The Morning Dispatch: Biden, World Leaders Huddle on Russia

Happy Friday! Today is our last Declan-less TMD for a while—unless of course you all band together as a mob over the weekend to demand his firing! We’ve done fine without him, haven’t we? Dead weight, if you ask us! (Please don’t say anything rash—in his absence we have nearly died.)

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The United States will admit 100,000 Ukrainian and other refugees fleeing as a result of Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression, President Joe Biden confirmed Thursday. According to the U.N. refugee agency, more than 3.5 million people have fled from Ukraine since February.

• President Biden met with other NATO leaders for an emergency summit Thursday in Brussels to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Afterward, the U.S. and other allies announced additional sanctions on more than 400 Russian individuals and entities. 

• Initial jobless benefit claims dropped from 28,000 to 187,000 the week that ended March 19 from the previous week, according to the U.S. Labor Department Thursday. That is the lowest level of unemployment benefit claims since September 1969 and is lower than economists predictions, which placed estimates closer to 210,000. 

• The Senate Judiciary Committee heard from the American Bar Association and witnesses both for and against Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson for the fourth and final day of her confirmation hearing. The nominee herself did not appear after a marathon 22 hours of grilling by lawmakers. The next phase of the process will include a committee vote April 4, and a final floor vote sometime next month. Democratic leaders have said they hope to confirm Jackson before Easter recess. 

• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 Thursday in favor of a death row inmate who asked for his pastor to audibly pray for him and lay hands on him during his execution, which had been delayed because the state of Texas refused to allow any spiritual advisers into the death chamber. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that while the state has a “compelling interest” in safe executions, the presence of a spiritual adviser falls in line with “traditional forms of religious exercise.” Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter in the case.

Biden’s Busy Day

President Joe Biden’s trip to Europe got off to a brisk start yesterday. The day-long diplomatic blitz in Brussels, Belgium, began at the NATO headquarters, where Biden met with the leaders of other alliance member states. He then attended a conference with leaders of the Group of Seven (G7)—France, Italy, Japan, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States—before joining the European Council Summit and appearing alongside the body’s newly re-elected president, Charles Michel. 

The day’s theme: unity in the face of Russia’s month-long assault on Ukraine. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin “was banking on NATO being split,” Biden said from the military alliance’s headquarters. “In my early conversation with him in December and early January, it was clear to me he didn’t think we could sustain this cohesion. NATO has never, never been more united than it is today. Putin is getting exactly the opposite of what he intended to have as a consequence of going into Ukraine. We built that same unity with our European—the European Union and with the leading democracies of the G7.” 

The president reiterated the administration’s three-pronged approach—providing military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, coordinating and enforcing sanctions against Russia, and bolstering NATO’s eastern flank—before laying out a series of new measures to mitigate the crisis and deter further Russian aggression.

The White House said the U.S. will accept Ukrainian refugees and extend humanitarian aid to alleviate the mounting humanitarian crisis abroad.

As civilians—more than 3.5 million by recent estimates—flood out of Ukraine, the Biden administration announced that it will welcome up to 100,000 refugees. The plan, Biden indicated in his speech, would prioritize the acceptance of Ukrainian refugees with family members currently in the United States. 

By what process, however, remains undetermined. A senior U.S. official told reporters Thursday that the administration is considering “the full range of legal pathways,” which includes the U.S. refugee admissions program—the clearest path to permanent residence. But as is the case with the country’s current influx of refugees from Afghanistan, incoming Ukrainians might be admitted via humanitarian parole, which only extends temporary lawful permanent status to its recipients. Other programs—like immigrant and non-immigrant visa designations—are also on the table for the newcomers. 

But many Ukrainians fleeing the war will likely want to stay in Europe, Biden added. Accordingly, the U.S. plans to allocate $1 billion in humanitarian relief to provide shelter, food, medicine, and water to accommodate the torrent of refugees. Ukraine’s neighboring countries of Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, and Slovakia have thus far borne the brunt of the mass displacement. 

The U.S. and its NATO allies announced ongoing efforts to arm Kyiv.

