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A third round of peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations ended without progress on Monday, as a deepening humanitarian crisis pushed the Biden administration to consider kneeing Russia in the energy sector.
- Ukraine has rejected a Kremlin proposal to open humanitarian corridors for its citizens to flee to Russia and Belarus, instead of to the West, calling it “unacceptable.” Russian troops have continued shelling evacuation routes for civilians, leaving about 200,000 residents trapped in the city of Mariupol without water or power. A New York Times team witnessed the horrific moment that a mortar shell killed four civilians (link warning: graphic photo) as they tried to flee Irpin, near Kyiv, on Sunday.
- More than 1.7 million Ukrainians have now fled the country, according to the U.N. refugee agency, in Europe’s fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II. Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent in nearly 100 percent of the forces he had amassed along the Ukrainian border, a senior Defense Department official said on Monday. Russia has also begun trying to recruit Syrian fighters to aid its invasion.
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the U.S. was in “very active discussions” with its European allies about the possibility of banning imports of Russian oil, but the U.S. may wind up going it alone, and senior lawmakers from both parties said Monday they had reached a deal on a bill to do so. (Another proposed bipartisan bill would ban Russian oil permanently, and require that those imports be replaced with clean energy.) Blinken also said that the administration was in talks with Poland on a possible deal to send Soviet-era fighter jets to Ukraine.
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Russia continues to grow more isolated, as Western companies move to step up the economic pressure and react to Putin’s new censorship law.
- Visa and Mastercard suspended their operations in the country on Saturday, following a request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a private video call with members of Congress. (Russian cardholders will still be able to use their cards to pay for things, but Russia’s National Payment Card System will have to process the transactions.) TikTok and Netflix have also blocked most of their services in Russia, after Putin signed a law that criminalizes sharing “false information” about the invasion.
- Russia’s crackdown on dissent was painfully visible over the weekend. Authorities arrested more than 4,300 anti-war protesters on Sunday, each of whom could face up to 15 years in prison under the new law. The end results of the Kremlin’s propaganda narratives are also heartbreaking: Many Ukrainians have found themselves in the surreal position of trying to convince relatives in Russia that they are, in fact, under attack.
The Biden administration had been reluctant to ban Russian oil imports for fear of driving up Americans’ gas prices. But as evidence of Russia’s human-rights abuses and war crimes pile up, and with military actions that would start a direct war off the table, that calculation may be about to change.
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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
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Disney CEO Bob Chapek would like the LGTBQ+ community to know that it has the company’s “unwavering commitment” as long as that doesn’t require saying anything that might piss off Republicans. Otherwise, welcome to waver city! Disney has refused to take a stand against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, after having donated money to each of its sponsors and co-sponsors. In a company-wide Monday memo addressing the backlash to that silence, Chapek wrote that the company hadn’t denounced the bill because such statements “are often weaponized by one side or the other to further divide and inflame.” But Disney will totally have the LGBTQ+ community’s back, Chapek assured employees, by continuing to produce “inspiring content” like Modern Family. Chapek himself is reportedly more conservative than his predecessor and has made personal donations to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Anyway, while Chapek was worrying about making Disney seem too liberal, the chief spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) accused anyone who opposes the bill of probably being a pedophile. A powerful time to remain neutral!
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- Two intruders drove through a checkpoint at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday night around the time Vice President Kamala Harris landed there. Authorities arrested one of them, an armed 17-year-old; the other fled the base.
- Russia has detained WNBA star Brittney Griner on drug charges, saying in a Saturday statement that the arrest happened at some point in February. The State Department has issued a new travel advisory urging U.S. citizens in Russia to leave immediately.
- The pandemic’s official global death toll has surpassed six million, which is almost certainly a vast undercount.
- A series of tornadoes killed seven people, including two children, in central Iowa on Saturday.
- Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is registered to vote at a mobile home in North Carolina where he’s never even spent the night, according to the home’s previous owner, suggesting we may have finally found some voter fraud.
