The Pentagon notified Congress it plans to divert roughly $750 million from the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, a NATO-backed program funding American-made weapons for Kyiv, to restock its own depleted arsenal, the
Washington Post reports. (
Gift link.) Officials cited shortages of critical air defense systems—including Patriot and THAAD missiles drawn down through heavy use in the Middle East. President Donald Trump
publicly attacked NATO, calling it a "paper tiger" on Truth Social and warning the United States would "remember" which countries failed to step up.
Now, to be clear, this hasn't happened yet. It shouldn't happen, considering that money was paid by European countries specifically to buy arms for Ukraine's defense, and using it for something else would be... illegal? Improper? Unconstitutional? A betrayal of NATO and Ukraine? Anyway, this move may be too openly pro-Russia even for Congressional Republicans to stomach.
Nevertheless, I thought I would bring this issue to your attention. One of the biggest winners of the US-Israeli war on Iran, so far,
is Russia.
(Senator Whitehouse:
If Trump were purposefully doing Russia's bidding, it's hard to see what he'd be doing differently.)
***
BONUS, via
Heather Cox Richardson:
As part of the Republicans' attempt to smear special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump's retention of classified documents when he left office after his first term, on March 13 the DOJ provided the House Judiciary Committee with documents related to Smith's investigation.
Raskin noted that some of those documents potentially violate the gag order Judge Aileen Cannon placed on that material as part of the attempt to keep it from public scrutiny. This suggests, he wrote, that the DOJ appears to take the position "that it can violate Judge Cannon's order and grand jury secrecy whenever it sees an opportunity to smear Jack Smith."
The documents also "include damning evidence" against Trump. The documents show that highly classified documents from his time in office were mingled with material from after he left, suggesting he illegally retained documents.
The documents the DOJ provided to the committee,
Raskin wrote, "suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them, that the documents President Trump stole pertained to his business interests, and that Susie Wiles, then the CEO of Donald Trump's super PAC, witnessed President Trump showing off a classified map to passengers on his private plane. This glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the coverup reveals a President of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself."
