Russians hold anti-war rallies amid ominous threats by Putin

By DASHA LITVINOVA TODAY

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Police detain a demonstrator during an action against Russia's attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. Protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine resumed on Sunday, with people taking to the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and other Russian towns for the third straight day despite mass arrests. 

(AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)


MOSCOW (AP) — From Moscow to Siberia, Russian anti-war activists took to the streets again Sunday to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the arrests of hundreds of protesters each day by police.

Demonstrators held pickets and marched in city centers, chanting “No to war!” as President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian nuclear deterrent to be put on high alert, upping the ante in the Kremlin’s standoff with the West and stoking fears of a nuclear war.

“I have two sons and I don’t want to give them to that bloody monster. War is a tragedy for all of us,” 48-year-old Dmitry Maltsev, who joined the rally in St. Petersburg, told The Associated Press.

Protests against the invasion started Thursday in Russia and have continued daily ever since, even as Russian police have moved swiftly to crack down on the rallies and detain protesters. The Kremlin has sought to downplay the protests, insisting that a much broader share of Russians support the assault on Ukraine.

In St. Petersburg, where several hundred gathered in the city center, police in full riot gear were grabbing one protester after another and dragging some into police vans, even though the demonstration was peaceful. Footage from Moscow showed police throwing several female protesters on the ground before dragging them away.

According to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests, by Sunday evening police detained at least 1,474 Russians in 45 cities over anti-war demonstrations that day.

Police detain a demonstrator with a poster which reads "The war with Ukraine is a shame and a crime" during an action against Russia's attack on Ukraine in Omsk, Russia, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. Protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine resumed on Sunday, with people taking to the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and other Russian towns for the third straight day despite mass arrests. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Sofiychuk)

Four days into the the fighting that has killed scores, Putin raised the stakes dramatically on Sunday, ordering the military Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, citing Western countries “taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere” and “top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country.”

The day before, the U.S. and its European allies have warned that the coming round of sanctions could include freezing hard currency reserves of Russia’s Central Bank and cutting Russia off SWIFT international payment system. The unprecedented move could quickly plunge the Russian economy into chaos.

Ordinary Russians fear that stiff sanctions will deliver a crippling blow to the country’s economy. Since Thursday, Russians have been flocking to banks and ATMs to withdraw cash, creating long lines and reporting on social media about ATM machines running out of bills.

According to Russia’s Central Bank, on Thursday alone Russians withdrew 111 billion rubles (about $1.3 billion) in cash.

The anti-war protests on Sunday appeared smaller and more scattered than the ones that took place on the first day of Russia’s attack in Ukraine, when thousands of people rallied in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but their true scale was hard to assess and they seemed to pick up speed as the day went on.

“It is a crime both against Ukraine and Russia. I think it is killing both Ukraine and Russia. I am outraged, I haven’t slept for three nights, and I think we must now declare very loudly that we don’t want to be killed and don’t want Ukraine to be killed,” said Olga Mikheeva, who protested in the Siberian city of Irkutsk.

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Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Irina Titova in St. Petersburg contributed reporting.

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Follow all AP stories on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

Anti-war sentiment grows in Russia despite govt crackdown

By DASHA LITVINOVA and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

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Police officers detain a woman in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Shocked Russians turned out by the thousands Thursday to decry their country's invasion of Ukraine as emotional calls for protests grew on social media. Some 1,745 people in 54 Russian cities were detained, at least 957 of them in Moscow. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)


MOSCOW (AP) — As Russian troops were closing in on the Ukrainian capital, more and more Russians spoke out Saturday against the invasion, even as the government’s official rhetoric grew increasingly harsher.

Street protests, albeit small, resumed in the Russian capital of Moscow, the second-largest city of St. Petersburg and other Russian cities for the third straight day, with people taking to the streets despite mass detentions on Thursday and Friday. According to OVD-Info, rights group that tracks political arrests, at least 460 people in 34 cities were detained over anti-war protests on Saturday, including over 200 in Moscow.

Open letters condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kept pouring, too. More than 6,000 medical workers put their names under one on Saturday; over 3,400 architects and engineers endorsed another while 500 teachers signed a third one. Similar letters by journalists, municipal council members, cultural figures and other professional groups have been making the rounds since Thursday.

A prominent contemporary art museum in Moscow called Garage announced Saturday it was halting its work on exhibitions and postponing them “until the human and political tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine has ceased.”

“We cannot support the illusion of normality when such events are taking place,” the statement by the museum read. “We see ourselves as part of a wider world that is not divided by war.”

An online petition to stop the attack on Ukraine, launched shortly after it started on Thursday morning, garnered over 780,000 signatures by Saturday evening, making it one of the most supported online petitions in Russia in recent years.

Statements decrying the invasion even came from some parliament members, who earlier this week voted to recognize the independence of two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, a move that preceded the Russian assault. Two lawmakers from the Communist Party, which usually toes the Kremlin’s line, spoke out against the hostilities on social media.

Oleg Smolin said he “was shocked” when the attack started and “was convinced that military force should be used in politics only as a last resort.” His fellow lawmaker Mikhail Matveyev said “the war must be immediately stopped” and that he voted for “Russia becoming a shield against the bombing of Donbas, not for the bombing of Kyiv.”

Russian authorities, meanwhile, took a harsher stance towards those denouncing the invasion, both at home and abroad.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, said Moscow may respond to Western sanctions by opting out of the last nuclear arms deal with the U.S., cutting diplomatic ties with Western nations and freezing their assets

He also warned that Moscow could restore the death penalty after Russia was removed from Europe’s top rights group — a chilling statement that shocked human rights activists in a country that has had a moratorium on capital punishment since August 1996.

Demonstrators shout slogans in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Shocked Russians turned out by the thousands Thursday to decry their country's invasion of Ukraine as emotional calls for protests grew on social media. Some 1,745 people in 54 Russian cities were detained, at least 957 of them in Moscow. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Kremlin human rights council, deplored it as a “catastrophe” and a “return to the Middle Ages.”

The Western sanctions imposed new tight restrictions on Russian financial operations, a draconian ban on technology exports to Russia and froze the assets of Putin and his foreign minister. Russian membership in the Council of Europe was also suspended.

Washington and its allies say even tougher sanctions are possible, including kicking Russia out of SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions.

