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Dominion had accused Fox personalities of repeatedly airing debunked election-fraud theories involving Dominion’s voting machine used in the 2020 election. Dominion would have had to prove that Fox News hosts knowingly disseminated falsehoods to their viewers. To that end, the company subpoenaed extensive internal text messages and emails from and between prominent names in the Fox News infrastructure, including Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Rupert Murdoch himself.
In the messages, all from the weeks after the election, the hosts discuss Donald Trump, their often-critical thoughts on Fox management, and their opinions on 2020 election fraud — opinions that often conflict with Fox’s public-facing coverage.
Tucker Carlson
On Fox News’ Arizona call:
“We devote our lives to building an audience and they let Chris Wallace and Leland fucking Vittert wreck it,” Carlson texted in a group conversation with Ingraham and Sean Hannity roughly two weeks after the election. Vittert was a Fox News reporter who was frequently criticized by Trump, and he left the network in April 2021 for NewsNation.
On Trump’s destructiveness
“What he’s good at is destroying things,” Carlson texted producer Alex Pfeiffer on November 5. “He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
On hating Trump:
“I hate him passionately,” Carlson texted Pfeiffer on January 4, days prior to the riot at the U.S. Capitol. He added, of Trump’s presidency, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”
On election denialism
On November 5, in response to his producer Alex Pfeiffer, who had written that “I really think many on ‘our side’ are being reckless demagogues right now,” Carlson wrote, “Of course they are. We’re not going to follow them. The sun will rise tomorrow and we want to wake up intact. I always think that.”
On Sidney Powell:
In a message from November 4, Carlson texted a colleague that there was “no doubt there was fraud” in the election. “But at this point, Trump and Lin and Powell have so discredited their own case, and the rest of us to some extent, that it’s infuriating. Absolutely enrages me.” (Tucker was referring to Lin Wood, another Trump lawyer.)
In a text on November 9, Carlson referenced Powell’s Dominion claims, commenting, “The software shit is absurd.” (Carlson then said on television that night, “We don’t know anything about the software that many say was rigged. We don’t know. We ought to find out.”)
Per Slate, around November 16, Carlson texted a producer that “Sidney Powell is lying. Fucking bitch.” He also called Powell an “unguided missile,” “dangerous as hell,” and a “crazy person.”
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Carlson texted Ingraham on November 18.
On November 21, Carlson referred to Powell as a “nutcase.”
In a text on November 22, Carlson called Powell a “cunt” to an unnamed Fox News staffer. (His use of this slur may have been a precipitating factor in his ouster from Fox News.) He added, “I hope he’s punished.”
On the same day, he told Ingraham that Powell was “a nut, as you said at the outset. It totally wrecked my weekend. Wow… I had to try make the WH disavow her, which they obviously should have done long before.”
And in another exchange on November 22, this time over email, Carlson confirmed to Daily Caller co-founder Neil Patel that he had been behind Powell’s dismissal from Trump’s legal team, and wrote “I’ve got a high tolerance for crazy as you know but she was too much.”
On Trump skipping Biden’s inauguration:
“Hard to believe. So destructive,” he texted Pfeiffer on November 10. “It’s disgusting. I’m trying to look away.”
On the prospect of ditching Trump coverage on Fox:
Two days before the Capitol riot, Carlson wrote to a colleague that “we are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.” The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, he texted his producer that “Trump has two weeks left. Once he’s out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his supporters. He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.”
Rupert Murdoch, Fox Corporation chairman
On Hannity’s and Ingraham’s on-air claims of election fraud:
“Maybe Sean and Laura went too far,” Murdoch wrote the day after Biden’s inauguration in an email to Fox CEO Suzanne Scott. “All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump … but what did he tell his viewers?”
On the infamous Rudy Giuliani press conference with the hair dye:
“Stupid and damaging,” Murdoch wrote to a friend on November 19, the day of Giuliani’s meltdown. “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad.” Murdoch said he had heard that Trump was “apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls” and that he worried about “what he might do as president.”
On calling the election for Biden:
“I hate our Decision Desk people!” Murdoch emailed former New York Post editor Col Allan on the day the election was called. “And pollsters! Some of the same people I think. Just for the hell of it still praying for Az to prove them wrong!” Later that day, he emailed his son Lachlan, writing that Fox News “should and could” have called the election for Biden before any other network. “But at least being second saves us a Trump explosion!”
On how to handle Trump postelection:
“The more I think about McConnell’s remarks or complaint, the more I agree,” Murdoch wrote in an email on Biden’s Inauguration Day. “Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25 percent of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up Jan. 6th. Best we don’t mention his name unless essential and certainly don’t support him. We have to respect people of principle and if it comes to the Senate, don’t take sides. I know he is being over-demonized, but he brought it on himself.”
Laura Ingraham, Fox News host
On Rudy Giuliani
“Rudy such an idiot,” Ingraham texted to an unknown recipient on January 12, 2021.
