A White House official signaled administration support for the House bill, highlighting that the legislation averts deep cuts to domestic programs and includes disaster relief. The official also said the administration expects House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to soon bring another bill to the floor to support Ukraine. The official provided the statement on the condition of anonymity to describe a position not yet made public.

https://wapo.st/3ZE1jId

In universities and newspapers, nonprofit organizations and even corporations, a new set of ideas about race, gender, and sexual orientation has gained huge influence. Attitudes to these ideas—which are commonly called “woke,” though I prefer a more neutral term, the “identity synthesis”—have split into two camps: those who blame them for all of America’s ills and those who defend them, largely uncritically.

…As the identity synthesis has gained in influence, its flaws have become harder to ignore. A striking number of progressive advocacy groups, for example, have been consumed by internal meltdowns in recent years. “We used to want to make the world a better place,” a leader of one progressive organization complained recently. “Now we just make our organizations more miserable to work at.” As institutions such as the Sierra Club and the ACLU have implemented the norms inspired by the identity synthesis, they have had more difficulty serving their primary missions.

…The identity synthesis is also starting to remake public policy in ways that are more likely to create a society of warring tribes. In the early months of the pandemic, for example, a key advisory committee to the CDC recommended that states prioritize essential workers in the rollout of scarce vaccines rather than the elderly, in part because “racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented” among seniors. Not only did this policy, according to the CDC’s own models, have the probable outcome of increasing the overall number of Americans who would perish in the pandemic; it also placed different ethnic groups in competition with one another for lifesaving medications.

When decision makers appear out of touch with the values and priorities of most citizens, demagogues thrive. The well-founded fears roused by the election of Trump accelerated the ascendancy of the identity synthesis in many elite institutions. Conversely, the newfound hold that these ideas now have over such institutions makes it more likely that he might win back the White House in 2024. The identity synthesis and far-right populism may at first glance appear to be polar opposites; in political practice, one is the yin to the other’s yang.

More at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/woke-ideology-history-origins-flaws/675454/

…Back in the early 1990s, I opposed NATO expansion after the fall of the Berlin Wall, because I thought our priority should be trying to nurture a democratic Russia. I don’t regret that for a second. Now, 30 years later, though, when the prospects for a democratic Russia feel utterly remote, I would gladly use NATO and the E.U. to nurture and secure a democratic Ukraine.

Because if Ukraine can escape this war — even if it has to temporarily cede some territory to Putin — and can complete the anti-corruption and other regulatory reforms that are required for it to join the European Union, the brainpower, agricultural power and military power that Ukraine represents would serve as an important model and magnet for Russians wanting a different future, not to mention other shaky Balkan states.

…Which is why, as much as I value NATO as a security alliance, I have never lost sight of how the European Union — which Americans tend to know little about — has managed to quietly build itself into its own kind of United States of Europe, another great center of free markets, free people democracy and the rule of law. To be sure, the E.U. has plenty of its own problems managing day to day. But considering Europe’s long history of fratricide, the E.U. is a quiet, boring miracle. Adding Ukraine to it would make it only stronger.

Indeed, as I’ve thought about what could be the most meaningful and painful punishment for Putin and his war crimes, I decided it would be for him to be sentenced to sit in the Kremlin for the rest of his life, hiding from coup plotters and having to look out at a Ukraine that is a secure and flourishing member of the single largest democratic, free market/free travel zone in the world — the E.U — while Putin’s citizens would be left with the freedom to vacation and invest in North Korea and Iran.

That would be Vladimir Putin’s nightmare. Our job is to help make it come true.

(Gift link) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=_shXNurOe-J5qx42jNmZw_c27LLzewm3ayHlLWSjNoVqsPQsBKICwIf-7N3SPpYazeF78nsy9Ir0Y4vZZAyRAgSG2GE8o-OL-0O0G0YquQ9W71DVSYnaUWktLyg84e7lPabKIMPdN_Efdzn7hE7RU40kGLiRRXRvbmYrO1dzmL1k4gvIfLmpJ2uDWSM_nMUHvGdJ3ZMlVsnwb_Nx8Q25A9V2didrXkevIs58w_VMqcvpTSN5KyMgF2d1kLAYhLxN5tHpABRcE3UVaodxyVdyG9MGXhwtgqCNvwGbBmCeAJNt0iRDrP3R2iws4JYDv3zbTL1tvKgRJfI3D_s&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare