The Roundup

Here comes the Trump vs. Biden rematch, the Russian election is gearing up, the pope wants Ukraine to surrender, a Ukrainian film wins an Oscar for the first time in history, and more!

On this day in 44 BCE Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Roman Senate by a group of approximately 60 nobles in a plot to preserve the Roman Republic and halt Caesar's increasingly monarchial regime. Armed with knives, the assassins brutally stabbed Caesar to death. The anniversary of that assassination is now known as the Ides of March. That assassination triggered a civil war that ultimately led to the replacement of the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire and the rise of Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son Octavian, who became the first Roman emperor known as Augustus Caesar. On that note, let's go from the turbulent times of the past to today's equally turbulent times.

US Election News

The Republican National Committee has been headed by Donald Trump loyalists (including Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump) for just one week and they are wasting no time in remaking the RNC into Trump’s own image. They are relocating the RNC headquarters to Palm Beach, which also happens to be where Donald Trump's Mar-a-Largo home is located.

The RNC has officially killed the GOP's mail-in voter effort and they have ended its minority outreach program. It figures this would happen. For decades the GOP have reached out to white voters who were the spiritual descendents of the old Confederacy/segregationists/Tea Party activists as part of its Southern Strategy. Cutting off all attempts to include people who are poor and/or BIPOC in the Republican political process sends a not-so-subtle message that the GOP, especially Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, is for whites only (especially middle and upper income whites) and anyone who isn't white is just riff-raff that needs to be kept out.

Is it incredibly short-sighted for the RNC to do this? Yes. By limiting who they want to recruit into their ranks, they are going to hurt themselves in the long-run because the white population is increasingly being outnumbered by non-whites. But that’s their problem and they will eventually learn the hard way about the steep price of not trying to include people of other races in their political movement.

The primary election season in the US is suddenly winding down, even though several states haven't held their primaries yet. On the Democrat side, current presidential incumbent Joe Biden has been running almost unopposed. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson tried to challenge Biden in a few states but they received less than two or three percent of the vote. Joe Biden will formally get the Democrat nomination after the primaries end.

On the Republican side the primaries have dwindled down to Donald Trump. Unless he suddenly dies, is sent to prison, or he decides to flee the country to either Russia or some other country with no extradition treaty with the US, it looks like Trump will get the nomination. Which means that we will be headed into a Trump vs. Biden rematch of the 2020 election.

As someone who lives in a state that hasn't had its primary yet (Maryland), I know it sucks that the primary has already been called on the presidential level. I also know that it may be tempting for those of you in states that haven't held elections to sit the primary out and just wait for the general election. I want to remind you that there are down-ballot elections that you can still vote on, including congressional legislators, state governor, state legislators, county executive, and county legislators. And if you happen to live in an incorporated town or city, you can even vote for mayor and town or city council.

In many ways voting at the state and local level is even more important than voting for president. Many of the most atrocious laws that have been passed in recent years (especially the ones that have scaled back abortion access, severely limited transgender rights, and rejected federal funds to provide free lunches in the summer to poor children) were made at the state and/or local level. That's the main reason why the Poor People's Campaign kicked off its 2020 voter registration action at state capitals across the United States. (In case you've missed it, here is my previous post about the Poor People's Campaign rally and march in Annapolis.)

Now that the presidential candidates have been decided on, I'm going to stop writing about the US primary election in this newsletter unless something major happens, such as Donald Trump deciding to defect to Russia or a Trump-supporting incumbent in one of the two houses of Congress loses the primary election to a rival in the same party.

Russian Election News

This weekend the Russian election is being held and the government is very serious about Russian citizens doing their civic duty to reelect Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin is rolling out a loyalty app that Russian state workers are required to use to prove that they have voted in this weekend's election. This app is being distributed by Vladimir Putin's own political party, United Russia, to ensure that Putin is reelected Russian state workers exercise their right to vote.

Believe it or not there are other candidates running against Putin. They are running despite what happened to Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who tried to run against Putin in 2018 only to survive being poisoned then get sent to prison before he was transferred to another prison located in the Artic Circle where he was killed last month. This video has information about them, which is very interesting but Putin is going to win anyway.

Someone on Twitter/X is currently doing a long thread on the scenes from the elections, which started today and is expected to run until Sunday when Vladimir Putin will be declared the winner soon after the polls close. Pro-goverment pop singers and traditional folk dancers have performed at some of these polling place. If you have a Twitter/X account, you can see the ongoing coverage right here.

Meanwhile in Lebanon someone had spotted this Arabic language sign supporting Putin's reelection bid in the Hezbollah controlled southern suburbs of Beirut.

The Pope is Urging Ukraine to Wave the White Flag of Surrender

Pope Francis has urged Ukraine to have the courage of the “white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia. Ukraine's official United 24 media account tweeted a screenshot of the Reuters article with a single message: “Nope.” Then the official account of that heroic landmine sniffing dog Patron retweeted United 24's message while adding this message: “Nope+”.

Protests Around the World

This past weekend there were a series of protests about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One was held in Tel Aviv and it was an anti-Netanyahu protest. Apparently the crowds have grown with each protest.

It looked like the Tel Aviv protest was largely peaceful.

In the US a group of pro-Palestinian activists interrupted a speech by Joe Biden during a campaign stop in Atlanta, Georgia. The person who shared this story on Twitter/X noted that it seemed like these activists never protest Republicans while writing off that protest as little more than an anti-Democrat op.

This one pro-Palestine protester in the UK went to a portrait of Lord Balfour that was hanging in Trinity College at the University of Cambridge and proceeded to spray red paint on it then taking a knife and slashing that portrait.

Another person noted that this protester was damaging that Lord Balfour portrait while carrying a high-end designer bag known as a Mulberry Cara backpack.

In Amsterdam pro-Palestinian activists held a protest outside of the National Holocaust Museum during that museum's grand opening, which included an appearance by Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Ukraine Wins Its First Oscar in That Nation's History

The film 20 Days in Mariupol has won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. It is the first Oscar that the nation of Ukraine has ever won for any of its films. You can now watch 20 Days in Mariupol on YouTube right here.

And speaking of the Oscars, Donald Trump once again demonstrated his amazing inability to keep his opinions to himself. He made a post on Truth Social where he insulted host Jimmy Kimmel while the show was still on the air. Here's the original post as screenshot and shared by The Lincoln Project.

Kimmel learned about Trump's post and he responded live by reading that post on the air and making his own hilarious commentary about it.

The Katie Britt Fiasco Continues

Last week I wrote about Alabama Senator Katie Britt's response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address that is the most bizarre response you'll ever see. It was so bad that it became the target of last weekend's Saturday Night Live sketch. Scarlett Johanssen did a great job at channeling Britt's anger being channeled through a very breathy baby voice.

Interesting Stories You Should Know About

How Ukraine's LGBTQ community have been active in resisting the Russian invasion of their country.

The network of Russian propaganda: What connects Western “experts” promoting narratives beneficial to Russia. (Link includes a chart that shows how these pro-Western propagandists are aligned with each other.)

If you want to know how Donald Trump became the person that he is today, read about the life story of his first lawyer, Roy Cohn.

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