On pressure from Fox News executives:
“We are officially working for an organization that hates us,” Ingraham texted Carlson and Hannity on November 16.
“Why would anyone defend that call?” Hannity asked in response, referring to the early decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden.
“I’m disgusted at this point,” replied Carlson.
“I think the three of us have enormous power,” Ingraham wrote. “We have more power than we know or exercise.”
Sean Hannity
On Rudy Giuliani
“Rudy is acting like an insane person,” Hannity texted to an unknown recipient on November 11.
Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO
On the Arizona call on Election Night:
“Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger,” Scott said in a Zoom meeting on November 16. “The mystery would have been still hanging out there.”
“Viewers going through the 5 stages of grief,” Scott texted Fox co-chair Lachlan Murdoch two days after the election. “It’s a question of trust — the AZ [call] was damaging but we will highlight our stars and plant flags letting the viewers know we hear them and respect them.”
On how the network should proceed postelection:
“Audiences don’t want to see too much of the Mayor Pete’s and Coons etc in the news hours,” Scott wrote to Fox News president Jay Wallace. “Need to be careful about bookings next 2 months - especially in news hours.” Scott had forwarded Wallace an email from Rupert Murdoch, in which he observed that Fox News was losing to CNN in the ratings.
On how fact checking Trump is “bad for business”:
“This has to stop now,” Scott wrote in an email to a network vice-president in early December, referring to anchor Eric Shawn’s fact-checking of Trump. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
Bill Sammon, former Fox News managing editor
On the mess inside Fox News:
Sammon oversaw the Fox News Decision Desk on Election Night. He retired in January 2021 amid heated Republican criticism over the call that Biden would win Arizona.
“More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we’re still focused solely on supposed election fraud — a month after the election,” Sammon texted editor Chris Stirewalt. “It’s remarkable how weak ratings makes good journalists do bad things.” Sammon added, “In my 22 years affiliated with Fox, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to an existential crisis — at least journalistically.”
Chris Stirewalt, former Fox News politics editor
On the fallout from election coverage:
“What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff,” Stirewalt responded to Sammon’s texts. Stirewalt, who made the decision that Fox News would call Arizona for Biden on Election Night, was removed from his job in January 2021 for the controversial (but correct) choice.
Bret Baier, Fox News host
On the difficulty of defending the Arizona call:
“I know You guys are feeling the pressure,” Baier wrote to Fox News executives two days after the election. “But this situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable … I keep on having to defend this on air. And ask questions about it. And it seems we are holding on for pride (I know the confidence you say you had and the numbers — but it’s at least within the realm of possible that he closes the gap now). And It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it — even if it gives us major egg. And we put it back in his column. The better we are. In my opinion.”
Raj Shah, Fox Corporation senior vice-president
On Rudy Giuliani
During Giuliani’s infamous press conference during which hair dye ran down his face, Shah texted to an unnamed respondent or respondents: “This sounds SO FUCKING CRAZY btw.” When a deputy wrote back that Giuliani “looks awful,” Shah remarked, “he objectively looks like he was a dead person voting 2 weeks ago.”
After the press conference, a Fox News reporter appeared on the network and cast doubt on some of Giuliani’s claims. Shah then texted the deputy, “This is the kinda shit that will kill us. We cover it wall to wall and then we burn that down with all the skepticism.”
On Fox News’ favorability rating dropping dramatically after the election
In an internal message, Shah shared a survey with colleagues showing that the network’s brand was “under heavy fire from our customer base.” In a different email, he wrote, “We are not concerned with losing market share to CNN or MSNBC right now. Our concern is Newsmax and One America News Network … I’d like to get honest/deeper feedback from Fox viewers on the brand, the handling of the election, if they feel like they have been somehow betrayed by the network.”
In a memo from Shah to Lachlan Murdoch on November 13, Shah wrote that “Fox News is facing a brand crisis” and “open revolt.” He added that the “precipitous decline in Fox’s favorability among our core audience… poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon.”
On Sidney Powell:
In another message to senior colleagues, Shah called Powell’s election-fraud claims “totally insane” and “just MIND BLOWINGLY NUTS.” Shah also told his bosses in a November 23, 2020 email that, “We encouraged several sources within the administration to tell reporters that Powell offered no evidence for her claims and didn’t speak for the president.”
Maria Bartiromo, Fox News and Fox Business Network host
On not wanting to acknowledge Biden’s win:
“I want to see massive fraud exposed,” Bartiromo texted Steve Bannon a week after the election, adding that she instructed her team to hold off on referring to Biden as “president-elect” — “not in scripts or in banners on air. Until this moves through the courts.”
Abby Grossberg, Maria Bartiromo’s producer
On how to cater to audiences postelection:
“Our audience doesn’t want to hear about a peaceful transition,” Grossberg texted Bartiromo, who had asked whether she should have covered the topic on a recent show. Grossberg later added that Fox viewers “still have hope.”