Medvedev was a placeholder president in 2008-2012 when Putin had to shift into the prime minister’s seat because of term limits. He then let Putin reclaim the presidency and served as his prime minister for eight years.

During his tenure as president, Medvedev was widely seen as more liberal compared with Putin, but on Saturday he made a series of threats that even the most hawkish Kremlin figures haven’t mentioned to date.

Medvedev noted that the sanctions offer the Kremlin a pretext to completely review its ties with the West, suggesting that Russia could opt out of the New START nuclear arms control treaty that limits the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.

The treaty, which Medvedev signed in 2010 with then-U.S. President Barack Obama, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance. The pact, the last remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control agreement, had been set to expire in February 2021 but Moscow and Washington extended it for another five years.

If Russia opts out of the agreement now, it will remove any checks on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and raise new threats to global security.

Medvedev also raised the prospect of cutting diplomatic ties with Western countries, charging that “there is no particular need in maintaining diplomatic relations.” Referring to Western threats to freeze the assets of Russian companies and individuals, Medvedev warned that Moscow wouldn’t hesitate to do the same.

Cracking down on critics at home, Russian authorities demanded that top independent news outlets take down stories about the fighting in Ukraine that deviated from the official government line.

Russia’s state communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, charged that reports about “Russian armed forces firing at Ukrainian cities and the death of civilians in Ukraine as a result of the actions of the Russian army, as well as materials in which the ongoing operation is called ‘an attack,’ ‘an invasion,’ or ‘a declaration of war’” were untrue and demanded that the outlets take them down or face steep fines and restrictions.

On Friday, the watchdog also announced “partial restrictions” on access to Facebook in response to the platform limiting the accounts of several Kremlin-backed media.

On Saturday, Russian internet users reported problems with accessing Facebook and Twitter, both of which have played a major role in amplifying dissent in Russia in recent years.

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Follow all AP stories on tensions and fighting over Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

On cusp of Biden speech, a state of disunity, funk and peril

By CALVIN WOODWARD and ZEKE MILLER

President Joe Biden speaks about Russia's invasion of Ukraine on a television at Shaws Tavern in Washington, Feb. 24, 2022. Biden will deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, March 1. 

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — In good times or bad, American presidents come to Congress with a diagnosis that hardly differs over the decades. In their State of the Union speeches, they declare “the state of our union is strong,” or words very much like it.

President Joe Biden’s fellow Americans, though, have other ideas about the state they’re in and little hope his State of the Union address Tuesday night can turn anything around.

America’s strength is being sharply tested from within — and now from afar — as fate, overnight, made Biden a wartime president in someone else’s conflict, leading the West’s response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine that makes all the other problems worse.

The state of the union is disunity and division. It’s a state of exhaustion from the pandemic. It’s about feeling gouged at the grocery store and gas pump. It’s so low that some Americans, including prominent ones, are exalting Russian President Vladimir Putin in his attack on a democracy.

Measures of happiness have hit a bottom, with fewer Americans saying they are very happy in the 2021 General Social Survey than ever before in five decades of asking them.

This what a grand funk looks like.

Biden will step up to the House speaker’s rostrum to address a nation in conflict with itself. The country is litigating how to keep kids safe and what to teach them, weary over orders to wear masks, bruised over an ignominious end to one war, in Afghanistan, and suddenly plenty worried about Russian expansionism. A speech designed to discuss the commonweal will be delivered to a nation that is having increasing difficulty finding much of anything in common.

Even now, a large segment of the country still clings to the lie that the last election was stolen.

THAT ‘M’ WORD

Four decades ago, President Jimmy Carter confronted a national “crisis of confidence” in a speech describing a national malaise without using that word. But Vice President Kamala Harris did when she told an interviewer last month “there is a level of malaise” in this country.

Today’s national psyche is one of fatigue and frustration — synonyms for the malaise of the 1970s. But the divides run deeper and solutions may be more elusive than the energy crisis, inflation and sense of drift of that time.

Take today’s climate of discourse. It’s “so cold,” said Rachel Hoopes, a charity executive in Des Moines, Iowa, who voted for Biden. “It’s hard to see how him talking to us can break through when so many people can’t talk to each other.”

It’s as if Americans need group therapy more than a set-piece speech to Congress.

“We have to feel good about ourselves before we can move forward,” historian Doris Kearns Goodwin told Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show.”

Yet in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s attack last week, a long-absent reflex kicked back in as members of Congress projected unity behind the president, at least for the moment, in the confrontation with Moscow. “We’re all together at this point,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, “and we need to be together about what should be done.”

Politics didn’t stop at the water’s edge but it paused. Though not at Mar-a-Lago’s ocean edge in Florida, where Donald Trump praised Putin’s “savvy,” “genius” move against the country that entangled the defeated American president in his first impeachment trial.

PICK YOUR POISON

White House officials acknowledge that the mood of the country is “sour,” but say they are also encouraged by data showing people’s lives are better off than a year ago. They say the national psyche is a “trailing indicator” and will improve with time.

Biden, in his speech, will highlight the improvements from a year ago — particularly on COVID and the economy — but also acknowledge that the job is not yet done, in recognition of the fact that many Americans don’t believe it.

A year into Biden’s presidency, polling indeed finds that he faces a critical and pessimistic public. Only 29% of Americans think the nation is on the right track, according to the February poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

In December’s AP-NORC poll, most said economic conditions are poor and inflation has hit them on food and gas. After two years of a pandemic that has killed more than 920,000 in the U.S., majorities put masks back on and avoided travel and crowds in January in the sweep of the omicron variant. Now, finally, a sustained drop in infections appears to be underway.

Most Americans are vaccinated against COVID-19, but debates over masks and mandates have torn apart communities and families.

With Biden so hemmed in by hardened politics, it’s difficult to imagine a single speech altering the public’s perception, said Julia Helm, 52, a Republican county auditor from the suburbs west of Des Moines.

“He’s got a lot of stuff on his plate,” she said. “You know what could change how people feel? And pretty fast? What they pay at the pump. I hate to say it. But gas prices really are the barometer.”

Biden suggested last summer that high inflation was a temporary inconvenience. But it’s snowballed in recent months to a defining challenge of his presidency, alongside, now, the threat of geopolitical instability from Russia’s attack on its neighbor.

Consumer prices over the past 12 months jumped 7.5%, the highest since 1982, as many pay raises were swallowed up and dreams of home ownership or even a used car became prohibitively expensive.

