Sweden’s NATO Bid Is Approved

After blocking the move for more than a year, Hungary clears the way for Sweden’s accession.

By , and
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Happy Monday! Great news for all you office workers to kick off the work week: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday ended their official recommendation to quarantine for five days after testing positive for COVID-19.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Talks aimed at reaching a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan—which is set to begin March 10—seemed to falter on Sunday after the Palestinian terrorist group rejected demands to release a list of remaining living hostages, prompting Israel to boycott the U.S.- and Qatari-mediated negotiations in Cairo. The U.S. military, meanwhile, began airdropping humanitarian aid into Gaza on Saturday, delivering roughly 38,000 ready-to-eat meals to the war-torn enclave. Speaking at an event in Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris urged Israel to facilitate more aid shipments into the Strip and called for a ceasefire “for at least the next six weeks,” blaming Hamas for the lack of progress. “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire,” she said. “There is a deal on the table, and as we have said, Hamas needs to agree to that deal. Let’s get a ceasefire.”
  • A Belize-flagged cargo ship that was struck by a Houthi missile on February 18 while traversing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait sank on Saturday after days of taking on water, officials reported. The Rubymar, which was transporting fertilizer and had been leaking fuel, was the first vessel to be destroyed in the Red Sea since the Iranian-backed militants in Yemen first began their attacks on international merchant vessels in November. 
  • Thousands of supporters turned out to honor Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny—who mysteriously died in an Arctic prison in February—at a funeral service in Moscow on Friday. The ceremony was conducted under heavy police security, and while officials detained some mourners before the event began, protesters shouted chants against Russian President Vladimir Putin outside the church and cemetery in one of the largest recent displays of mass public dissent.
  • German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius accused Russia on Sunday of waging an “information war” against Germany following the reported interception and leak of sensitive conversations about the Ukraine war between high-ranking military officers. The 38-minute-long audio recording, posted online Friday by Russia’s state-backed RT media, included discussions about potential strikes on Crimea and the possible use of German-made Taurus missiles by Ukrainian forces. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday called the leak “a very serious matter,” and said German intelligence was working to investigate the matter “very carefully, very intensively, and very quickly.”
  • Former Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was elected prime minister by his nation’s parliament on Sunday, after a coalition government was established following fractious elections in February that produced no clear winner. Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, partnered with the Pakistan People’s Party to form a governing majority after independent candidates aligned with jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan won a majority of seats in the national contest. Khan’s allies, who jeered Sharif as he gave remarks after his confirmation, have alleged that the February election was rigged.
  • President Joe Biden on Friday signed a short-term spending deal that will keep government agencies operating through March 8 and March 22, staving off a shutdown for a few more weeks. On Sunday, Congress released six bills that would fund federal agencies—including the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration—for the rest of the fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2023. The package will be voted on by the House this week before moving to the Senate.
  • New Jersey businessman Jose Uribe, a co-defendant in the criminal corruption case against Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, pleaded guilty to six charges on Friday, including conspiracy to bribe the senator with a Mercedes-Benz convertible. Uribe has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against the senator, who, along with his wife, has been accused of accepting more than $500,000 in cash and 13 gold bars in bribes. Menendez, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stepped down from his leadership role in September but remains in the Senate.
  • Former President Donald Trump won three state primary contests on Saturday, adding more than 130 delegates to his count. Trump commanded large victories in the Idaho and Missouri caucuses, and secured all remaining delegates in Michigan’s party convention after winning the state primary earlier this week. Former Ambassador Nikki Haley won the Washington, D.C., Republican primary on Sunday, her first victory so far. The win marked the first time a woman has won a Republican primary contest in U.S. history. Trump leads Haley in the delegate count 244-43 ahead of contests in North Dakota on Monday and 15 more states on Tuesday.

Swede Victory

After 19 months of slow-walking the measure, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán finally relented last week and allowed his parliament to ratify Sweden’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), paving the way for a 32nd member of the alliance. A trip by Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson to Budapest late last month and a resulting agreement for Hungary to buy Swedish fighter jets overcame the lingering opposition—although we’re pretty sure a lifetime supply of Swedish Fish would have been an equally effective deal sweetener.

The Scandinavian nation will soon become part of the military alliance following a formal flag-raising ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Sweden joins neighboring Finland as the second new entrant into the body since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The accession of both historically neutral countries to the transatlantic security pact reflects how dramatically Europe’s security posture has changed over the last two years.

The weight of the decision—and the increased tension on the European continent—were on full display as Sweden was informally welcomed into the alliance. “Sweden stands ready to shoulder its responsibility for Euro-Atlantic security,” Kristersson tweeted last week. NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg pointed to the immediate benefits of Sweden’s accession, arguing, “It makes NATO stronger, Sweden safer, and all of us more secure.” But the journey to membership wasn’t without bumps along the way.

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  1. Pohl

    QOTD: I don’t think the newest additions to NATO significantly change Putin’s calculus. I think a reawakened NATO did that already. It doesn’t hurt, though, to add capable members to our side.