The NATO summit opened with a video call from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who continued his forceful appeal for additional Western military assistance. Though just last week he appealed to Congress directly to enforce a no-fly zone, Zelensky stopped short of such a request to the U.S. and NATO Thursday. Ukraine reportedly told the U.S. it needs 500 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles—daily. And in a call with reporters, a U.S. official alluded to tentative plans to provide Ukraine with anti-ship missiles but noted “technical challenges with making that happen.” 

A statement from the White House also indicated an ongoing effort to get air defense systems into Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the Pentagon plans to supply the Ukrainian armed forces with a Soviet-made anti-aircraft system. 

The U.S., G7, and European Union unveiled additional economic penalties targeting Russia. 

Biden announced sanctions—to be implemented in alignment with the EU, United Kingdom, and Canada—targeting Russian oligarchs, dozens of defense companies, and more than 300 members of the Duma, Russia’s lower legislative body. The U.S. Treasury also moved to ban “any transaction involving gold related to the Central Bank of Russia,” taking a swipe at Russia’s use of its more than $100 billion in gold reserves. The initiative aims to undermine efforts by Moscow and its partners to circumvent existing U.S. sanctions. 

As a result of the West’s economic punishments thus far, a U.S. official said on a call with reporters Thursday, “Russia is now looking at a contraction in its economy of 15 percent this year, according to private sector estimates. To put that into perspective, that would be three times as much as the GDP declined after Russia’s debt default in 1998. The Institute for International Finance estimates that the shock to Russia’s GDP this year will wipe out the past 15 years of economic gains.”

If the Russian economy continues to shrink at pace, the official added, it will fall out of the world’s top 2o economies. 

Biden said Thursday that he hopes to see Russia foisted from the Group of 20—an international body comprised of the world’s biggest economic players—but alluded to disunity among other member states.

Biden said NATO will respond “in kind” if Putin uses chemical weapons in Ukraine.

A major question of the day: What action by Russia would warrant further intervention by the U.S. and its NATO allies? Biden afforded some clarity on that point Thursday, confirming that Moscow’s deployment of chemical weapons “would trigger a response” by the alliance. But the “nature of the response,” Biden said, “would depend on the nature of the use.” 

A U.S. official elaborated further Thursday: “There is a recognition that NATO needs to continue a lot of the good, ongoing work to be prepared to respond to various contingencies. It’s something that NATO, as a military alliance, is already postured to do, and it’s something that they recognize that they need to continue to do given the various scenarios that could emerge as part of this conflict.” The official also told reporters that the U.S. is “already taking steps both nationally, as well as through NATO, to enhance the readiness and capability of our defense forces to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incidents. Frankly, for NATO, this is an important part of strengthening our longer-term defense and deterrence postures.”

The U.S. and its democratic partners promised economic consequences if China supports Russia’s war effort. 

Following Biden’s two-hour call with President Xi Jinping last Friday, China’s plan—or lack thereof—to offer military and financial backing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remained unclear. But Biden hinted at the economic repercussions facing Xi on Thursday, saying that assistance to Russia would jeopardize China’s “economic relations and economic growth with Europe and the United States.” 

NATO also released a statement including an explicit call-out of China: “We call on all states, including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), to uphold the international order including the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, as enshrined in the UN Charter, to abstain from supporting Russia’s war effort in any way, and to refrain from any action that helps Russia circumvent sanctions. We are concerned by recent public comments by PRC officials and call on China to cease amplifying the Kremlin’s false narratives, in particular on the war and on NATO, and to promote a peaceful resolution to the conflict.” 

Trump Shivs Mo

During his tenure as primary kingmaker of the Republican Party, former President Donald Trump prizes two qualities in the candidates he endorses: to-the-hilt loyalty to him personally, and the ability to win. He’s also long maintained that the two qualities are actually one and the same: So great was the love Republican voters had for him that his choice of the true MAGA candidate would be determinative in any GOP primary at any level.

