https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-no-choice-halt-ukraine-invasion-former-US-general-2022-3

"Putin will have to halt his war in Ukraine sooner or later and probably in a matter of weeks,"
"He has basically reached the capacity of what his military can do for him in Ukraine."
Ryan said the Russian army "has a huge personnel problem. There is no significant military unit left in Russia outside of Ukraine. They are all in the fight," he said. "He does not have the military forces to take all of Ukraine and occupy it,"

Ryan called this "a great achievement by Ukrainian people to have prevented an overthrow of their government and a total seizure of all their land."

"So until he gets enough concessions," Ryan said of Putin, "I think he would want to stay in that kind of no man's land of a halted military operation — one that could be restarted at any time. That would be the threat."

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-5-2022?s=r

"Today, former president Barack Obama returned to the White House at President Joe Biden’s invitation to talk about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare

Republicans have loathed the ACA since Obama signed it into law in 2010. This is a modern-day stance, by the way: it was actually Republican president Theodore Roosevelt who first proposed universal healthcare at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Republican president Dwight Eisenhower who first tried to muscle such a program into being with the help of the new department created under him: the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which in 1979 became the Department of Health and Human Services."

If just one of these groups/people decide to talk, the entire saga would be exposed. Who's on your list?

Melania
Ivanka
Jared
Don, Jr.
Eric
Weisselman & his son
Cohen (he's talked, probably more than we know, but he wasn't there for the entire shit-show)
Trump's administrative assistants & Hope Hicks
Trump's assorted lawyers (some have been sent subpoenas): the list is long
Trump's drivers/body guards/the secret service
Ivana (wife #1 - These two appear to still be close)
Tiffany (she knows some stuff)
White House staff and certain congressional members
Friends like the My Pillow guy, Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, Sidney Powell
The dark money mega donors: most notably the Mercers brother/sister act
Intelligence Services in USA & Five Eyes (U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, U.K.)
A few other countries: Israel, Turkey, Qatar

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-2-2022?s=r

"In order to compile that official record, the White House diarist normally gets information from the Secret Service about the president’s movements, the phone logs from the switchboard, and the records from the Oval Office, including phone calls, visitors, and activities...That record-keeping system was in place until January 4, 2021, but by then the plot to overturn the election was in high gear.

“nearly 300 state lawmakers” who were provided with resources to use “as they make calls for state legislatures to meet to investigate the election and consider decertifying their state election results.” An article about it stated: “A similar briefing is being scheduled in Washington, D.C., at the request of Members of Congress.”

"On January 3, lawyer John Eastman wrote his memo outlining a plan for then–Vice President Pence to overturn the election results.

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American

"The March jobs report came out this morning and, once again, it was terrific. The economy added 431,000 jobs in March, and the figures for January and February were revised upward by 95,000. The U.S has added 1.7 million jobs between January and March, and unemployment is near an all-time low of 3.6%. As employment has risen, employers have had to raise wages to get workers. So, wages are up 5.6% for the year that ended in February.

According to the nonprofit academic medical center Mayo Clinic, the cost of insulin has skyrocketed because people need it to live, there is a monopoly on production, there is no regulation of the cost, and there are companies that profit from keeping prices artificially high."

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-31-2022?s=r

"Four cases were consolidated into one: the League of Women Voters v. Florida Secretary of State Laurel M. Lee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Republican National Committee....

“This case is about our sacred right to vote,” Walker wrote, “won at great cost in blood and treasure....Walker notes that the issue at stake is not whether the legislators who wrote the new laws are racist, but rather whether race was a factor in the writing of SB 90. Recognizing that few people would today openly admit their racial motivations, he explains that the court needed to look at the circumstances around the passage of SB 90 to determine if race played a role in the law....

“This Court finds that the Legislature enacted SB 90 to improve the Republican Party’s electoral prospects,” Walker wrote. He required Florida to get the approval of the federal government before trying to make any such changes for the next ten years.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-30-2022?s=r

Letters from an American: Heather Cox Richardson

"As director of OMB, Mulvaney okayed the withholding of almost $400 million Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s protection against Russia. In May 2019, he set up “the three amigos,” Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, special envoy Kurt Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to pressure Zelensky.

...the Washington Post tonight revealed that he had reviewed a recording of a phone call in which the co-president of CBS News, Neeraj Khemlani, suggested they had hired Mulvaney to guarantee access to Republican lawmakers. “If you look at some of the people that we’ve been hiring on a contributor basis, being able to make sure that we are getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms,” Khemlani told staff."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/30/donald-trump-burner-phones

'...the most important burner phone principle is to discard it and replace it constantly. But not everyone remembers to do this...So if someone were using a burner phone to orchestrate a coup from the White House, could law enforcement triangulate the user? While it might be possible from a technical standpoint, the greater barriers might be legal ones....

You’ve got to have a warrant to get that information on that particular person...It wouldn’t necessarily be easy for the US president to keep switching burner phones, either. “You’re going to have to tell your nearest and dearest of the new number each time. But how can you trust it? If I get a message from Donald Trump saying this is Donald Trump’s new burner phone number, I’m going to suspect that it’s not.”

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-29-2022?s=r

"The missing logs might not, in the end, obscure any phone calls made in that time, though....because last summer, the January 6 Committee instructed 35 telecom and social media companies to preserve records of calls....Crooked Media editor in chief Brian Beutler recalled McCarthy’s threat to punish telecom companies that cooperate with the January 6 Committee.

While Eastman presented a plan by which Pence could refuse to count Biden’s electors, Cruz wrote a plan for congress members to object to the results in six critical states that Biden won, establishing a 10-day “audit” that would have enabled Republican-dominated state legislatures to overturn the election results in their states. Ten other senators backed Cruz’s plan, offering a path to create enough chaos to keep Trump in power."

And then there is this: "Department of Justice yesterday revealed that it wants 131 more lawyers to handle January 6 cases. In the request, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said, "Regardless of whatever resources we see or get, let's be very, very clear: we are going to hold those perpetrators accountable, no matter where the facts lead us,... no matter what level.”

"Well, I mean this. Well, I mean that." Pundits, please stop. I'd rather hear, "So, we promise to stop saying, 'Well, I mean' to begin every statement we make."

Just my small complaint.