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    Citizen60

    Unfortunately not at this time.
    Putin believes the U.S. has no stomach to put boots on the ground to protect Georgia (Bush), Crimea (Obama), or Moldavia. And NATO cannot execute Article 5 without the U.S., so NATO isn’t a deterrent. He’s been right that the US would lose interest in The Ukraine, even if other European countries haven’t yet. And Putin’s doing everything possible to put Trump & Minions back in the WH so he can do then as he wants. It’s very sad.

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  3. Stevenreedcurtis

    By expanding you mean into NATO territory? Certainly. By expanding you mean other border areas--Moldavia? Russia may decide to act more quickly because a window of opportunity is closing. Ukraine? My guess is the Russians will be more aggressive rather than less.

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  4. Trichwages

    LUK: now they need to offer membership to Ukraine and then to Moldova before we have Ukraine II on our hands. Let’s put the pressure on Putin to back down. If he can annex whole areas of an independent state (Ukraine) and threaten to do the same with another (Moldova), then he’s feeling emboldened. The biggest boost to NATO would be for Donald Trump to lose this election and for everyone who has endorsed Trump down-ticket to lose, too. Don’t be namby pamby by giving anyone a get out of jail free card cuz you kinda like them.

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  5. Philip.R.M.Hunt

    Contra to some of the other posters, I don’t think the section 3 disqualification exercise was worthless.

    Bad timing maybe - Biden and Congress should have addressed this back in 2021 along with other structural issues made apparent by J6 instead of seeing how much of the progressive wish list they could pass.

    The issue was out there, so it needed to be addressed or it could have potentially come up at the next electoral vote count and that would have been a repeat of J6, but x10. Good to get that off the table.

    The whole exercise actually shows that the American legal system is functioning well. The conduct of all the courts involved were exemplary. The Colorado SC made a good decision but the ultimate decision that had to be made and SCOTUS did make was not within the authority of the Colorado SC to make.

    Also, out of this exercise we got several state courts to find, to a preponderance of the evidence, that Trump participated in an insurrection. SCOTUS did not touch those findings, so they stand.

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      PaulH

      I suppose those state court rulings "stand", but they don't stand for much. A finding under Section 2383 of the federal code would actually prevent Trump from holding office, but Jack Smith did not bring such charges.

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    Normb1442

    If by "expanding" you mean "attacking other countries besides Ukraine," I think the obvious answer is "nothing else will." The man has said, often, how much he regrets the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and in his interview with Carlson he claimed at length that Ukraine was legitimately part of Russia. Anyone who thinks he wouldn't expand that reach to the Baltic states should be given a glass of warm milk and sent to bed early, and the same probably applies to Poland.

    But as I've said before, don't take my word for it. Ask the Finns and Swedes. Actually, as this article notes, you don't have to. They've already spoken.

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      Retired Prosecutor

      Thank goodness the Poles are getting armed to the teeth. They don't shirk on their defense and spend almost as high a percentage of their GDP on defense as we do. They've tripled their outlay since 2014. The Poles know what living in a bad neighborhood is all about.

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      1. Packmd4

        And they probably hate the Russians more than anyone on Earth. This reminds me of one of my favorite niche historical jokes

        A Polish man finds a genie in a bottle, one decades-old joke goes. The genie offers him three wishes. The Pole says, “I want the Mongols to invade Poland and then go back to China.” So it happens. For his next wish, the Pole also asks for the Mongols to invade Poland and then go home. So it happens. For his third wish, the Pole again asks for the Mongols to invade Poland and go home. “I gave you three wishes,” the genie cries. “Why did you ask for the Mongols to invade Poland and then go home three times?”

        “Because they had to march across Russia six times.”

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        Normb1442

        True that. 2014 was a wakeup call. Same continued to sleep but not the Poles.

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      PaulH

      Yeah, I think the most wrongheaded argument against aiding Ukraine is the idea that Ukraine is not important to us but it is to Russia. Realistically, Russia doesn't need Ukraine -- it can be secure and function perfectly well without it -- but it would like Ukraine. And it would like the Baltics and it would like Poland. And once it got those countries, it would likely develop an appetite for other countries. I think we have a strong interest in the rest of Europe remaining free and allied with us. At the very least, in any potential conflict with China, we would like Europe to be able to assist us and not be tied down confronting an aggressive Russia. Ukraine is the place to draw the line.

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      1. Stohv8

        I agree. Does anybody think that Russia has been harmed, other than in its completely wrong- headed position that it is the new Rome, by the departure of its satellite state prisoners of the cold war period. When, in its period of weakness after 1989, did the West attack it? There was no incentive and, I am fairly sure, some Russian hegemonists felt cheated that an assault did not happen. It appears that Russia's idea of patritosim lies in being a paranoid bully. Sadly, it shows in their history, and not just the Stalin years. I'll never understand, with all their intellectual, cultural and natural resources, why they can't advance past this national inferiority complex.