Inflation was a side effect of an economy running hot after the economically devastating first chapters of the pandemic, when Biden achieved the kind of growth that Presidents Barack Obama and Trump could not deliver.

The prime engine for both the gains and the inflation appears to be Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which pushed down the unemployment rate to a healthy 4% while boosting economic growth to 5.7% last year — the best performance since 1984.

SINKING POLLS

Still, voters have largely overlooked those gains as inflation bit. The February AP-NORC poll found that more people disapproved than approved of how Biden is handling his job as president, 55% to 44%.

That was a reversal from early in his presidency. As recently as July 2020, about 60% said they approved of Biden in AP-NORC polls.

After four years of Trump’s provocations from the White House, Hoopes, 38, the Des Moines charity executive, finds Biden to be a “nonthreatening” leader, a “decent person, someone it seems you could talk to.”

“He seems to be a quiet decision-maker,” she said. “But I don’t know if that’s good or bad for him or the country right now.”

The most she could say about Biden’s State of the Union speech is that “it can’t hurt.”

That’s about the most that historians say about it, too.

THE SPEECH

If State of the Union addresses are remembered at all, it’s generally because feathers were ruffled on a night of tradition and forced comity: Obama admonishing the Supreme Court justices seated in front of him for their ruling on campaign finance laws in 2010; Justice Samuel Alito mouthing “not true in response,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., ripping up Trump’s speech in disgust in 2020.

In 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., was reprimanded by fellow Republicans and lacerated by Democats for shouting “you lie” at Obama when he spoke to Congress about his health care plan.

“Inaugural addresses sometimes do have an impact because they are big picture, far horizon speeches,” said political scientist Cal Jillson of Southern Methodist University. “State of the Unions rarely do because they tend to be listy rather than thematic.”

Among presidents of the last half century, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama and Trump repeatedly declared “the state of our union is strong” while Bush’s father took a pass and Gerald Ford confessed: “I must say to you that the state of the union is not good.”

Trump being Trump and Clinton being Clinton, both additionally claimed that the state of the union had never been stronger than on the nights they said it.

Whatever diagnostic phrase Biden chooses, his task is to promote an agenda and plausibly claim credit for positive developments over the last year “without a mission accomplished moment,” Jillson said. “That’s delicate. It’s delicate to claim credit for the economic recovery ... and still acknowledge people’s pains and fears.”

Biden comes to Congress with some missions actually accomplished, like his historic infrastructure package, as well big dreams deferred.

He still wants to “Build Back Better.” In the funk of these times, Americans just seem to want someone to wake them up when it’s all over.

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Emily Swanson and Hannah Fingerhut in Washington and Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Biden’s Russia sanctions may let Moscow profit from oil, gas,STEEL AND ALUMINUM

By JOSH BOAK

The tanker Sun Arrows loads its cargo of liquefied natural gas from the Sakhalin-2 project in the port of Prigorodnoye, Russia, Oct. 29, 2021. There is a glaring carve-out in President Joe Biden's sanctions against Russia: Oil and natural gas from that country will continue to flow freely to the rest of the world and money will keep flowing into Russia. (AP Photo, File)

There is a glaring carve-out in President Joe Biden’s sanctions against Russia: Oil and natural gas from that country will continue to flow freely to the rest of the world and money will keep flowing into Russia.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden defended his decision to preserve access to Russian energy in order “to limit the pain the American people are feeling at the gas pump.” But some academics, lawmakers and other analysts say that excluding an industry at the heart of the Russian economy essentially limits the sanctions and could embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Energy exports are the whole game,” said Columbia University historian Adam Tooze, an expert on finance and European politics. Politicians in the United States and Europe chose to “carve out the one sector that might truly be decisive. I don’t think Russia is blind to what is going on and it must indicate to them that the West does not really have the stomach for a painful fight over Ukraine.”

As part of a broader international push, Biden announced sanctions on Thursday that target Russian banks and the country’s elites, and restrict the export of vital technologies that are key for the military and economic development. The U.S. and its European allies intensified the sanctions on Saturday by announcing plans to freeze the reserves of Russia’s central bank and block certain financial institutions from the SWIFT messaging system for international payments.

But the rules issued by the Treasury Department allow Russian energy transactions to keep going through nonsanctioned banks that are not based in the U.S. And administration officials stress that the sanctions are designed to minimize any disruptions to the global energy markets.

U.S. crude oil prices closed Friday just below $92 a barrel, right where they were in the days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Still, gasoline prices at the pump are up more than 33% from a year ago to a national average of $3.57 a gallon, according to AAA.

Inflation, at a 40-year peak and fueled in large part by gas prices, has hurt Biden politically with voters heading into the November elections.

The sanctions created a possible trade-off for the president between his political interests at home and abroad. By invading Ukraine, Russia has potentially fed into the supply chain problems and inflation that have been a crucial weakness for Biden, who now is trying to strike a balance between penalizing Putin and sparing American voters.

Biden specifically highlighted the Russian energy carve-outs as a virtue because they would help to protect U.S. families and businesses from higher prices.

“Our sanctions package we specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue,” he said.

Those domestic politics — which also apply to many European leaders — produced a set of sanctions that Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., on Thursday said he fears “will be inadequate to deter Putin from further aggression.”

“The administration is intentionally leaving the biggest industry in Russia’s economy virtually untouched,” Toomey said. “The sanctions imposed on Russian banks, while welcome, may not isolate the Russian financial system from international activity. That’s why the U.S. should impose crippling sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector.”

But Biden also needs to consider the needs of his European allies. Natural gas from Russia accounts for one-third of Europe’s consumption of the fossil fuel. Restricting the world’s largest exporter of natural gas and second-largest exporter of oil, after Saudi Arabia, could hurt the unity that U.S. officials say is key to confronting Putin.

This dependence on Russia could limit the potential devastation of sanctions.

“It would definitely be more damaging to Russia if the energy sector was included in the sanctions package,” Mark Finley, a fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said in an emailed statement. “Oil royalties & taxes generally account for about 40% of Russian federal government revenues.”

Finley noted that Russia has relied on oil and natural gas revenues in recent years to build its stockpile of foreign reserves above $600 billion, specifically so it could insulate itself from financial sanctions. But that financial cushion may ultimately be at risk from the added U.S. and European sanctions.