This was often—though not always—true at the height of Trump’s influence, while he was president and still had charge of his social media accounts. Since he left office, however, it’s become clear that that power is waning—which is leading to some odd dance moves from the Trump camp as the former president tries to maintain the illusion of infallibility.

When Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby announced last February that he would retire after more than three decades in the Senate, Trump wasted little time putting forward his candidate to succeed him: Rep. Mo Brooks, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus and MAGA firebreather who spoke before Trump at the “Save America” rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. “Few Republicans have as much COURAGE and FIGHT as Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks,” Trump said in an April 7 statement. Brooks, he promised, “will stand up for America First no matter what obstacles the Fake News Media, RINOs, or Socialist Democrats may place in his path.”

The early endorsement was intended to clear a crowded Republican field, and Brooks indeed jumped out to an early lead. A June Club for Growth poll showed him with a mammoth name-recognition advantage of around 60 points over his two most prominent challengers: former U.S. ambassador Lynda Blanchard and Katie Britt, Shelby’s chief of staff and former president of the Business Council of Alabama. That same poll found 57 percent of likely primary voters had a positive opinion of Brooks, compared to just 8 percent for Blanchard and 6 percent for Britt. What’s more, the pollsters asserted, “relatively few primary voters are aware of Donald Trump’s endorsement of Brooks, so Brooks’ lead is likely to grow even larger as awareness of Trump’s endorsement becomes more widespread.”

But it didn’t. Instead, Brooks’ lead shrunk the rest of 2021 as his competitors introduced themselves better to voters and outside groups funded (sometimes misleading) attack ads against Brooks. An Alabama Daily News poll in August found support for Brooks at 40 percent and support for Britt up to 17 percent. By December, that same poll had Brooks at 31 percent, Britt at 26 percent, and a recent entry, Mike Durant, at 17 percent—with Britt actually beating Brooks 39 percent to 37 percent in a head-to-head polling question.

By this week, the wheels had fallen off completely for Brooks: The latest Gray TV/Alabama Daily News poll found a close race between Durant at 35 percent and Britt at 28 percent, with Brooks back in third with 16 percent support.

It was the last straw for Trump. One day later, he released a statement pulling his endorsement from Brooks. In his statement, the former president brought up comments Brooks made in a rally last August, suggesting that he had been insufficiently devoted to the (false, fraudulent) proposition that the 2020 election had been stolen by the Democrats.

“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’ despite the fact that the Election was rife with fraud and irregularities,” Trump said in the statement. “When I heard his statement, I said, ‘Mo, you just blew the Election, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ Very sad but, since he decided to go in another direction, so have I, and I am hereby withdrawing my Endorsement of Mo Brooks for the Senate.” Trump went on to promise that “I will be making a new Endorsement in the future!”

The “put that behind you” comment was certainly awkward for Brooks at the time, drawing boos from the crowd at the Trump rally where he said it. (He seemed to be suggesting that voters should take their anger about the 2020 election and channel it into voting in 2022 and 2024.) But the insinuation that it was some great break with the former president is laughable. Later that same day, Brooks made his (untrue) beliefs explicit on Twitter: “Let me be clear, the 2020 election was fraught with voter fraud & election theft on a massive scale. If only legal votes cast by eligible American citizens were counted, Trump won the election.” And overall, it’s harder to find candidates who have hustled harder than Brooks to trumpet their devotion both to Trump and to his stolen-election narrative. Until this week, he included Trump’s endorsement both in his official campaign logo and in his account name on Twitter.

At any rate, Trump isn’t just now learning about Brooks’ comments, which were made in his presence nearly a year ago. Even Trump’s own statement hints at the real reason for the rescinded endorsement, with Trump noting that “Mo’s 44-point lead totally evaporated all based on his ‘2020’ statement made at our massive rally in Cullman, Alabama.” Trump doesn’t want to be stuck with a loser, and his endorsement doesn’t seem to be preventing Brooks from losing.

In reality, observers in the state say, Brooks has fallen behind simply because he hasn’t run a very good campaign—failing to raise and spend the necessary money to match his well-heeled opponents and squandering the early lead his high name recognition and Trump endorsement had earned him in the process.