On March 20, Grossberg filed a lawsuit against Fox News, alleging the network had pushed her into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case in an attempt to set her and Bartiromo up as patsies.
Gary Schreier, Fox Business Network SVP
On Mario Bartiromo’s false allegations of election fraud:
After Bartiromo tweeted a baseless allegation on November 5 about Democrats adding “vote dumps” overnight, she left Twitter for the conservative platform Parler. “How about get off social all together,” Fox Business News President Lauren Petterson wrote to Schreier. He responded: “I mean if you say crazy wrong shit on Parler is that better just because Parler won’t flag you?”
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Abortion-rights activists hold up signs outside the US supreme court building on 19 April in Washington DC. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Guardian UK)
Recent stay on the abortion pill ban is a contest between conservative institutionalists and ideologues on the court
On Friday, after days of anxious waiting for abortion providers, the pharmaceutical industry and American women, the supreme court declined to allow Kacsmaryk’s stay – and another, also dramatic ruling from the fifth circuit court of appeals – to go into effect. The court that destroyed the abortion right last year thereby preserved the availability of the most common abortion method – at least in the dwindling number of states where abortion remains legal at all.
The ruling came on the court’s shadow docket – that body of informal but increasingly important choices made by the justices, once largely procedural but now often binding and merits-based, in which the court hears no oral arguments and in which they do not need to disclose their votes. Still, we have a decent guess about how the votes broke down, because two of the justices – Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – noted publicly that they would have allowed the drug to be pulled from distribution.
It’s possible that other conservative justices agreed with them, but it seems clear that at least one of them didn’t: in a four-page written dissent, one which had little in the way of legal argument but an abundance of sniping and peevish grievance, Samuel Alito took a swipe at several of his female colleagues over their approach to shadow docket rulings, including his fellow conservative Amy Coney Barrett.
It seems reasonable to deduce, then, that even among the supreme court justices who overturned women’s rights to control their bodies and lives, there is sharp intra-Republican disagreement over how to handle the unexpectedly virulent political fallout from the Dobbs decision. Like their counterparts in Congress and on the campaign trail, the Republicans on the supreme court may be looking to put a gentler spin on abortion bans, or to shore up their own dwindling legitimacy by scorning legally sloppy and thinly pretexted orders like Kacsmaryk’s.
Several members of the court have long preferred to have better, more robust excuses for their cruel and myopic transformations of the law – Chief Justice John Roberts, in particular, has always preferred to attack voting rights, women’s rights and other pillars of pluralist, representative democracy in the most respectful possible fashion. It’s not he and those like him are not rabid conservatives, eager to do violence to the traditions and aspirations that make the US worthwhile. It’s that they prefer the kind of violence that wears a suit.
Not so with Alito and Thomas – and not so with their successors, like Kacsmaryk, the fifth circuit panel, the heavily conservative federal judiciary and the rest of the increasingly emboldened conservative legal movement. These are the rightwing players who want to seize the moment, to take advantage of the uneasy and unsustainable political state of affairs in the US where legislative gridlock means that lawmaking and policy power has been delegated almost entirely to a captured and unchecked court system. The problem, for institutionalists on the court like Roberts and possibly Barrett, is that going as fast as the supreme court has been going makes them look bad. The court has never been so unpopular as it has become since Dobbs; dramatic reforms, like term limits and court expansion, have never had as much broad support as they do now. And so we may see some tensions arise within the supreme court’s six-judge conservative supermajority: the ideologues want to hit the gas, and the institutionalists want to pump the brakes. But rest assured that they’re all driving in the same direction. Do not let the mifepristone ruling fool you about where this extremist court is going.
In the end, what might be most distressing about the fiasco that unfolded as the nation waited for the supreme court’s ruling was realizing just how far the Overton window has shifted, and just how low the standards for women’s health and freedom have sunk, in the months since Dobbs. For days before the court issued its order, developments that could only been fairly understood as grave insults to women’s dignity were instead pitched as mercies or signs of moderation.
Kacsmaryk, a lifelong anti-abortion activist, issued an order consisting of bunk science, anti-choice rhetoric, novel interpretations of both standing doctrine and statutes of limitations, and a remarkably expansive interpretation of the federal judiciary’s power over the Food and Drug Administration; but when he stayed his own injunction from going into effect for seven days, we were meant to greet the delay with relief. When the fifth circuit then said that mifepristone’s availability should be curtailed back to its pre-2016 status – which involved a densely bureaucratic and labyrinthine process of multiple doctor’s appointments to get the medicine, and medically unnecessary gestational limits on its use – we were meant to be happy, because technically, that ruling would have allowed mifepristone to stay on the market, in some form.