Should there be a loss of oil and natural gas from Russia, the U.S. appears unable to quickly increase production of oil and natural gas, while OPEC-plus countries have yet to publicly commit to substantially more production.

Domestic oil and gas companies are dealing with tight supplies of rigs, sand, truckers and laborers needed to drill for oil and gas, said Jen Snyder, managing director at Enverus, an energy analytics firm. She noted that one supplier said its most modern and efficient rigs are all contracted out through the end of the year.

“All these constraints can be bridged, but it takes time,” Snyder added.

Natural gas supplies in Europe have been extremely tight. But gas producers in the U.S. cannot quickly export more gas into the global market. That’s because to ship natural gas overseas, it has to be cooled and converted into liquefied natural gas at LNG export facilities, and in the U.S. those facilities are operating at capacity.

In the face of sanctions over Putin’s 2014 invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine, the country’s elites and insider corporations learned to adapt, often transferring their assets into newly created shell entities with a clean record. Those strategies are now being put to the test, though access to oil has been a consistent loophole that other countries in a similar predicament exploited in the past with Russia’s help.

Putin’s government has helped tutor other U.S. adversaries such as Iran and Venezuela on how to circumvent Washington’s controls, said Marshall Billingslea, who helped set sanctions policy for the Trump administration.

“Sanctions enforcement is inherently a cat and mouse game and they’ve had eight years, ever since Crimea, to set up alternative mechanisms to keep hard currency flowing to the regime,” Billingslea said.

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Associated Press writers Joshua Goodman in Miami and Cathy Bussewitz in New York contributed to this report.

Ukraine invasion spotlights the delicate state of democracy

By TED ANTHONY

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Protesters hold a placard reading "Stop Putin" during a demonstration at Odeonsplatz against Russia's attack on Ukraine, Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022.(Tobias Hase/dpa via AP)


The secretary-general of the United Nations opened the most recent annual meeting of Earth’s leaders with a bleak assessment of the planet’s state of affairs. Humanity, he said, faced “a moment of truth.”

“Peace. Human rights. Dignity for all. Equality. Justice. Solidarity. Like never before, core values are in the crosshairs,” Antonio Guterres said. “A sense of impunity is taking hold.”

Guterres’ message to the U.N. General Assembly takes on even more relevance with the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine. Those things he outlined? They are bedrock principles of democracy — a once-on-the-upswing method of human governance that in recent years has been taking body blows across the world.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion advances the anti-democratic trend – one that has seen strongmen, some elected, prod their nations toward dictatorship and ignore once-solid democratic norms. In doing so, they are collectively pounding at the door of democracy’s always-delicate house.

The invasion is “surely a watershed moment for the future of global democracy,” says Stephen E. Hanson, a professor of government at William & Mary College in Virginia and author of “Post-Imperial Democracies,” which in part examines Russia after the Soviet Union dissolved.

In recent years, the ascent of a group of what some consider dictators within democracies — Putin, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Narendra Modi of India, Viktor Orbán of Hungary — has gradually chipped away at the outer boundaries of democratic systems while still talking the talk of democratic principles. Appearing democratic, it seems, is the new democracy.

In the United States, Donald Trump has produced similar concerns, stoked by his ongoing claims of a stolen election. That has helped inspire efforts to change state laws to limit access to polls, and to stock election administration roles with allies, stoking fears that a free and fair vote may be overturned in a nation that was, until recently, a beacon for the world’s democracies.

The rub: Each of these leaders has been chosen by their people — or, at least, by democratic-style systems. “Globally, populists that undermine democratic norms have gained more traction in elections over the past 20 years,” says Douglas Page, a political scientist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.

This gradual rebranding of democracy for the 21st century has been exacerbated by leaders of more traditionally authoritarian governments who call their systems democratic, too. Even China’s Xi Jinping, never a democrat, has maneuvered his nation’s hybrid of communist tenets and market economy into a personality-driven rule that is presented as a form of democracy.

So when Putin orders the invasion of Ukraine in a manner that tacitly invokes democratic principles even as he circumvents them, he offers up a face of democracy as viewed through a glass, darkly. Experts say this is designed to give him cover as a democratic leader at home while allowing him to do pretty much what he wants elsewhere.

“The space he holds on the democratic scale, he is not a full-blown authoritarian leader. He doesn’t have the same means available to oppress his people. He still has democratic elements, even though they’re vanishing,” says Stefanie Kasparek, an assistant professor of government at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania who studies international political institutions.

Not that Putin has worried excessively about appearing democratic. At home, he has spent years harshly stamping out both public dissent and political opposition, targeting rivals and jailing opposition party leader Alexei Navalny, whom the Kremlin declared a terrorist last month. Nevertheless, says Kasparek, “There are democratic elements that he can’t fully ignore.”

That was illustrated Tuesday when Russia’s upper legislative house, the Federation Council, voted unanimously to allow Putin to use military force outside the country. Yet the ask — largely pro forma, given Putin’s level of authority — gave him cover to say that his actions were endorsed by democratic systems within his own nation.

“Democracy led to Putin being in power in the first place and has served him considerably as a tool to keep power,” Crystal Brown, a political and social scientist at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts who studies the effect of institutions on global political systems, said in an email.

Why is the appearance of democracy — or, at least, the surface reliance on it even when a leader’s actions seem undemocratic — so important? It’s a complex question.

In Putin’s case, while his through-line may be a glorious re-aggregation of the Soviet Union, he is playing to a domestic audience that includes many who turned their back on that same communist-era collection of republics — and in some cases did so using democracy as a North Star. To them, the principle is important.

So Putin deploys raw power externally, in everything from his approach in Crimea to the online attacks on U.S. elections — and thus is able to flout the West, which holds itself up as democracy’s standard-bearer. Internally, he is constrained by the support he needs from those inside Russia wary of dictatorial authority being used against them.

This two-pronged approach to democracy — making a show of upholding the very tenets one is violating — is hardly limited to Putin. It has played out in other nations, with sometimes chaotic outcomes.

In the United States, for example, Trump’s baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 election won by Joe Biden — an attempt to wipe away a democratic process — helped fuel the rage that produced the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters trying to overturn the outcome. Through it, Trump insisted he was the champion of democracy, not the one getting in its way.

