Bad luck for Zelenskyy in D.C. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy met with President Joe Biden, making his plea for greater U.S. support for the war effort against Vladimir Putin's Russian invasion. Though the White House had just announced a $325 million air-defense package for Ukraine, "the Biden administration has opted not to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles known as ATACMS that would allow Kyiv to strike well behind Russian lines," reports Axios.
Zelenskyy's plea for an additional $24 billion also does not look likely to materialize, as Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), along with six senators and 22 members of the House, used the occasion to voice their opposition to that high dollar amount of Ukraine aid. As Republicans in the House continue to oppose spending bill proposals, the U.S. government inches closer to shutting down, provided appropriations cannot be agreed to by the Sept. 30 deadline.
Meanwhile, as Zelenskyy has been in the U.S. this week, relations between Poland and Ukraine have soured due to a grain dispute, and Poland has declared it will no longer arm Ukraine. Also this week: "Nearly 50 children from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine were taken to Belarus… with the help of a charitable foundation that has been accused of facilitating Russia's forcible deportations of Ukrainian children," reports The New York Times.
On Tuesday, while in New York, Zelenskyy addressed the general assembly of the United Nations and sounded alarm about the kidnapping and deportation of children from occupied regions.
Kamala Harris, here to secure the border and end all gun violence? The White House has created a federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention and tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with leading it. "Every time I've met with families impacted by gun violence as they mourn their loved ones, and I've met with so many throughout the country, they all have the same message for their elected officials: 'do something,'" [President Joe] Biden said in a statement.
This, apparently, is that something. It's not clear how this office will actually work to solve the problem, nor is it clear that Harris' previous busywork—supervising the administration's border strategy—was completed successfully. No information has been released on how much funding this office will gobble up, either.
Agents of the state hopefully held accountable: This week, Reason's Billy Binion has been covering the Tony Timpa wrongful death trial from Dallas.
In August 2016, "Timpa told a [911] dispatcher that he was having a mental health crisis," saying "he had schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety and that he had not taken his medication. Two private security guards handcuffed Timpa and waited for the cops." Timpa was then held down by police officers in a prone restraint for over 14 minutes as he cried out, asking them to stop and telling them he was going to die. The police officers joked as they held Timpa down. Following his death, the government refused to give Timpa's family the body camera footage of the incident, and then invoked qualified immunity to shield the cops from civil liability (which was later appealed and overturned). "Tony Timpa's story shows how far the government goes to prevent victims of abuse from seeking recourse," notes Binion, who has covered this case extensively.
Now, finally, Timpa's case will be weighed by a jury. Trials like these are "incredibly valuable fact-finding tools—particularly when the defendants are government employees who may have violated the Constitution at the direct expense of the taxpayer," writes Binion.
Scenes from New York:
New York City is trying to do what virtually every city in the developed world already does — putting trash in garbage cans — and some NIMBYs aren't having it because the status quo of trash and rats spewed all over the sidewalks give that "cute neighborhood feeling"… Holy f*ck! pic.twitter.com/SNgyIf3pT2
— Aaron Carr (@aaronAcarr) September 20, 2023
QUICK HITS
- Did Ibram X. Kendi's Center for Antiracist Research just blow through $30 million in two years?
- Stunningly bad ideas for how journalists should cover Trump vs. Biden.
- Dispatches from the Senate, which now has no real dress code:
Fetterman looks like he's about to tell you that he found half a cat in the air conditioner he was working on yesterday. pic.twitter.com/Iy4ZuiswuJ
— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) September 21, 2023
- At 92 years old, Rupert Murdoch is retiring. His son Lachlan will now oversee the Fox empire in his place.
- Argentina "isn't just a place of multiple truths and ready arbitrage, it's a place in real crisis where the pegs and stories and chewing gum holding things together are all failing," reports Karl T. Muth for Noahpinion. ("Cualquier cosa es major que pesos," says one bitcoin ATM sign Muth encounters.)
- "Jackson's experience is a warning to the vast majority of Alexa users and smart home dwellers who… are increasingly at the mercy of the tech they have embedded into their lives and bedrooms," writes Tablet's Jarod Facundo in his investigation into the story of a black man who Amazon accused of making racist remarks in private.
- Incredible:
san francisco's new approach to combatting property crime is encouraging victims to have less property pic.twitter.com/f7pg0lL7Fd
— Mike Solana (@micsolana) September 21, 2023
- On Tuesday, Indonesian TikTok influencer Lina Lutfiawati was sentenced to two years in prison and more than $16,000 in fines. Her crime? Eating pork rinds, which is considered haram and is forbidden by the government.
- No Curtis Mayfield or Marvin Gaye, really? Jann Wenner defends his picks for best artists in his new book, The Masters, but ends up sounding… a bit sexist and racist. (His defense of Rolling Stone's journalistic malpractice is similarly stunning.)
- Inside China's disturbing war on drugs.
- About 45 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 live with their parents—roughly the same rate as in the 1940s. (People should do whatever they need to in order to scrape by, but Failure to Launch Syndrome disturbs me. It's almost like cities should loosen bad regulations to allow more housing to be built!)
- Nightmare blunt rotation!
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