For days before the supreme court issued its ruling keeping the drug available, abortion providers, hospitals, drugmakers and most importantly, American women, were left holding their breath, uncertain about whether a safe medication would be legal, or whether it would abruptly become illegal, and inaccessible, because of the whims of a handful of jurists – whom nobody voted for and who possess no medical expertise – because those people want to preserve a gendered social hierarchy that the medication threatens. That this threat did not come to fruition, at least not this time, is no consolation. It is unacceptable, and unbecoming the dignity of citizenship, that American women are threatened this way at all.
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In declining to appear before Congress, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a letter that such testimony is 'exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns.' (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT)
In an accompanying statement on ethics practices, the Supreme Court’s justices insisted their current ethical guidelines on gifts, travel and financial deals are sufficient.
In an accompanying statement on ethics practices, all nine justices, under mounting pressure for more stringent reporting requirements at the court, insisted that the existing rules around gifts, travel and other financial disclosures are sufficient.
The chief justice wrote that such appearances before the committee were “exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”
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From left: Cossack hetmans Ivan Mazepa and Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Russian emperors Catherine II and Peter I. (photo: Kyiv Independent)
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 shocked many around the world.
But anyone who paid attention to Ukrainian history would have seen it coming.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered several excuses for the invasion. One was to kill all the supposed "Nazis" in Ukraine. Another was to eliminate Ukraine's supposed military threat to Russia.
But the true reason was to annex Ukraine as a territory that Putin believes has always rightfully belonged to Russia. In speeches that recalled imperial times, Putin claimed that Ukraine's independence was a mistake that he intended to correct.
This meant conquering Kyiv, toppling the elected government, and destroying the Ukrainian national identity.
Putin's twisted vision isn't new. Russia has been doing this for close to 400 years.
In the 17th century, Russia violated its treaty with the independent Ukrainian communities known as the Cossacks to seize control and partition their burgeoning country. A century later, Russia massacred thousands of Ukrainian civilians, betrayed the Cossacks, and eliminated the last traces of their independent rule.
During the 1900s, Russia actively suppressed the Ukrainian language and culture throughout the empire. In the early 20th century, Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, Russia's dominant political faction following the October Revolution, led multiple bloody invasions of the nascent Ukrainian nation to bring it under Soviet control.
Over the past 30 years of Ukrainian independence, Russia has tried to rule Ukraine through proxy politicians. When that stopped working following the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and greatly scaled up its invasion in 2022.
Russia has never ceased its assault on Ukrainian independence. This is just the latest episode. And this time, Ukrainians are determined to put it to an end.
A soldier nicknamed Raven fighting in Mykolaiv Oblast in October, said, "we will not allow what our grandfathers allowed to come to pass when they let us be subjugated."
From Kyivan Rus to the Cossack Hetmanate
Ukraine's capital Kyiv was once the heart of Kyivan Rus, the most powerful medieval state in Eastern Europe. It was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, believed to be founded by Norsemen who traded and raided along the rivers of the region.
Internal strife would gradually tear the Kyivan Rus apart until a Mongol invasion in the middle of the 13th century finally destroyed it. It left behind successor states, such as Galicia-Volhynia, which Poland absorbed in 1349. Another successor state would become the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, the center of the future Russian Empire.
Over the centuries, the Ukrainian steppes began to be settled by Cossacks, groups of militarized people who drifted into the region over the centuries to freely live off the land and raid their neighbors. Many peasants drifted to the Ukrainian region, seeking a freer life.
The Cossacks were known for their militance, but also for their fierce commitment to independence, democracy and egalitarianism. This was a contrast from many surrounding empires with powerful nobility that kept their serfs in subjection.
By the 1600s, Cossacks in the region created a semi-autonomous proto-state called the Zaporizhian Sich, which was surrounded by several powers – the Tsardom of Russia, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, and the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth.
They all fought one another at different times in a series of shifting alliances.
The rise and fall of the Hetmanate
In the 1600s, the Zaporizhian Sich was under Polish rule, which the Cossacks resented.
Eventually, a strong Cossack leader arose – Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
Khmelnytsky led the Cossacks to victory against the Polish forces, establishing the Cossack Hetmanate, a Ukrainian Cossack state in the area of what is today central Ukraine.
To protect his newly created state against Poland, Khmelnytsky decided to court the protection of the Tsardom of Russia, with the two sharing the Eastern Orthodox fate. Under the treaty of Pereislav of 1654, the Hetmanate pledged allegiance to the throne of Moscow in exchange for military protection.
But it quickly became clear that the two sides understood the agreement very differently.
Khmelnytsky believed that his Hetmanate was going to be an independent power under Moscow's protection. Moscow saw it as a territorial acquisition.
Moscow began sending military governors to Ukraine, tried to collect taxes, and undermined the independence of the Ukrainian church. Moscow would send a noble to oversee local elections in Kyiv and told Ukraine that Tsarist warlords would take over the functions of government. Moscow also bribed military officers to rise up against the Hetmanate.