“Everywhere these men make the same basic argument: The `neoliberal’ order merely pretends to be democratic, when in fact it is run by representatives of the `deep state’ who conspire to steal from ordinary people and undermine social order through the destruction of traditional moral values,” Hanson says.

“They portray themselves as the unique saviors of the traditional nation, and demand unconditional personal loyalty from all who serve them,” he said in an email. “That such a recipe for the destruction of democratic institutions has proven to be so potent around the world is one of the most remarkable developments of the early 21st century.”

What, then, might the unfolding of the Ukraine saga mean for democracy writ large? Biden insists the outcome is certain: “In the contest between democracy and autocracy, between sovereignty and subjugation, make no mistake: Freedom will prevail,” Biden said in an address Thursday.

He made it sound obvious. But given recent years’ events — including those leading up to his inauguration — reality is less definitive. Democracy doesn’t always prevail. And even when it does take hold, its permanence isn’t guaranteed — a lesson that, just like during the Cold War, goes far beyond what’s happening in eastern Europe right now.

“The world does not want to enter into a large-scale conflict. That gives a lot of leeway for leaders to push those boundaries of democratic appearance without actually being democratic,” Kasparek says. “It’s effectively a game of chicken.”

In that metaphor, democracy itself is the car. But the problem with a game of chicken quickly becomes obvious: Eventually, inevitably, you crash.

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Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation for The Associated Press, has written about international affairs since 1995. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted

ANOTHER NAME FOR SEGREGATION

School choice movement gains momentum amid pandemic discontent

Mike Bebernes

·Senior Editor

Fri, February 25, 2022, 9:34 AM·7 min read

“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.

What’s happening

School choice, a movement seeking to give parents alternatives to public schools for their children, has made major gains across the United States amid widespread frustration with how schools have responded to the coronavirus pandemic.

Last year alone, seven states established new school choice programs, and 15 expanded their existing programs, according to the advocacy group EdChoice. Several more states may soon follow. School choice takes a variety of forms, but it broadly refers to any system that allows parents to take tax dollars designated for the public education of their child and spend the funds on some other form of schooling.

The most well-known form of school choice is vouchers, which are direct payments sent to families to cover tuition at a private school or other nonpublic alternative. Other systems provide the money to parents through tax credits or deposits in what are known as Education Savings Accounts. There were roughly 600,000 students in the U.S. taking part in school choice programs in the 2020-21 school year, according to EdChoice. One recent analysis found that new laws passed last year could mean an additional 1.6 million students participating in school choice nationwide. Even with its remarkable expansion, school choice still represents a small sliver of the country’s K-12 education system — which includes an estimated 50 million students attending public schools.

While both Democrats and Republicans have promoted alternatives to traditional public schooling, school choice has become increasingly partisan in recent years. Former President Donald Trump called school choice “the civil rights statement of the year,” and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, was a strong proponent. Last year’s expansion of school choice happened almost exclusively in Republican-controlled areas of the country.

Why there’s debate

Advocates for school choice say that children should not have the quality of their schooling determined by their ZIP code. They argue that redirecting money from failing public schools will allow disadvantaged children to access a high-quality education that is currently available to only the rich — a change they say will disproportionately benefit students of color. “Funding students, not systems” is a common slogan used by proponents of school choice.

Others make an ethical-focused case, based on the principle that parents, not government bureaucrats, should decide what form of education works best for their kids. Some add that freeing families to choose their own educational models could help calm some of the intense fights over COVID rules and curriculum content that result from forcing people with disparate views to share a single school model.

Critics argue that school choice, at its core, is just a thinly veiled attack on the very institution of public education. They argue that siphoning money from already cash-strapped public schools represents “an existential threat” to the country’s ability to provide free education to every child. Increasing investment in public schools, they say, is the only true solution to educational inequities.

Others argue that rather than reducing segregation, school choice models make it more pronounced by empowering white students to abandon public schools. There are also deep concerns about having more students attend schools that exist outside the realm of government oversight. An investigation of private schools in Florida, for example, found that the state pumped nearly $1 billion into a private school system that was “so weakly regulated that some schools hire teachers without college degrees, hold classes in aging strip malls and falsify fire-safety and health records.” Other reports have tracked government funds going to schools that aggressively discriminate against LGBTQ students.

What’s next

The legal framework around school policies could be due for a major shift in the near future. The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in a case centering on the question of whether states are obligated to include religious schools — including ones with openly discriminatory views — in their voucher programs. A ruling in that case is expected this summer.

Perspectives

Supporters

School choice allows kids to escape broken schools that will stifle their potential

“The benefit will flow to thousands of students and families looking to escape the prison of low-performing public schools.” — Editorial, Wall Street Journal

Children should not be condemned to a poor education based on where they live

“Moving to a nearby school district is rarely an option considering the average home price in neighboring, better-performing suburban districts. Economically disadvantaged parents and guardians are then subject to de facto education ‘redlining,’ with the quality of a child’s school determined by his or her ZIP code. Families that want a different or better option but cannot afford one are out of luck.” — Paul Vallas, Chicago Tribune

Every family deserves the chance to seek out the education that fits them best

“Educators know that every child learns differently and not every learning environment is best suited for every student. In order to best serve students, we need to ensure that they have the ability to access an education that will help them reach their full potential.” — Noelani Kahapea, Washington Examiner

School choice can help calm the intense fights that are tearing apart the U.S. school system

“At a time when so many trends in American life have been bleak, this embrace of school choice is something to cheer. The more liberty parents have to choose how, where, and what their children learn, the more tolerant and peaceful America’s educational landscape will become.” — Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

Throwing money at low-performing schools is not the solution

“Unlike investing more in the same underperforming public schools — which research shows does not correlate with improved student outcomes — school choice programs have improved student academic outcomes, empowering students to choose an education provider that works best for them.” — Cooper Conway, Orange County Register

School choice gives all students opportunities that are currently available to only the rich

“The greatest contributing factor to segregation today is that kids without choice are trapped in schools based on a zip code. … We need school choice for everyone, not just rich people.” — Reason editor Billy Binion

Critics

It’s dangerous to entrust unaccountable private schools with educating our children

“Our leaders hand public money to parents who hand it to private and parochial schools. … There is no real accountability for how the money is spent, not even a requirement that kids actually learn something.” — Laurie Roberts, Arizona Republic

