The Morning Dispatch: After the Fall of Mariupol

Plus: Did Texas just break the internet?

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Happy Thursday! Congratulations and get well soon to Eritrean cyclist Biniam Girmay, who won a stage of the Giro d’Italia on Tuesday and immediately had to withdraw from the rest of the race after hitting himself in the eye popping open a bottle of prosecco. Race organizers will now present winners with uncorked bottles. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Sweden and Finland formally applied to join NATO on Wednesday, with Prime Ministers Magdalena Andersson and Sanna Marin meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the military alliance headquarters in Brussels. Despite continued Turkish obstinance, Stoltenberg expects the Nordic countries’ applications to receive unanimous approval within a few months. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with his Swedish counterpart yesterday, and, although Sweden and Finland won’t be covered by NATO’s mutual defense pact until their applications are accepted, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Europe and the U.S. “will not tolerate any aggression against Finland or Sweden during this process.”

  • The Senate voted unanimously Wednesday night to confirm career Foreign Service officer Bridget Brink as ambassador to Ukraine. Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that—after a three-month closure—the United States was reopening its embassy in Kyiv.

  • President Joe Biden announced yesterday he would invoke the Defense Production Act in an effort to address the ongoing baby formula shortage, requiring suppliers of certain resources to prioritize formula producers over their other customers. He also directed the Department of Health and Human Services to use Defense Department commercial aircraft to pick up formula produced overseas that meets U.S. health and safety standards.

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  1. Bdecicco2001

    Watching the GOP - and the editors here - run hard to fascism has been sickening.

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    Dr. Livesey

    QotD: Social media censorship (SMC) just passed 1,000,000 deaths in the U..S. And far more abroad. SMC has perpetrated massacres in Ukraine. Inflation wouldn’t be nearly so high if it weren’t for SMC. Global warming, baby formula shortages, the latest atrocities in Afghanistan, indignities in D.C., discrepancies on Wall St., stupidities in the Ivy League—well, you guessed it, we must focus on SMC. Our lives, fortunes & sacred honor are at stake.

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    SD

    I have some sympathy for the argument that social media platforms are the place where discussion happens, but this law seems like it will have lots and lots and lots of consequences that the creators of the law did not intend and will not like. Maybe companies can just keep people from IP addresses in Texas from joining? I certainly wouldn't want to deal with this vague and stupid law if I worked for a social media company.

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    rlritt

    "The British Office for National Statistics reported Wednesday that inflation in the United Kingdom hit a 40-year high last month, with consumer prices in April 9 percent higher than one year earlier, up from a 7 percent annual inflation rate in March."

    Are the British saying their inflation is Biden's fault? Or is it possible, inflation is caused by other factors the government doesn't control?

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  5. Brook

    I predict — and hope! — that the US Sup. Ct. will reinstate the preliminary injunction and that the TX law will be held unconstitutional. Besides being unconstitutional, the law is a stupid exercise of populist demagoguery.

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  6. PaliMat

    Boudin is the French word for a blood sausage, and the word is also used colloquially to refer to someone who is hideously ugly.
    Make of it what you may.

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    Cogitatio

    I love Texas. It is my adopted state, and I have enjoyed living here for the last 18 years. But this is not the answer to the perceived problem.
    Some have said that this is Texas' attempt to implement its own form of censorship. That does not seem to be in the law at all. What it does, from what I can tell, is force a business to accept most any speech on their platform, which violates that business' First Amendment rights. And if we think that the social media platforms are a pig sty now, just wait.

    The problem I see with the social media companies is that they are having it both ways. Section 230 grants them carte blanche to censor as they desire, protected from law suits or any attempt to regulate them. And they argue that they cannot be held liable for any content that does get posted, because they are not publishers and have no control over what individuals post on their sites. Facebook, et. al., can thus censor as they will, leave up whatever content they want, and no one can do anything about it, even if an individual can demonstrate that he or she has been harmed by the company. They are thus wholly unaccountable in a way that no other corporation I am aware of is (and please do not bring up gun manufacturers, they can be sued for defective products just like anyone else).
    The perceived problem from the right is that the platforms are biased against conservative views. There is perhaps some truth to this, but removing all controls seems like it will create more problems than it solves.

    The solution, it seems to me, is to get rid of section 230 and see what happens. If the problems do not improve, then we can relook, but this seems both unconstitutional and too extreme to me. If the social media companies actually had to worry about their decisions like everyone else, they would probably act quite a bit differently.

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    Bill Dyer

    As I'm so spoiled as to expect, this was another terrific Morning Dispatch!

    Re this, from the WH Press Release yesterday (link: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/05/18/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-new-actions-to-address-infant-formula-shortage/):

    ===begin quote===
    To ensure that manufacturers have the necessary ingredients to make safe, healthy infant formula here at home, President Biden is invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA). The President is requiring suppliers to direct needed resources to infant formula manufacturers before any other customer who may have ordered that good. Directing firms to prioritize and allocate the production of key infant formula inputs will help increase production and speed up in supply chains.
    ===end quote===

    I looked it up. The Defense Production Act is for defense and national security.

    I am not against baby formula safely, reliably, and continuously reaching all who need it. I am curious, however, how anything having to do with baby formula rationally relates to defense or national security. Is this for the anticipated West Point Class of 2044?

    Where is the limiting principle?

    Not bothering to pretend anymore: This is a distressing sign with a consistent trend in this Administration. One can easily find roots in the previous two administrations. It bespeaks a foolish but deep contempt for the American public, the "ruled."

    Are we to the point yet at which the more interesting question becomes not whether Biden will run again, but whether he'll manage to serve out this first term? I think we're comfortably into that zone now.

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      CynthiaW

      "The President is requiring suppliers to direct needed resources to infant formula manufacturers before any other customer who may have ordered that good."

      What if the competing manufacturer is making something that's actually defense related?

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    Michael Dan Martin

    In the article about Boudin and drug convictions -

    “A significant percentage of people selling drugs in San Francisco, perhaps as many as half, are here from Honduras,” Boudin said in a video posted to Twitter late last year. “And many of them have been trafficked from Honduras.”

    So a man pays a coyote or contracts with a drug cartel to help him enter the US and the state of California illegally, and when caught selling illegal drugs is let off the hook because he was “trafficked”.

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      Ms. SSM

      Well kind of. It’s amazing how effective coyotes and cartels are at exploiting there fellow citizens. I don’t think we should let crimes go unpunished. But I don’t really get up in arms about how any jurisdiction deals with low level drug offenses. They could be giving them all 20 year sentences. It doesn’t matter. They will be out in a few months anyway.

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    Ed

    QOTD: The free internet was always going to decay into a putrid reeking swamp. The lowest common denominator is really low and regulation, whether governmental or private could slow the descent, but could not stop it. As it gets worse, people will turn away. It will be interesting to see what evolves, what we turn to. I'm here and I hope this model works.

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