Crooked Media - What A Day: No counteroffense taken

In the weeks since Ukraine’s counteroffensive began, progress has been slow, and western officials are starting to grow concerned.
 

• Two western officials and a senior United States military official told CNN that the early phases of Ukraine’s counteroffensive are “not meeting expectations on any front,” and Russian forces are showing more competence than early assessments expected. Russian lines of defense are reportedly proving to be well-fortified, and they have had success pushing back Ukraine with missile attacks, mines, and air attacks. 
   

• The officials made sure to stress that the counteroffensive is still in its early days, and Western allies “remain optimistic” that Ukraine will be able to make territorial gains as the mission progresses. They also mentioned that Ukrainian forces have skillfully adapted to Russian tactics, and have had more success targeting and shooting down Russian aircrafts of late.
   

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, who heads the Russian Wagner Mercenary Group (and whom we should always remember is an unreliable narrator) poured gasoline on his weird feud with the Kremlin’s top brass on Thursday when he accused them of lying to President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people about the scale of Russian losses and setbacks in Ukraine. The Wagner Group led the Russian capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut last month, and Prigozhin has taken a defiant, public “I’m doin’ all the work around here and I get no respect,” stance with the Russian government.

Russian and Ukrainian officials are trading accusations of military sabotage that seem to point towards further escalation of the conflict. 
 

• Russian-backed officials in southern Ukraine have accused Kyiv of using long-range missiles supplied by the United Kingdom to strike the Chonhar Bridge, which connects the Kherson region (mainland Ukraine) to the Crimean peninsula. The strike came just two days after the Kremlin threatened to attack Ukraine’s “decision-making centers” if western-supplied missiles were used against the Russian-annexed Crimea. 

• On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the country’s intelligence services have warned him that Russia is considering carrying out a “terrorist act” on a nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. The plant is currently under Russian occupation, and Zelenskyy said he had received information that the occupying troops were planning an attack that would release radiation to the surrounding region. The Kremlin responded later in the day with spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling it “another lie” shortly after Zelenskyy’s video was released. The Kremlin’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted on Thursday as saying that the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Mariano Grossi would meet with the head of Russia’s state nuclear company in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on Friday. 

Now that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway, both countries are trying to maintain a posture of strength in the face of escalating violence, and western allies are waiting with bated breath hoping that their efforts and aid are enough to help Ukraine regain its territory.

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Saturday will mark the one-year anniversary of the fateful Dobbs decision, which rescinded the constitutional right to abortion. New research shows that, as many pro-choice activists long predicted, the consequences for women’s health have been devastating. A poll by KFF, a health-research nonprofit, uncovered that, beyond simply restricting access to abortion, the end of Roe increased maternal mortality, affected how pregnancy-related medical emergencies are managed, and triggered an increase in requests for sterilization. The poll was conducted on a random sample of 569 board-certified OBGYNs across the country. Many of them reported that post-Roe restrictions have made their jobs more difficult and legally precarious than before, all while leading to worse patient outcomes. Seventy percent of respondents said the Dobbs ruling has widened severe racial inequities in maternal health care. Dobbs immediately rendered common but serious patient emergencies such as miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and other complications immediately subject to delays and denials of care. More than half of the doctors polled said the decision has broadly hurt their profession, and has made it harder to attract new OBGYNs to the field.

The Titanic tourist submersible apparently imploded under intense water pressure and its five passengers are presumed dead, according to officials. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy shelved a sham impeachment vote against President Biden introduced by MAGA whackjob Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), because even most Republican lawmakers didn’t want to take it. 

The United States Census Bureau confirmed that Hispanic Texans outnumber White Texans for the first time after trending in that direction for years. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) explained why she reportedly called Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) “A little bitch” on the House floor by telling Semafor: “She has genuinely been a nasty little bitch to me.” Love this for them!

We finally know who put up $500,000 in bail for Rep. George Santos (R-NY) after he was arrested by federal authorities, and it turns out it was just his father and his aunt, who are, we assume, the last two people on this cursed planet who can stand him. 

The North Atlantic Ocean is experiencing off-the-charts surface temperatures, particularly around the United Kingdom and Ireland, where an “exceptional” marine heat wave is in progress. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to fight Tesla CEO in a cage match, because we live in the dumbest possible reality. We can only hope this is a “Two billionaires enter, no billionaires leave,” situation.

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer unveiled a comprehensive congressional effort to set new rules and regulations for artificial intelligence, one that would more closely connect A.I. experts with lawmakers as they try to catch up to the European Union’s considerable head start in creating guardrails to protect the population from A.I. through legislation. Schumer outlined a new process by which Congress would field input from industry representatives, scholars, and consumer advocates in order to get lawmakers (who, to put it generously, are not tech-savvy people) up-to-speed on the complicated topic and thereby expedite regulation. Key lawmakers across the upper chamber will be deputized by Schumer to develop bipartisan proposals to address concerns about A.I.’s potential impact on privacy, intellectual property, and national security. Lawmakers are under the gun to create new protections against AI-related abuses while the technology is still nascent. The Biden administration and other federal agencies have launched their own initiatives to keep A.I. in check in recent months, but Schumer’s plan is the most concerted congressional effort thus far. “Chuck Schumer vs. A.I.” is, of course, the battle royale we have all long wanted to see.

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A federal judge struck down a Florida statute banning state Medicaid payments for transgender health care on Wednesday, the second blow to anti-trans legislation in Florida in just two weeks. We love to see it. 

Two high-profile claims of 2020 election fraud in Fulton County, GA, were formally dismissed by state officials on Thursday.