School choice makes inequality in education even more severe

“Vouchers defund public schools. No matter how this reality is distorted or packaged, funding for schools is tied to enrollment. If students leave, funding decreases. Private schools exacerbate racial segregation — namely through white students leaving diverse public schools.” — T. Jameson Brewer, Atlanta Journal Constitution

The goal of many school choice advocates is eliminating the public school system entirely

“The end game is really to have an education system that the public doesn’t pay for. … It will be a stratified system, where wealthy kids receive the absolute best education; kids in the middle will probably receive a decent education; and kids that are poor and disadvantaged will sit in a big room in front of computers with someone standing at the door keeping them in.”⁠ — Carol Corbett Burris, public education advocate, to New Republic

The public deserves to have a say over what kind of education its tax dollars are funding

“Often, [parents] look for schools that already affirm their particular worldview or personal wishes for their child. This strips our communities of deliberation about what we want from our schools and what we desire for children collectively. The public loses the opportunity for voice and influence over how it spends public dollars. Communities lose the ability to determine what content schools should teach, which skills are necessary for our workforce, and the best ways to develop active citizens” — Sarah M. Stitzlein, Washington Post

Fixing education requires investing in public schools, not diverting funding from them

“If we truly want to ensure equitable education, [struggling] schools should be targeted for true reform, meaning investments in faculty development, leadership development, social and emotional learning, wraparound services, and other supports that would strengthen those schools and make them safe, welcoming, high-quality learning environments.” — Raymond Pierce, Forbes

Parents can influence their children’s education within the public school system

“Parents already have ‘choice’ about their public schools: They elect their local school board officials and have opportunities to speak out through a myriad of civic and advocacy organizations. … They can educate themselves about how our schools are funded and seek change through their elected representatives.” — Susan Burk and Denise Murden, Virginian-Pilot

USA
Blinding health-care consumers: Hospitals shamefully dodge a federal rule demanding price transparency


Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News
Sun, February 27, 2022

A year after a federal appeals court upheld a government regulation requiring hospitals to publish their prices — a rule rooted in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, fought tooth and nail since, then finally advanced during the Trump administration after legal challenges failed — the institutions are flouting the mandate. In a report this month, PatientRightsAdvocate.org found that just 14% of 1,000 randomly selected hospitals nationwide were in full compliance. In New York State, just two of 22 were. In New York City and Long Island, none of 12 were.

That contempt for consumers is supposed to result in penalties of up to $2 million a year. Bring on the transparency or bring on the fines.

As anyone who’s ever asked for an itemized bill after being treated and discharged can attest, trying to make sense of it all can make you sick all over again. Hospitals negotiate wildly variable rates with different insurers, and also have a discounted cash price for those who pay upfront. But for years, many of those institutions have done everything in their power to keep the numbers fuzzy or hidden, lest those who actually pay for the services — insurers and ultimately patients and their employers — start asking why one provider charges double another for the same knee replacement or colonoscopy or c-section delivery, with no meaningful difference in quality.

Americans’ blindness on who charges what and why is one of the big reasons health-care costs here are twice those in comparable countries. Every time they grow, they take a bigger bite out of wages.

No, shopping around on a medically necessary procedure isn’t the same as hunting down the best deal on a TV — there are all kinds of reasons price sensitivity will always be different in health care — but the only way to begin to build a more functional marketplace is by telling the people who pay the bills what costs how much and why so the informed scrutiny can begin in earnest. There’s no second opinion.

Tiny robots made in Mexico to explore moon in scientific first

Alberto Fajardo
Fri, February 25, 2022, 
By Alberto Fajardo

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Five tiny robots designed and made in Mexico will blast off for the moon later this year, part of a first-of-its-kind scientific mission that envisions the two-wheeled bots scrambling across the lunar surface while taking sophisticated measurements.

The so-called nano robots developed by researchers at Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM) will work together like a swarm of bees, the senior scientist told Reuters, once they make the nearly 240,000 mile (386,000 km) trip from earth aboard a rocket from closely held U.S. firm Astrobotic Technology.

The mission is poised to launch on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket and would be the first American spacecraft to land on the moon in nearly 50 years.

"This is a small mission where we'll test the concept, and afterwards we'll undertake other missions, first to the moon and then on to asteroids," said Gustavo Medina Tanco, a UNAM scientist who heads the Colmena project, which means "beehive" in Spanish.

Medina Tanco explained that the bots, made of stainless steel, titanium alloys and space-grade aluminum, are equipped to gather lunar minerals that could be useful in future space mining.

On a recent tour of UNAM's space instruments lab, Colmena team members tested a launch device for the wafer-thin almost 5-inch-diameter (12 cm) disk-shaped robots, which are designed to communicate with one another as well as with an earth-based command center.

The bots are scheduled to launch in June on Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, originally developed for Google's Lunar-X-Prize.

During their month-long mission, the nano robots will take first-ever lunar plasma temperature, electromagnetic and regolith particle size measurements, according to an UNAM article on the project published earlier this month.

Medina Tanco expressed pride about the upcoming mission, that also included contributions from some 200 engineering, physics, math and chemistry students.

"No one has done this, nobody, not just in Mexico," he said.

"We can make a difference in the technology and for international cooperation that can then lead to important joint ventures to study the minerals or undertake other scientific exploration."

(Reporting by Alberto Fajardo; Writing by David Alire Garcia; editing by Diane Craft)

THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS

Whoever Controls the Moon Controls the Solar System

Passant Rabie
Sat, February 26, 2022

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway and Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy declared that his nation would be the first to land a man on the moon. That ambitious goal would later be fulfilled as two NASA astronauts took wobbly steps across the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, much to the dismay of Russia’s own space program leaders.

More than 60 years later, a new space race to the moon has begun, albeit with much higher stakes and brand new players ready to make the 238,855-mile journey. This time, the race to the moon is about much more than just planting a flag on its dusty surface. Getting to the moon first could also mean calling dibs on its limited resources, and controlling a permanent gateway to take humans to Mars—and beyond.

Whether it’s NASA, China, Russia, or a consortium of private companies that end up dominating the moon, laying claim to the lunar surface isn’t really about the moon anyway—it’s about who gets easier access to the rest of the solar system.
Everyone’s Got an Agenda

James Rice, a senior scientist at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, remembers growing up with the Apollo program and getting bitten by the space bug as he watched the 1969 moon landing unfold on television.