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  7. Philip.R.M.Hunt

    SCOTUS made the ONLY decision that would not have led to chaos. I think the most reasonable straight forward interpretation of section 3 of the 14th amendment would have been to let the Colorado decision stand, but even if the court put some prudent limitations on that alternative decision to limit the chaos, there was no way that I can see to sufficiently dampen the chaos that would likely have resulted. So instead, SCOTUS relied entirely on prudential reasoning to achieve the maximum reduction of the risk of chaos. Order is at least an important function of law as justice. Being a pragmatist, I think the five justice SCOTUS majority showed great wisdom. If the concurrent justices had their way, it would have opened the door to total chaos at the next electoral vote count.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    The vote totals in the D.C. Republican primary are themselves more interesting to me than the results (although the subjects are unquestionably linked):

    1274 votes for Haley
    676 votes for Trump
    38 votes for DeSantis
    18 votes for Christie
    15 votes for Ramaswamy
    9 votes for two people I've never heard of and won't bother to look up
    link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/results/2024/03/03/district-of-columbia-president-republican-primary/

    This amounts to fewer total votes cast than in many mid- to large-sized high schools' student government elections. That, in turn, seems to me to be one of the most material facts about this primary election, so I'm surprised to see it omitted from almost all of the news coverage, which is premised on the notion that so small a sample means anything at all.

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      Kurt

      Thanks for this. It's remarkable. (52 kids in my graduating class)

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      John N.

      Both my sons graduated from a high-school in Texas that had more than 1,000 students in their graduating class, and the school had almost 5k students in total. It was one of five high-schools in the ISD with around 5k students.

      Yes, "everything is bigger in Texas" but those are what I consider large schools. (I saw your comments below about weighing in on TX school sizes.) For my part, both of my sons' graduating classes were larger than the high-school I attended in IL back in the very early 1980s.

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      Retired Prosecutor

      I'm guessing a GOP Primary in the District of Columbia is a pretty thinly attended affair, Bill. But the numbers still surprise.

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    4. BDM

      2,000 students is not a mid-sized high school anywhere that I've ever been. It's an exceptionally large high school. Other than that quibble, you make a very good point. Only some 2,000 Republicans - of a not large number of total Republicans in the District - even bothered to vote.

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        Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

        It's a quibble I embrace. I originally had written just "large," but thought to myself: Self, you graduated from high school in 1975 — in a graduating class of not quite 200 from a small town — and things may have changed since then. Forty-five seconds of Googling taught me that the ten largest high schools in Texas, many of which are from towns most folks have never heard of, ranged anywhere from 6947 (Allen) to 4364.5 (Coppell, and I can't account for the 0.5th student). Link: https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2024/01/30/the-top-10-largest-high-schools-in-texas, a source considered near-sacred in Texas lore and myth.

        My own kids went to a semi-exclusive but still very large high school in Houston, Bellaire H.S., which has more than 3000 students; in 2022, it boasted (if that's the word) 13 valedictorians (down to five this year, however).

        But my mistake may have been in assuming that Texas in any way resembled the norm, notwithstanding my lifelong knowledge that we reflexively resist that proposition here. I accept your quibble as a friendly amendment, then, with thanks.

        And while I know a lot of Congresscritters, and at least some of their staff, personally reside (for work purposes, distinct from their home turfs) outside the District, these numbers lead me to guess that the number of Republicans in government who could have voted in this primary, and in fact did, has to be a tiny fraction of one percent.

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          Rebecca

          The Allen football stadium is bigger than the college stadium in my town! Of all the things that are bigger in Texas, high schools in and around Dallas, Houston, Austin etc. are surely one.

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          Retired Prosecutor

          109 in my Catholic High School (all boys) graduating class.

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        3. BDM

          While taking part in a conservative campaign training course (The Leadership Institute) back in the late 80s, we were told that if we ever went to work as congressional staffers in DC, we should live in Northern Virginia. Anyplace safe to live in DC would be too expensive for our meager salaries and Maryland was too rife with Democrats.

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            PJ

            Comments like this make me think if I were a Democrat I would be in a civil war with the GOP.

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            Rebecca

            DC is so much safer now. But, Maryland is still rife with Democrats. :-)

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    5. Drsterrett

      So you're telling me there's a chance?

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  9. BDM

    LUK: Yes, a growing NATO can and should deter Putin. Putin is in great danger of having bitten off more than he or Russia can chew. What has been lost amid the head-in-the-sand (or, perhaps more accurately, head-in-the-ass) isolationist bombast among the populist-MAGA crowd here at home, and Trump's once again spouting of ignorant NATO- and alliance-skeptical rhetoric, is how much Russia's aggression has reinvigorated NATO and given it renewed purpose. As demonstrated by Sweden and Finland's accession, our European allies are more dedicated to and enthusiastic about NATO than they've been since the end of the Cold War.

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  10. Michael Bates

    Haley yesterday: “When you go in and talk about revenge, when you go and you talk about vindication, when you go and you talk about—what does that mean? Like, I don’t know what that means.” 
    She must be the only person on God’s green earth who doesn’t know exactly what Trump means.
    Not a good look, Nikki.

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