Moscow even made a truce with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, under which Ukraine would become a commonwealth protectorate.
Soon, the Ukrainian Cossacks clashed with Russian forces. The Cossacks prevailed at the Battle of Konotop in 1659. However, again, their leaders were unable to capitalize on their military victory.
Outmaneuvered politically by Moscow, Khmelnytsky's son signed the Articles of Pereislav, which limited the Cossacks' independence.
Less than a decade later, Moscow and Poland would divide control of the proto-Ukrainian state amongst themselves along the Dnipro River.
The end of the Cossack Powers
After decades of instability, known as the Ruin, the Hetmanate found another strong leader: Ivan Mazepa. Under his rule, which lasted from 1687–1708, Ukrainian culture flourished. Kyiv's golden domes bear witness to his legacy.
Then came the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden. Mazepa fought for the Tsar, but after disputes with Peter I of Russia, Mazepa and some of his Cossacks switched sides.
Russia's Peter I ordered revenge. In November 1708, his forces smashed into hetman's fortified capital of Baturyn, located in modern-day Chernihiv Oblast. Once inside, the imperial troops executed up to 15,000 people, including civilians, among them women and children.
Many were quartered, broken on the wheel, or impaled on stakes.
Sweden's King Charles XII and Mazepa were crushed at the Battle of Poltava. This was the beginning of the end for the Hetmanate.
The true death of the Cossacks came after the coup of Catherine II. She asserted imperial autocracy, cracking down on the Cossacks' self-governance. In the region of Sloboda, which ran from modern-day Sumy to Kharkiv oblasts, Cossack regiments were reforged into Russian imperial army units.
In 1764, the Cossack system was abolished and replaced with Russian institutions.
The authority of the Cossack Hetmanate was liquidated, and the last Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host was ordered to renounce his authority to a Russian governor-general.
Subsequently, Moscow also eliminated the autonomous Cossack way of life.
The final blow landed in the 1770s after the Cossacks helped Moscow defeat the Ottoman Empire. Russian troops surrounded the Sich, surprising the Cossacks.
Faced with overwhelming firepower and a threat to their families, they were forced to surrender. This was the end of the Cossack Hetmanate.
Suppression of national identity
The notion of a Ukrainian national identity emerged in a big way in the 19th century, inspired by other national movements in Europe.
Moscow began suppressing the Ukrainian language and identity, afraid of separatism. Top writers and intellectuals were imprisoned or exiled. That included Ukraine's most famous author and artist, Taras Shevchenko.
The Russian Empire banned the publication of scholarly, religious, and educational books in Ukrainian in 1863. Tsar Alexander II then banned the printing and import of Ukrainian language publications altogether in 1876 with the Ems Decree.
The exodus of Ukrainian cultural figures to more liberal Austria-Hungary, where no ban on the Ukrainian language and culture existed, allowed Ukraine to preserve its national identity.
Meanwhile, Russia actively tried to undermine Ukraine, referring to it as "Malorossiya" or "Lesser Russia," which is how Putin views much of Ukrainian territory today.
Malorossiya, which means little, lesser, or minor Rus, is a term that began appearing in the 13th century, referring to Galicia-Volhynia.
The term began to resurface in the 17th century to refer to geographical or ecclesiastical subdivisions within the area of what is now Ukraine.
After the Pereiaslav Treaty, Moscow began using it to refer to the Cossack Hetmanate to back its claim on the entire region. Putin's Russia, fond of historical revisionism, has been trying to bring back the term.
The 20th century
In the early 20th century, the Russian Empire was crumbling, facing military, economic, and political setbacks. In 1917, amid the ongoing World War I, Russia faced two revolutions. Ukrainians saw it as an opportunity for independence.
Between 1917 and 1921, the land that is now Ukraine was fought over and controlled by more than half a dozen armed factions.
Kyiv faced two successful waves of assault from Russia during this time. Eventually, Ukraine was swallowed by the Soviet Union.
Ukrainian People's Republic was created in 1917 which proclaimed its independence the following year. Ukrainian officials gathered a parliament (Central Rada), elected a leader (historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky), and sought international recognition.
After a failed Bolshevik uprising in Kyiv in early 1918, Russia began a military campaign against Ukraine.
The officer in charge of the invasion was Mikhail Muravyov, who tortured the inhabitants of each new city he conquered. The rest, he let his men loot.
Ukrainian forces, mostly students, were able to delay the swiftly advancing Russian troops in the Battle of Kruty, about 120 kilometers northeast of Kyiv.
Despite the Bolsheviks winning the battle and sacking Kyiv, Ukraine was able to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers and soon, together with the German army, pushed the Bolsheviks out of Ukraine.
While in Kyiv, German forces didn't oppose a coup led by Pavlo Skoropadskyi, who was proclaimed the new hetman, meaning the military leader of the Ukrainian State.
Skoropadskyi's reign proved unsuccessful.