“As a kid, I saw that happening and I wanted to be a part of it,” Rice told The Daily Beast. “That’s basically why I’m in this career today.”

As Rice reflected on the current space race, he recognized some key differences. “Things have really changed dramatically in terms of the technology and the players that are out there,” he said. “This is not the moon we thought of during the Apollo days.” Scientists have learned so much more about the moon through more detailed analysis of lunar samples, as well as several missions that have probed exactly what might be sitting on the moon’s surface and remain hidden deep underground.

Though we have known for over a decade that the moon is probably teeming with reserves of water ice, NASA announced just last year that it had found the best evidence yet that water trapped in icy pockets were far more spread out across the lunar surface than previously believed. The discovery further fueled the idea of building a permanent base on the moon, which astronauts could then use to reach Mars and other celestial destinations.

Conceptual art for a NASA-led astronaut base involving water ice prospecting and mining.
NASA

Why is this such a big deal? Water is a precious resource for space travelers—not just for astronauts to drink, but also to turn into rocket fuel to use to blast off.

Remember your grade-school science here: Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is known to be the most efficient rocket propellant whereas oxygen can be combined by fuel to create combustion. The ability to break down all that water ice on the moon means you have access to both of its constituent elements—an enormous supply of rocket fuel. (And as an added bonus, you can use any excess oxygen as breathable air for astronauts.)

Finding these resources on the moon is much better than transporting them from Earth. Packing resources to space comes at a hefty price—it costs about $10,000 just to launch a payload weighing a single pound into Earth’s orbit, according to NASA. It could be far less costly to use what the moon has to offer to build a lunar pitstop to cosmic destinations.

“I think the moon has been placed as this midpoint, or first step towards Mars,” Casey Dreier, senior space policy adviser at The Planetary Society, told The Daily Beast. “It’s not an end destination.”

In other words, going back to the moon is not really about the moon, at least not entirely. It’s a gateway to truly larger space ambitions. That’s why Artemis—NASA’s new lunar exploration program—has been consistently touted not as simply a redux of Apollo, but rather the initial foundation for a permanent presence on the moon.

Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, left, and Rick Gilbrech, director of NASA's Stennis Space Center, right, watch as the core stage for the first flight of NASAs Space Launch System rocket undergoes a second hot fire test in the B-2 Test Stand on March 18.
NASA/Robert Markowitz via Getty

Martha Hess, the director for human exploration and spaceflight at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit for technical guidance on space missions, echoed those sentiments. “This time, the moon is a training ground, and Mars is the destination,” she told The Daily Beast.

Today’s space race is also not merely between competing nations and political ideologies. It also involves private companies trying to pursue profits. “We are at a unique point in time where our economy and technology are aligned, allowing for private and commercial investment in space based capabilities,” said Hess. “This investment takes the pressure off government agencies to sustain the industry.”

Private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are also looking beyond the moon. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has an obsessive vision of going to Mars and terraforming the planet to make it suitable for human colonization. Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos is looking to be a dominating player in the field of commercial space travel, transporting (probably very wealthy) citizens to the moon or beyond.

“Private companies have their own long term goals that exist outside of the national space program,” Dreier said. “They’ll do whatever NASA asks them to do, they don’t care whether NASA is going to the moon or Mars.”
A fight over resources

Something that will define the upcoming moon race is the fact that not every region on the moon is equal in value. “There are limited places to go, and it’s all about location,” Rice said.

Just as the California gold rush of the 19th century was defined by where the gold was found, so too will the water rush to the moon be defined by where the water is stored. The U.S. is looking to build its lunar base at the moon’s south pole, where there is thought to be a wealth of water ice reserves.

Moreover, the south pole is a wellspring for fulfilling energy needs: It’s exposed to more sunshine than anywhere else on the moon, which would fuel solar panels and supply power to the base.

Li Xianhua, China Academy of Sciences academician and Institute of Geology, speaks during a press conference in Beijing on Oct. 19.
Noel Celis/AFP via GettyMore

And with no clear space laws currently in place over ownership of objects in space, lunar resources may very well come down to whoever calls dibs first.

Who else wants to build a base on the moon’s south pole? For starters, there’s China, which recently announced long-term plans to build a base on the moon with Russia. Its more distant goal, of course, is to send a crewed mission to Mars by the year 2033.

The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, or the Chang’e Project, is relatively new to the scene but has already made great strides. In Jan. 2019, the country’s Chang’e-4 lunar probe was the first spacecraft in history to safely land on the far side of the moon. In Dec. 2020, the Chang’e-5 mission returned samples from the lunar surface. Those new moon rocks are already paying off in new scientific revelations. .

China’s space agency recently approved three more missions to the moon, targeting—you guessed it—the lunar south pole. The nation’s space program is hoping to land astronauts on the moon by the year 2030. Down the line, we may see Chinese and American astronauts hanging out on the moon at the same time.
The finish line

Nevertheless, China and Russia don’t pose much competition to the U.S. as long as NASA doesn’t dawdle on its way back to the moon. “China is absolutely working on building up its capability,” Dreier said. “But I’d say they’re at least a decade behind, if not more, compared to the U.S. capability.”

First up on NASA’s agenda is Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight to the moon that is meant to debut the brand new Space Launch System (the biggest rocket system ever built) and the Orion crew capsule that will eventually take astronauts back to the moon. Launching tentatively in April, Artemis I will simply orbit the moon and come back to Earth. It won’t be until Artemis III, set to launch in 2025 (if you’re an optimist), that we’ll finally see human boots make it to the lunar surface.

Hess does believe, however, that China has one advantage over the U.S. that it could exploit to make speedy progress.

“China has the benefit of being able to establish a long-term plan and funding, which allows them the ability to chip away at their 30-50-100 year vision,” Hess said. “We don’t have that luxury; our plans are good for a presidential term, and our budgets are appropriated annually so our programs start, stop and starve.” Long-term exploration of the solar system isn’t actually something that’s crystallized in U.S. budgets for decades to come.

NASA estimates that the Artemis program will cost $86 billion by 2025. The current U.S. administration has made a $24.8 billion fiscal 2022 budget request for NASA to cover the return to the moon.

During the first space race, the agency spent $28 billion to land the first humans on the moon, which is about $280 billion when adjusted for inflation, according to The Planetary Society.


As the space program for each of the space race participants begins to take shape, policy makers are realizing that they need to update the laws at hand to better govern the new era of space exploration that’s about to launch.

