Crooked Media - What A Day: State of the UN(ion)

 -Pat Robertson chiming in with the hottest Putin take of all

Russia has escalated its attacks on civilian areas in major Ukrainian cities, while continuing to struggle with failed supply lines, low troop morale, and overwhelming global condemnation.
 

• Early on Tuesday morning, a Russian military strike hit Kharkiv’s Freedom Square, the cultural center of Ukraine’s second-largest city. Horrifying video footage shows a missile hitting a local government building and a fireball engulfing vehicles on the street below. Officials said that at least seven people were killed, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack as a war crime and “state terrorism.” 
   
• Russia also bombed the main television and radio tower in Kyiv, killing at least five people in the area and knocking broadcasts off the air. The attack also damaged the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Site, where Nazis killed nearly all of Kyiv’s Jewish population during World War II, as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s celebrated de-Nazification campaign continues to go off without a hitch.
   
• Human rights groups and Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. have accused Russia of using vacuum bombs and cluster bombs, weapons that have widely denounced by international organizations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday condemned Russia for killing civilians and suggested that it should be booted from the UN Human Rights Council:  "One can reasonably ask whether a UN member state that tries to take over another UN member state—while committing horrific human rights abuses and causing massive humanitarian suffering—should be allowed to remain on this Council."

A vast military convoy outside Kyiv suggested that more brutal attacks on the capital may be imminent.
 

• A 40-mile-long Russian convoy sat motionless about 20 miles north of Kyiv on Tuesday, according to the Pentagon, as Russian forces appeared to regroup from an unexpectedly rough few days. A senior Pentagon official said that some Russian troops had surrendered en masse or punched holes in their own gas tanks to avoid fighting, and the U.S. has reportedly seen indications that many young conscripts had no idea they were being sent into combat. 
   
• Meanwhile, Russia’s international shunning continues. The three largest shipping companies will suspend deliveries to and from Russia, Apple has paused the sale of its products in the country, and Visa and Mastercard have blocked Russian banks from their networks. More than 100 UN diplomats from 40 nations staged a walkout when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov began to address the Human Rights Council on Tuesday. And as Americans rally behind Ukraine, Republicans who defended disgraced former president Donald Trump after he withheld military aid to Ukrainians sure do hope that you won’t remember that.

Military analysts fear that Russian forces are now planning to encircle Kyiv, and say that Russia’s worsening assaults on residential areas are an ominous sign of where the war is headed. It remains utterly unclear what Putin has to gain when it gets there. 

 Tell the Biden Administration to Cancel Student Debt 

The cost of higher education has grown exponentially in our country, placing it out of reach for most students and families unless they agree to take on huge amounts of debt. Over 44 million Americans carry more than $1.7 trillion of student debt. This crushing burden is preventing millions from buying homes, starting businesses, saving for retirement, or even starting families: And that reality falls heaviest on communities of color – particularly Black people and especially Black women – as a direct result of systemic racism.

That's why we’re urging the Biden Administration to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt per borrower  – and we need as many people with us as possible. Add your name to our petition to join us in action today.

Centuries of structural inequities and racism have created large barriers in access to education for Black communities. For instance, Black families have far less generational wealth to draw on to pay for college than white families – and as a result, are more likely to take on student loans and struggle with repayment, which is exacerbated by job discrimination and pay disparities. Two decades after taking out student loans, the median Black borrower still owes 95 percent of debt, whereas the median white borrower has paid off 94 percent of debt.

But canceling student debt can help close the racial wealth gap by over 20 percent – securing financial stability and economic mobility for Black, Latinx, and other people of color who are disproportionately burdened by loans, while addressing the debt crisis for millions.

It’s a common-sense solution and there is no reason to wait: Sign our petition telling the Biden administration to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt per eligible borrower now.

Thanks for taking action, 
The ACLU Team

President Biden will deliver his State of the Union address tonight, with a major focus on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. response. Biden will reportedly announce that the U.S. will close its airspace to Russian aircraft. Ukraine's Ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, will be in attendance as a guest of First Lady Jill Biden. The speech will also be a chance for Biden, whose approval rating is less than great, to tout the country’s economic recovery and progress against the pandemic, and make the case for Congress to retrieve the rest of his policy agenda from Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) houseboat garbage disposal and get it passed. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) will deliver the GOP response, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) will deliver a progressive response supporting Biden and the Build Back Better agenda, and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), who criticized Tlaib for doing so, will be on a panel delivering the, um, No Labels response. Should be quite an evening! Watch the speech with live Crooked commentary on our Group Thread, starting at 8:45 p.m. ET/5:45 p.m. PT.

• The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has, horrendously, begun investigating the parents of trans kids for possible child abuse, according to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. An employee at the agency was placed on leave because she has a 16-year-old transgender child. Here’s where to support trans youth in Texas, if you’re able.
   
• The low-dose Pfizer COVID vaccine seems to be much less effective at protecting kids ages five to 11 from infection than the high-dose version for adults, according to a new study, but it does provide strong protection against serious illness.
   
• California, Oregon, and Washington will drop their school mask mandates on March 12, with each state leaving mask requirement decisions up to school districts. 
   
• GuiYing Ma, who was attacked last year in Queens by a man with a rock, has died after 10 weeks in a coma. At least three other Asian Americans have died after violent attacks in New York in just the last two months. 
   
• A man shot and killed his three children, their chaperone, and himself during a supervised visit at a church in Sacramento on Monday. The children's mother had a restraining order against him, which should have prevented him from having a gun.
   
• The U.S. and its allies have agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil from their reserves in an effort to keep gas prices down amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
   
• Three House Republicans voted against a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime: Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Chip Roy (R-TX), and Andrew Clyde (R-GA). 
   
• Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) rejected President Biden’s request to send Florida National Guard members to help protect Washington, DC, during the State of the Union, upholding the GOP’s proud commitment to supporting political violence.
   
• The cargo ship full of luxury cars that caught on fire has sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, in juuuust the right spot to fuck up a fragile ecosystem.
   
• World Taekwondo has stripped Vladimir Putin of his honorary black belt, a sanction so extreme that NATO dared not even consider it. 

Big Tech companies have finally begun taking stronger steps to stem the flood of Russian propaganda and war misinformation on their platforms, under mounting pressure from Western officials. YouTube, Meta, and TikTok have moved to block Russia state media outlets across Europe, Youtube and Meta have barred those outlets from selling ads on their platforms, and Twitter said it would start labeling all tweets with links to Russian state-affiliated media. The platforms’ efforts to address Russian propaganda ahead of the invasion have been found wanting: While Facebook pledged in 2019 to label state-controlled media, a study released on Friday found that the platform was failing to label 91 percent of posts containing Russian propaganda about Ukraine.

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The Labor Department is set to begin rolling out millions in grants to promote equity in unemployment insurance programs.

The Oregon Senate has approved bill that would guarantee due process for undocumented immigrants in deportation court.

Rhode Island has opened up applications for a pilot program that will establish harm reduction centers to prevent overdoses.

The House has voted unanimously to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the only all-female, all-Black unit that was deployed overseas during World War II.