After Germany's defeat in World War I, he himself was deposed by the reemerged Ukrainian People's Republic led by Symon Petliura.
The following year, Soviet Russia swept in once more, finally bringing Ukraine, poisoned by internal fighting, under its control.
After taking power, the Soviet regime first promoted Ukrainian culture to appease the hostile population, yet later turned to terror in fear of popular uprising.
In the 1930s, Ukrainian writers Valerian Pidmohylny, movie director Les Kurbas, and painters Mykhailo Boychuk and Ivan Padalka were tortured, imprisoned, and executed.
They have been known as the Executed Renaissance, as most of them were shot by the Soviet regime during the Great Terror in Sandarmokh.
21st century
Moscow's designs on Kyiv continued into the 21st century.
After Ukraine became independent, Russia tried to maintain control through proxy politicians. These included pro-Russian lawmaker and oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk and former President Viktor Yanukovych.
This failed. In 2004, Yanukovych's fraudulent election victory was resisted by the Orange Revolution, a series of protests that annulled a rigged runoff vote in his favor.
Yanukovych would run again in the 2010 presidential election and prevail against his main opponent Yulia Tymoshenko. Yanukovych's Party of Regions, which had a collaboration agreement with Putin's party United Russia, would be a powerful force in Ukrainian politics for years.
In 2013, when Yanukovych defied the popular will and refused to sign an association with Europe, people rose up again in the EuroMaidan Revolution.
No matter what Russia wanted, Ukraine was pulling away toward Europe.
In the end, Putin was left with one option to cling to what he sees as Russia's imperial possession: a direct invasion that began with the occupation of Crimea and eastern parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in early 2014.
When the nine-year occupation of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk failed to shake Ukraine's Westward course, Moscow gave up all pretense and launched a full-scale ground war to destroy and conquer Ukraine.
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Hundreds of people marched through the South River Forest during a protest against the construction of a large police training facility dubbed 'Cop City' in an Atlanta forest, on 4 March 2023. (photo: Steve Eberhardt/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock)
Opponents say move is yet another example of crackdown by officials seeking to disrupt protests against $90m training center
On Monday college students at Emory University, Georgia Tech and other Atlanta schools protested the gigantic project, holding up signs, handing out leaflets and giving speeches. They tried to camp overnight at Emory, but were forced off by Atlanta police early Tuesday morning.
But while the protests against Cop City go on, the project is making headway and a key stretch of public land nearby is no longer accessible to people seeking to defend the forest. For the first time in nearly two years of opposition to Cop City, the public park part of South River Forest south-east of Atlanta has been shut down, allegedly for the public’s safety.
Opponents say the move is yet another example of the heavy-handed crackdown by law enforcement and local officials, who have sought to portray the protesters as “domestic terrorists” and have used a variety of methods to disrupt opposition groups. Dekalb county officials have no timeline for reopening the park.
The park’s secondary-growth forest is where police shot and killed activist Manuel Paez Terán, or Tortuguita, on 18 January, catapulting the fight over Cop City into global headlines. It is also where dozens of people were arrested on 5 March during a music festival and charged with domestic terrorism and where almost all the movement’s “tree sitters” have camped.
Called “Intrenchment Creek Park” – or “Weelaunee People’s Park” by protesters – the part of the forest now closed down has been the physical and spiritual center of the movement to “Stop Cop City”. “Forest defenders” have camped there and dozens of public events around the issue have happened there, including Jewish and Muscogee (Creek) ceremonies, herbal workshops, school events, food distribution to area residents and five “weeks of action”.
Forty acres of the park have also been under threat from a developer’s plans since before the Cop City project became public in late 2021. These plans have been stalled by a local environmental group’s lawsuit.
In response to the park’s closing, the broad range of groups interested in defending the forest are showing up elsewhere around the city – as evidenced by the visits to city hall and this week’s plans by Emory and other Atlanta-area college students. Weekly food distribution and potlucks, formerly held in the park’s parking lot, are now being held right outside, yards away from police.
“The fact we’re not able to be in the forest … makes us shift in different directions, to expand the movement,” said Willow, an Emory student organizer.
Dekalb county CEO Michael Thurmond announced the order closing the park in a press conference, claiming that the protestors had “booby-trapped” the forest, putting the public in danger. He displayed photos of boards with nails in them allegedly found in the park as evidence, and said the order would be lifted when it was “safe” – but to date police and barricades are still blocking public entrance.
County officials barred a local documentary filmmaker and a reporter from the Atlanta Community Press Collective – a leading local source of information about the training center in an environment where the state has been less than transparent – from entering the press conference.
Asked why the park remained closed, and when it would be reopened, Dekalb spokesman Andrew L Cauthen merely sent an email quoting the order: the park “will remain closed ‘until further notice … to protect the safety of the families, residents and visitors and their pets in the area… [and] county personnel.’”