Regardless of who gets to plant space boots on the moon next, there is an overarching benefit to human exploration as a whole.

“There's more to it than that because there's an inspiration to it that you can't put a price tag on,” Rice said. “It does something to you when you walk out there and look at the moon and now there are people out there doing something, that just resonates.”

POPULISM IS NOT PROGRESSIVISM

Tulsi Gabbard Slams Fellow Dems for Promoting Freedom Abroad While 

Undermining It at Home: ‘Hypocrites’

EVEN IF IT SOUNDS LIKE IT

Caroline Downey
Sat, February 26, 2022


Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., Friday evening, former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard accused the modern progressive movement of hypocrisy for punishing dissent at home while standing up for democracy abroad.

Making an unexpected appearance that ruffled feathers on both sides of the aisle, Gabbard noted the increasingly authoritarian trajectory of the modern Left.

“They’re hypocrites. They proclaim that we must go to war to spread democracy and freedom while they actively work to undermine our democratic republic and our freedoms right here at home,” she said.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine escalates, Gabbard criticized the Biden administration’s “neo-con, neoliberal” foreign policy, which she claims ships soldiers overseas to “be the policemen of the world… all in the name of ‘spreading democracy.'”

While the U.S. has increased its troop presence in Poland and other NATO countries to help process refugees fleeing the conflict, the Pentagon has not deployed troops to join the fight in Ukraine.

After taking on the Democratic Party’s alleged foreign policy failures, Gabbard slammed the Biden administration for punishing dissent at home. While a Democrat, Gabbard has differentiated herself from the party through her isolationist foreign policy views and her opposition to radical left-wing social ideology.

She said she’s observed that progressives exploit times of panic to tighten the government’s grip on the population.

“They use crises, emergencies, times of war, whether it’s a cold war or a hot war to embolden the security state and infringe on our liberties and our rights. We saw it with the Patriot Act, we saw it with Covid, we’re seeing it happening now in the name of ‘democracy’ as again our government works with Big Tech to censor misinformation about what’s going on with Russia’s war with Ukraine,” she said.

The former Army national guard major then slammed the Department of Homeland Security for using the specter of domestic terrorism to harass political opponents.

“Those in power see themselves as the high priests in a secular theocracy. This explains why they see those who disagree with them as heretics. So it’s not surprising that those who reject their leadership, these are the people who were targeted by Biden’s attorney general as domestic terrorists simply for holding anti-authority views,” she said.

“Basically what they’re telling us is ‘you are an enemy of the state if you dare to oppose or even question the president, his administration, or his policies. Shut up, step back, fall in line, or we’re coming after you.'”

She blasted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for “resorting to genuinely authoritarian and tyrannical means” to squash the “peaceful mass protest” of the trucker convoy lobbying the government to end the cross-border vaccine mandate.

“The execution of emergency powers, freezing of bank accounts, seizure of children from parents, etc.” are all things that “could happen here,” she warned, if Americans aren’t vigilant.

“What are they so afraid of? Who are they afraid of? You know the answer, it’s simple. They’re afraid of us. They’re afraid of a free people,” she said to the crowd.

Gabbard lauded the parents of Loudoun County, Va. for their efforts to take back control of their children’s education. She bashed Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memo that mobilized the FBI and federal law enforcement to probe and potentially prosecute parents who allegedly leveled “threats” against school administrators.

“They’re fighting against boards of education and politicians who believe that parents don’t have the right to raise their own children,” she said.

CONSERVATIVE CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

CPAC Is Not Registered As A Foreign Agent, But Is Taking Money From Foreign Interests Anyway

S.V. Date
Fri, February 25, 2022

ORLANDO, Fla. — Organizers of the CPAC conference have taken tens of thousands of dollars in sponsorship fees from foreign interests – including one which is actively advocating against legislation before Congress – without registering as foreign agents.

Neither Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, nor CPAC itself appears to be registered as a foreign representative under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a circumstance that drew a complaint to the Department of Justice this week.

“There is sufficient evidence of alleged violations to support a federal criminal or civil investigation,” the complaint reads, according to a copy obtained by HuffPost.

The complaint names Schlapp, his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump White House official and prominent player at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the American Conservative Union, the ACU Foundation, and Cove Strategies, Matt Schlapp’s consulting firm.

The complaint was provided to HuffPost on condition of anonymity by a conservative activist who would likely face retaliation in business relationships.

ACU officials did not respond to HuffPost’s queries about the complaint.

The Department of Justice FARA unit told HuffPost that it “does not comment on any activities the staff conducts in its efforts to enforce the Act, nor does it comment on compliance matters related to registered agents or other parties.”

CPAC is a production of the ACU Foundation, which is a 501(c)3 educational charity under the federal tax code. The group has posted prominent signs at the conference venue stating: “Electioneering is strictly prohibited. Those found to be electioneering may be asked to leave the premises.”

FARA, meanwhile, requires those who are paid to advance the interests of foreign entities in the United States to register that affiliation. At CPAC this year, foreign entities likely paid CPAC’s organizers at least $200,000 to participate in the four-day event.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, 

speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in São Paulo, 

Brazil, on Oct. 11, 2019.

 (Photo: NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP via Getty Images)

The conference attracts a few thousand activists from around the country, but also dozens of sitting members of Congress and congressional candidates, several of whom are also paying CPAC for exhibition space while another dozen or so are appearing as featured speakers.

The foreign groups participating at CPAC include New Direction, a conservative think tank in Europe, CPAC Hungary, the Japanese Conservative Union, and CPAC Korea. According to CPAC’s own “sponsorship prospectus,” the groups were charged based on the size and prominence of their display space.

Based on the published tiers, CPAC Hungary was charged $15,000 for its 10-by-10-foot booth, while the Japanese Conservative Union and CPAC Korea each paid $75,000 for their 20-by-10-foot booths. Their packages also included three-minute videos to be shown from the main stage and two Facebook shares and two retweets from the CPAC social media accounts.

CPAC Korea’s video played Friday afternoon and urged viewers to sign a petition calling for the defeat of a House bill that would encourage a peace treaty between North and South Korea. The group is displaying signs and distributing literature from its booth in the exhibit hall telling attendees to “End the #fakepeace on the Korean peninsula act – OPPOSE H.R. 3446.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.