- Former Attorney General Bill Barr said he’d vote for Donald Trump again if he’s the GOP nominee in 2024, unable to resist a second round of perfect ideas like ‘put a Chinese flag on fighter jets that only the U.S. uses, bomb Russia, and tell Russia that China did it.’
- A new dark-money group plans to spend millions this year to try to disbar more than 100 lawyers who worked on Donald Trump’s Big Lie lawsuits, in an effort to deter lawyers from joining any future GOP coup attempts.
- The Supreme Court declined to review the sexual-assault case against Bill Cosby, leaving in place a decision that vacated his conviction and freed him from prison.
- A Russian gymnast wore the ‘Z’ symbol Russia’s military uses to rally support for its invasion of Ukraine, on the medal podium of a World Cup event next to the Ukrainian winner.
- The “People’s Convoy” drove around the Beltway for a second day on Monday, where participants were once again quickly separated by DC traffic. Consider the libs owned.
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America’s first right-wing Spanish-language network will launch on SiriusXM radio on Tuesday, cranking open an exciting new firehose of GOP disinformation just in time for the midterms. The network, Americano, will expand to streaming TV this summer. Its chief strategy officer is former Trump campaign and White House adviser Michael Caputo, a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist whom you might remember from such career triumphs as “pressuring CDC scientists to revise unflattering COVID-19 reports.”
Meanwhile, at least in Texas, the GOP’s recent gains among Hispanic voters seem to be solidifying. In the state’s 16 most heavily Hispanic counties, 27 percent of last week’s primary voters cast a ballot in the GOP primary, compared to just 15 percent in 2018. In Starr County, where 0.2 percent of primary votes were cast in the GOP primary in 2018, that share jumped to 24 percent on Tuesday. The shift in Republican-primary participation in those 16 counties was nearly three times the movement toward Republicans statewide. Recent polling suggests that Republicans have held onto their 2020 gains among Hispanic voters nationwide—it’s not clear that Democrats have lost more support, but they haven’t gained any back, either.
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If you have investments, odds are high that your money has been winding up in places you would never put it on purpose. Places like Mitch McConnell’s campaign coffers. Here’s the problem: A lot of Americans own S&P 500 index funds—these are funds made up of the 500 largest U.S. publicly traded companies available, and they collectively contain over $1.5 trillion dollars of Americans’ retirement money.
Unfortunately, when you buy an S&P 500 index fund, you’re buying stock in the following companies:
- First Energy, which just paid a $230M penalty related to a bribery scandal involving Ohio Republicans.
- Wynn Resorts, one of the top contributors to Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the GOP.
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AT&T, which is already back supporting the election objectors in Congress, as well as the GOP sponsors of Texas’s abortion ban and voter-suppression law. It’s also a top donor to Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham.
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Halliburton, one of the nation’s biggest defense contractors, which has funneled millions to the GOP.
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Lockheed Martin, which is one the largest weapons manufacturers in the world and one of Lindsey Graham’s top contributors.
The list goes on. But before you stuff all of your savings in your mattress and call it a day, you should know about DEMZ.
DEMZ is the first investment product that allows you to get similar performance and exposure you would expect from the S&P 500, without all the Mitch McConnell. It only includes companies who have made over 75% of their political contributions to Democratic causes and candidates. DEMZ has outperformed the S&P 500 since its launch in November of 2020.
You can finally put your money where your vote is, even on Wall Street. Look for the DEMZ ticker wherever you invest, or visit DEMZ.fund to learn more.
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The Supreme Court, of all things, rejected Republicans’ requests to block state court rulings that threw out gerrymandered maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
A North Carolina baby has thrived after receiving a heart transplant with a new technique to help prevent rejection.
The EPA has proposed a new rule to curb nitrogen oxide and carbon pollution from heavy trucks.
Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) has pledged to veto an anti-trans sports bill that Utah Republicans passed on Friday.
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