Dekalb county commissioner Ted Terry, a former state Sierra Club director, described the order as a “back-room, behind-closed-doors coordination between Thurmond and [Atlanta Mayor Andre] Dickens … to push visual opposition to what’s happening in South River Forest out of view.” He will be pushing to reopen the park through a resolution being introduced in early May.
Jacqueline Echols is board president of the South River Watershed Alliance, the group behind the three-year-old, ongoing lawsuit seeking to stop the county from giving away 40 acres of the park to a developer named Ryan Millsap, in exchange for another piece of land nearby. Before “Stop Cop City,” there was “Stop the Swap”.
Through their lawsuit, Echols and her group of Atlanta-area residents have essentially been keeping the park open while “Stop Cop City” turned into a local, national and international cause celebre for a range of people concerned about police militarization and abuse of force, and about destroying forest.
The group’s lawsuit also maintained the forest’s accessibility to the public in an area where majority-Black neighborhoods have historically been overlooked, and protected the Atlanta metro area’s largest forest in an era of climate change. “With no lawsuit, after all these years, the land probably would have been sold for a hefty profit … and by this time, there probably would not be a forest,” Echols said.
Echols, who is Black, has been taking mostly Black people from the Atlanta area on hikes and kayak rides down South River – which is fed by a creek that flows between the planned training center and the park – for more than a decade. She is surprised to find herself three years into defending part of the forest against Millsap, a former film studio executive, and that “Stop Cop City” has launched from the same forest.
“I never anticipated this – that Dekalb would do the swap, or that the city of Atlanta would do what they’re doing – particularly because the people running those municipalities are Black, and they should understand the importance of protecting this forest in an area that has suffered so much neglect,” she said – referring to Dekalb CEO Thurmond and Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens.
Joe Peery, an artist who lives near the forest, is a plaintiff on the lawsuit. On a recent Saturday, he got off his bicycle along with several dozen cycling enthusiasts, stood in front of a police car and several concrete barriers blocking the park’s entrance, and took a photo. The idea: sending a letter to the county opposing keeping the park closed.
Peery knows nearly every inch of the forest that stretches out behind the barriers and the police. He has biked and walked there for more than a decade, created or maintained about six miles of trails himself and led hundreds of people on tours.
“There’s a comfort to the forest,” he said. “It’s beneficial to meeting with others, discussing ideas and feeling a sense of acceptance.”
“The park is closed to shut down people protesting against Cop City and the land swap,” Peery said. “But what’s happened is people are finding other ways to express themselves.”
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Sudanese refugees make camp in Chad this week after fleeing the fighting at home. Up to 270,000 are expected in Chad and South Sudan. (photo: Twitter/UNHCR West and Central Africa)
Read the Full Transcript
Amna Nawaz:
Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese are fleeing to neighboring countries to escape violence that's killed more than 400 people in the last week-and-a-half.
And, as Nick Schifrin tells us, aid agencies are warning, the humanitarian situation is increasingly dire because of a political fight that's been brewing for years.
Nick Schifrin:
Today, the U.N. agency that coordinates humanitarian affairs warned that it had to pull back from parts of Sudan, as a country of 45 million copes with shortages of water, food and access to medicine.
The U.S. and others are trying to end the fighting between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, comprised of former militias that committed the genocide in Western Sudan's Darfur region that killed more than two million people.
The two men were supposed to help return the country to civilian rule demanded by the 2019 pro-democracy popular uprising.
One of those who participated in that uprising is writer Muzan Alneel, who joins me now from Khartoum.
Muzan Alneel, thank you very much. Welcome back to the "NewsHour."
As we just said, there's a humanitarian crisis. What are the conditions that you, your neighbors, and millions of Sudanese face today?
Muzan Alneel, Sudanese Researcher and Writer: The situation right now is that, for 11 days, we have been under heavy fighting, and there are around 10 million people living in this city, most of them under the poverty line, most of them without any stable access to electricity or water.
The electricity network is followed by the e-banking system that many depend on to get food or be able to evacuate their families from Khartoum. It has also fell apart. The telecommunication has fell apart. People are just trying to survive this. We see Sudanese people restoring to popular and mutual aid, which is the only thing that they have.
And the street is being used now by the people to form networks in their neighborhoods to know where the water is, to be able even to run some of the health centers, instead of those hospitals that are impossible to reach right now.
Nick Schifrin:
And those popular efforts, they're led by the resistance committees, right, the same committees that helped the revolution in 2019, sustain it through the coup in 2021 up until today, right?
Muzan Alneel:
The tactics that we learned from the resistance committees that we are using to network, to have mutual aid, to be able to evacuate ourselves and evacuate our families and our loved ones, and even help evacuate and help provide food and medicine to people.
The concept of mutual aid mutual is what sustaining the people, not the international aid diplomats who called for a realistic approach by partnering with the — with the criminals
Nick Schifrin:
Well, let me ask about the politics of this moment.
