Day: March 20, 2025
President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act last week kicked off a battle with the courts that’s getting more heated by the day. On Tuesday, he called U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg “crooked” and a “radical left lunatic” and suggested he should be impeached. Then, Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a rare public rebuke of the president, saying impeachment is “not an appropriate response” to a judicial decision. Senior politics reporter Aaron Blake speaks with Supreme Court reporter Justin Jouvenal and White House reporter Natalie Allison about the legal and political calculus behind Trump’s fight with the courts. And they also weigh in on the partial ceasefire deal for Ukraine brokered by the president and his Russian counterpart. Today’s show was produced by Laura Benshoff. It was edited by Reena Flores and Rachel Van Dongen. It was mixed by Sam Bair. Subscribe to The Washington Post here .
(NewsNation) — Angry constituents at town hall events for Republican lawmakers have made headlines recently, as conservative voters chide their representatives for some of the actions being taken by the Department of Government Efficiency.
Recently, liberal voters have also been criticizing their Democratic lawmakers as well — in this case, for not doing enough to fight Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Now, in the next couple of days, progressive lawmakers are going to swing districts in Arizona, Nevada and Colorado. Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is joining Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, on his “Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here” tour.
Democrats say this is to fill the void, as House Republican leadership has told members of their party to stop doing in-person town hall events. Another reason is to get a chance to put their message in front of Republicans.
In front of a crowd of 15,000 in Nevada Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez said this isn’t just about Republicans though.
“We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us too. So I want to thank you,” she told audience members. “Your state is pulling its weight out here, but we need more like them with the courage to brawl for the working class.”
At another stop in Colorado, Sanders noted the large crowds, saying they make it “clear…that the American people are outraged at what’s going on.”
“The American people are saying loud and clear we will not accept an oligarchic form of society,” Sanders said. “We will not accept the richest guy in the world running all over Washington making cuts to the Social Security Administration, cuts to the Veterans Administration, almost destroying the Department of Education, all so that they could give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent.”
NewsNation spoke to several moderate Democrats who say they’re OK with the progressives in their party spreading their message like this.
However, Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina dismissed the Democrats’ actions.
“They see that those types of actions are not a sincere effort in having rational, reasonable conversation to advance the American agenda,” Edwards said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Ukrainians living under Russian occupation to “legalize” their status by September 10 or face deportation. In other words, those who have not yet done so must apply for Russian passports or risk being expelled from their homes as foreigners. This March 20 presidential decree is the latest step in a campaign to pressure Ukrainians into accepting Russian citizenship as the Kremlin seeks to strengthen its grip over areas of Ukraine currently under Russian control.
Kremlin officials say they have distributed around 3.5 million Russian passports in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine since the onset of the full-scale invasion just over three years ago. Residents are reportedly being forced to apply for Russian passports in order to access basic services such as healthcare and state pensions, while those without Russian documentation face the possibility of harassment and detention.
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The enforced adoption of Russian citizenship is just one of the many tools being employed by the Kremlin to systematically erase all traces of Ukrainian statehood and national identity throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine. Wherever Russian troops advance, local populations are subjected to mass arrests designed to root out any potential dissenters. Those targeted typically include elected officials, military veterans, religious leaders, civil society activists, teachers, journalists, and patriots. Thousands have been abducted in this manner since 2022 and remain unaccounted for, with many thought to be languishing in a network of prisons in Russian-occupied Ukraine and Russia itself.
Those who remain are subjected to terror tactics in conditions that Britain’s The Economist has described as a “totalitarian hell.” All public symbols of Ukrainian statehood and cultural identity are being systematically dismantled. The Ukrainian language is suppressed, while any Christian denominations other than the Russian Orthodox Church face persecution or worse.
Moscow’s efforts to erase Ukrainian identity begin in the classroom. In schools throughout the occupied regions, Ukrainian children are being taught a new Kremlin-approved curriculum that praises Russian imperialism and glorifies the ongoing invasion of Ukraine while demonizing the entire concept of a separate and independent Ukrainian state. Any parents who dare to resist risk losing custody of their children.
The Kremlin is also accused of kidnapping tens of thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied regions and deporting them to Russia, where they are subjected to ideological indoctrination to rob them of their Ukrainian roots and impose an imperial Russian identity. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin due his personal involvement in these mass abductions of Ukrainian children.
Eurasia Center events
The actions of the Russian occupation authorities are entirely in line with the vicious anti-Ukrainian rhetoric coming from Putin himself and other officials in Moscow. Putin has long insisted that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”). Six months prior to the full-scale invasion, he took the highly unusual step of publishing a lengthy history essay that read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood.
As Russian troops prepared to invade in February 2022, Putin sought to justify this act of international aggression by describing Ukraine as “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” He has since compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great, and has declared occupied Ukrainian territory to be “Russian forever.”
The Russian establishment has enthusiastically followed Putin’s lead. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has stated that “the existence of Ukraine is mortally dangerous for Ukrainians,” while top Putin aide Nikolai Patrushev recently suggested Ukraine may soon “cease to exist.” Meanwhile, poisonous anti-Ukrainian language has become so commonplace in the Kremlin-controlled Russian media that UN investigators believe it may constitute “incitement to genocide.”
This week’s presidential decree threatening to deport Ukrainians from their own homes is the latest reminder that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is no mere border dispute or attempt to address legitimate security concerns. It is a colonial war of the most brutal kind that aims to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. In the heart of Europe and before the watching world, Putin is openly pursuing policies that almost certainly meet the definition of ethnic cleansing and may qualify as genocide.
The grim reality of Russia’s invasion should weigh heavily on the US officials who are currently charged with drawing lines on maps and attempting to create a realistic framework for a possible ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine. While diplomatic compromises and temporary territorial concessions are now clearly inevitable, any future peace deal must also take into account the fate of the millions of Ukrainians who are likely to be left under Russian occupation.
Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.
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The post Putin is ruthlessly erasing Ukrainian identity in Russian-occupied Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.
Plus: European central banks make rate decisions a day after the Fed’s. Class B shares of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway close at a record high. And the family of a Boeing whistleblower who took his own life filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the company. Pierre Bienaimé hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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5PM ET 03/20/2025 Newscast
P.M. Edition for Mar. 20. As the costs of home ownership soar, Florida lawmakers are considering a far-reaching remedy: eliminating property taxes. WSJ economics reporter Arian Campo-Flores joins us to discuss why the state is unlikely to get rid of property taxes completely. Plus, President Trump signs an executive order seeking to abolish the Education Department. And a $6.1 billion-sale of the Boston Celtics basketball team is the biggest in the history of American sports. Alex Ossola hosts. Listen: Trump Wants to Abolish the Education Department. What Comes Next? Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
