha massacre, and even some western leaders who had tried to forge cooperative relations with Putin now admit they were wrong. "I did not believe Vladimir Putin would embrace his country's complete economic, political and moral ruin for the sake of his imperial madness," said German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a leading social democrat.

Putin et al are naturally taking it in stride. 
 

• Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, who has not been expelled, today said his American colleagues “should pay attention to the facts and stop the criminal indifference to [Ukrainian] national battalions, which continue to lock civilians inside the cities, open indiscriminate fire on refugees, terrorize and torture everyone who does not share their Nazi ideology”—repeating the false smear Russia has used to justify its invasion and lie about its war crimes. 
   
• Perhaps even more ominously, an article published in the official state Russian news agency RIA Novosti proposed the elimination of Ukraine altogether. You can read an archived, translated version of the article here, but a short version of the argument is that Ukraine is irredeemably Nazified (it is not) and denazifying it will thus require “de-Ukrainization—a rejection of the large-scale artificial inflation of the ethnic component of self-identification of the population of the territories of historical Little Russia and New Russia.” So that’s a bad sign.

Check out the latest episodes of Crooked’s newest podcast Strict Scrutiny! Each week, law professors Leah Litman, Kate Shaw, and Melissa Murray use their experience to provide understanding into the inner workings of the Supreme Court’s decisions, culture, and personalities. Listen to the newest episode where Leah, Kate, and Melissa recap some of the best, worst, and weirdest moments throughout the four days of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings. New episodes of Strict Scrutiny drop every Monday wherever you get your podcasts.

Senate Republicans want to inject a poison pill into the COVID-19 mitigation bill they’ve already agreed to, though it’s still unclear whether they will succeed, or whether (if they fail) they will renege on the agreement and tank the whole relief package. Specifically, they will try to force a vote on an amendment to compel the Biden administration to reinstate Title 42—a Trump-administration policy that used COVID-mitigation concerns (which Republicans did not sincerely hold) as a pretext to crack down on asylum seekers. Biden’s decision to reverse the policy in the coming weeks ends the pretext, and would bring U.S. border policy closer into alignment with U.S. public-health priorities more broadly. But several Senate Democrats fear that the end of Title 42 will increase migrant flows, or, more candidly, that the change in policy will fuel Republican demagoguery in the fall campaign, and are thus likely to support the GOP gambit. It’s unclear whether Republicans have enough votes to amend the underlying bill, whether such an amendment would survive in the House, or whether Republicans would blow up their own deal if the measure fails somewhere along the way. But they're off to the races to find out. 

• Ivanka Trump testified before the January 6 committee today, just a few days after her husband Jared Kushner did the same. 
   
• Bitter grapes from both Starbucks and Amazon executives as workers make headway unionizing shops, including, in Amazon’s case, accusing the National Labor Relations Board of “undue influence.”
   
• President Biden will reportedly extend the pandemic-era moratorium on student-debt repayment through August 31, after which ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
   
• A new study by economists and political scientists concludes that messages from Donald Trump endorsing COVID-19 vaccination meaningfully increases uptake in communities with vaccine-reluctant Trump supporters, suggesting both a novel way to improve vaccination rates, and that Trump’s general reluctance to encourage vaccination has cost tons of lives. 
   
• Twitter's gonna do the edit button thing, which definitely won't be abused by the worst people in the world to mislead the masses on purpose...
   
• Speaking of using Twitter to mislead people and editing things, new Twitter board member Elon Musk's shady raid of Twitter stock was actually way shadier than it looked!
   
• Sarah Palin isn’t a shoo-in to win the vacant Alaska House.
   
• Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), another House Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump after the insurrection, has announced his retirement.
   
• The Oklahoma House has passed a bill to make abortion illegal. 
   
• After raising only muted objections to their colleagues smearing Ketanji Brown Jackson as an advocate for convicted pedophiles, Republicans must now deal with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) reverting to her Q-Anon roots and calling Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Mitt Romney (R-UT) “pro-pedophile.” 
   
• Matt Mowers, a former Trump official running for a House seat in New Hampshire, voted twice in the 2016 GOP presidential primary: Once in New Hampshire, when he worked for Chris Christie’s failed campaign, and then again, after Christie lost, in New Jersey, where he had re-registered at his parents’ house. 
   
• You absolutely have to watch this cursed PragerU commercial.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services plans to deliver private insurers who operate within the Medicare system a larger-than-expected pay increase, dashing hopes that the Biden administration would put downward pressure on the share of Medicare dollars that flow through Medicare Advantage, rather than traditional, government-run Medicare. Those health plans can expect a five-percent average increase in payments from the federal government, rather than the 4.5 percent boost that Biden proposed. The increase is putatively meant to cover an increase in the number of seniors who have enrolled in Advantage plans, and budget for an expectation that enrollees will seek care they deferred through the coronavirus pandemic, but the new rule includes no cost-saving reforms, such as to excessive payments the government makes in advance to cover the projected costs of higher-risk patients.

Relationships take work. A lot of us will drop anything to  go help someone we care about. We’ll go out of our way  to treat other people well, but how often do we give ourselves the same treatment? 

This month, BetterHelp online therapy wants to remind you to take care of your most important relationship– the one you have with yourself. Whether it’s hitting the gym, making time for your haircut, or even trying therapy, you are your greatest asset, so invest the time and effort into yourself like you do for other  people.  

BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist, so you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It’s much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can start communicating with your therapist in under 48 hours.

Give it a try and see why over 2 million people have used BetterHelp online therapy. This newsletter is sponsored by BetterHelp, and What A Day readers get 10% off their first  month  BetterHelp.com/crooked.

President Biden signed an executive order that should help 200,000 people obtain comprehensive health insurance, and make health plans cheaper for one million others.

Here's a story about a remarkable Washington, DC-area carpet cleaner, who is also a hyperpolyglot, and has taught himself to speak dozens of languages, many fluently.

Cool new observational evidence from fledgling solar systems of how gas-giant planets like Jupiter form. See?

Revolutionary nanotechnology could make vaccine development a million times faster in the future.