“He certainly got a lot of attention, most of it positive among Republicans among the MAGA crowd, on and around January 6, and was very vocal, one of the moral vocal people defending the Trump line after the election,” Zac McCrary, an Alabama Democratic strategist, told The Dispatch. “And then he did get the Trump endorsement at the start of the race. And so all that combined had him in a good position at that point. But really, he’s always been a weak fundraiser, has not raised money well—whereas you have Britt, who is very well connected, ran the state Chamber of Commerce, has been Richard Shelby’s chief of staff, is sort of heir apparent in the Shelby machinery, such as it is.”

None of that, of course, is Trump’s fault. But in Trump’s personal cosmology, Republican candidates don’t win or lose based on things like fundraising prowess or skill on the campaign trail—they win by attaching themselves to Trump and earning his favor, and they lose by crossing him and earning his wrath. Don’t expect that cosmology to waver even in the face of stories like that of Mo Brooks. 

Worth Your Time

• “Nearly 2 million people have already left my beloved city of Kyiv, our local council has reported. I am one of the roughly 2 million who have stayed,” 31-year-old Ukraine-based journalist Veronika Melkozerova writes for The Atlantic. Her stay is not without danger: More than 200 people in her city have been killed and more than 900 wounded due to Russian shelling, she reports. But in identifying her reasons for staying, she writes: “First of all, you never leave your loved ones, and Kyiv is my love.” She also notes the way the city’s remaining residents have responded to the onslaught of Russian aggression with defiance and courage: “If Vladimir Putin uproots us all, he will win.”

• Over at National Review, Charles C. W. Cooke unloads on a New York Times report concerning the resignation of senior Manhattan processor Mark Pomerantz, whose leaked resignation letter said he “believed that [former President Trump] was ‘guilty of numerous felony violations’ and that it was ‘a grave failure of justice not to hold him accountable.’” “Americans of all political stripes should be horrified by this development, and the leaker, whoever he may be, should be summarily fired,” Cooke writes. When it comes to the guilt or innocence of any American, what matters is not what investigators believe but what a jury determines at trial: “As a matter of elementary civic hygiene, American citizens should expect their government to put up or shut up. If the government has a case, it should make it in court and accept the decision that flows from that move. If it does not have a case—or if it chooses not to bring one—it should stay quiet. There is no room in our system for leaked letters that assert, as a matter of fact, that presumptively innocent people have committed crimes.”

Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

• In the latest edition of The Current (🔒), Klon breaks down the Biden administration’s warning that America’s private sector should brace for the possibility of Russian cyberattacks amid escalating tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “There are a lot of unknowns right now so it’s best to let this story develop further,” Klon writes. “But one thing is certain: While we have significant cyber capabilities, we also have significant vulnerabilities. If large-scale cyberattacks come, we’re all going to feel it.”

• Chris’s latest Stirewaltisms considers how bad behavior on the part of elected officials can often be traced to bad advice from consultants operating in their own interest: “Each of those senators employs not one, but a team of political professionals who advise them on everything imaginable. Long before the proof for the first giant poster from Antiracist Baby was sent to the printing office, those members considered how to attack [Ketanji Brown] Jackson and relied on the input of highly compensated individuals. The problem, though, is that this high compensation relies on lots and lots of campaign contributions. And those … professionals, whether they know it or not, face an implicit bias in favor of the strategies that are most likely to produce them—such as acting like a jerk in a televised hearing.”

• When Kevin Williamson comes on The Remnant, it’s safest just to quote from the show notes: “In a conversation that will send you scrambling for your bingo cards, Kevin and Jonah explore the problem with social homogeneity. They also touch on the weaknesses of autocratic regimes, realistic climate change solutions, and Kevin’s hatred of Ohio. Plus, tune in to hear Kevin give a rousing reading of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’”

Let Us Know

Is NATO’s strategy of directly calling out China’s amplification of Russian talking points effective? How else should the West pressure Xi Jinping from giving aid to Vladimir Putin? 

Reporting by Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Ryan Brown (@RyanP_Brown), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).