The last time we spoke a few years ago, our segment was followed by an interview I did with the then-U.S. special envoy to the region, who argued that the generals who are fighting in the streets right now had to be at the table, part of the negotiation process. Do you think that the U.S., the international community accommodated them, helping lead to the violence we see today?
Muzan Alneel:
That was definitely accommodating them, legitimizing them, giving them the platform that they needed to have all their international deals and their stronger ties with the within the region.
We were asked to be realistic after a massacre and accept those war criminals. We were asked to be realistic after a coup. And we are even, I think, will be asked to be realistic after a war, because I'm hearing news of some sort of negotiation, that they want to bring them back into — into ruling or bring back whatever kind of political process they called it, that, basically, to bring back the same old agreement that brought us all that we are going through right now.
Nick Schifrin:
What's been your response, as you have seen U.S. special operations forces fly into the capital to evacuate U.S. diplomats?
We have seen the U.N. have to pull back, other countries spend time at the airport with their militaries trying to pull out civilians, as millions in Sudan face these dire humanitarian conditions.
Muzan Alneel:
My priority are the people most in need. And those are the poorer of the Sudanese people.
And they are getting help from themselves and from mutual aid, from resistance committees, and from neighborhood networks that are forming themselves to govern themselves and somehow provide for themselves. That's what I focus on.
So, when I think about whatever evacuation efforts that are happening, good for them. Flee out of a war zone. It's not good to be out in a war zone. It's not good if your country is turned into a war zone, and you have nowhere else to run.
But the fact that they didn't even consider to bring any sort of medical support with them, any sort of medical equipment or medicines that are in — we're in dire need. They were sending airplanes and not even sending medicines to us. Like, it's absurd to even follow what they're doing. There isn't one place that will tell you, these are the needs and here's where you can, like, send your donation.
No, it's a — it's decentralized. And everyone's trying to figure out what's happening in their neighborhood. And that is what's working for us right now. There is no U.N. agency that is here to support. There is no international organization that is here to support. We are supporting ourselves.
So, try to support us, but please use all the meeting rooms you have to get them to stop the war zone.
Nick Schifrin:
Muzan Alneel, thank you very much.
Muzan Alneel:
Thank you.
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People cool off at Qargha Lake on a hot summer day last year on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. (photo: Sahel Arman/AFP)
A new study found that heat waves intensified by climate change, combined with existing socioeconomic issues, will create potentially devastating vulnerabilities.
The research, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, identified places such as Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Honduras and Guatemala as regions where heat waves intensified by climate change, combined with existing socioeconomic issues, will create potentially devastating vulnerabilities.
The findings offer a timely warning on the dangers of extreme heat made worse by global warming, particularly as parts of Southeast Asia and China have been scorched by record-high temperatures in recent days and as much of the Northern Hemisphere heads into the warmest months of the year.
The study focused on parts of the world that are likely to experience brutal heat waves but have not yet suffered through extreme temperatures, said study co-author Dann Mitchell, a professor of climate science at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.
“It was all about really identifying regions where statistically we can predict there will be an extreme event, but observationally we haven’t seen that extreme event,” he said. “Where those two things meet, then we highlight that as a region potentially at risk.”
These areas likely do not have the resources in place to cope with sweltering conditions, Mitchell said. Some communities, for instance, may have limited access to air conditioning or already face barriers to health care and social services. In other countries, geopolitical forces may undermine a region’s ability to adapt or build resilience to climate extremes.
The researchers also found that places experiencing rapid growth, such as Beijing and spots across central Europe, are also at risk. If temperatures spike in these areas, millions of people in these densely populated cities would be affected, the scientists said.
And though nowhere on Earth is expected to be spared the impacts of climate change, the study identifies parts of the world that can do more to prepare for extreme temperatures.
“We identify regions that may have been lucky so far — some of these regions have rapidly growing populations, some are developing nations, some are already very hot,” Vikki Thompson, a climate scientist at the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute for the Environment and the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “We need to ask if the heat action plans for these areas are sufficient.”
Mitchell said he and his colleagues were motivated to study vulnerabilities to heat following the unprecedented heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2021. There were 100 heat-related deaths reported in Washington state during the multiday event, and nearly 100 deaths reported in Oregon, though experts have said the true toll was likely higher.
“That extreme caught a lot of people off guard,” Mitchell said. “The idea was then: Could we have identified that region’s risk beforehand?”
The researchers identified vulnerable hot spots by analyzing maximum daily temperatures across the globe over the past six decades. They then used statistical models and global climate models to zero in on where temperature records were likely to be shattered in the years ahead.
Mitchell said he hopes the findings will spur governments to do more to prepare for heat waves, particularly for populations that could be disproportionately affected by extreme temperatures.
“Climate change makes inequalities even more unequal,” he said. “And just because you haven’t seen something, our data has shown there are these regions where we are expecting to see a very extreme event. Don’t wait until it happens.”
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