memeorandum: Red states are remaking the civil liberties landscape (Ronald Brownstein/CNN)

10:10 AM ET, February 22, 2022

Top Items:

Melissa Eddy / New York Times:

Germany puts a stop to Nord Stream 2, a key Russian natural gas pipeline. — Germany halted certification of the pipeline linking the country to Russia in response to the Kremlin's recognition of two separatist regions in Ukraine. — Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday that Germany …

Associated Press:

World leaders focus on how to punish Russia over Ukraine — BRUSSELS (AP) — With the smell of war in the air over Europe, world leaders got over the shock of Russian President Vladimir Putin's order to deploy troops to separatist regions of eastern Ukraine and they are focused on producing as forceful a reaction as possible.

Discussion: Insider, The Times of Israel, KNSD-TV, Fox News, Associated Press, Raw Story, Gotrade Daily, Politico, WTOP News, One America News Network, The Guardian, CBS News and globalnews.ca

BBC:

Five banks and three wealthy Russians hit by UK sanctions — Summary — Western countries are imposing sanctions on Russia after it ordered troops to be sent to eastern Ukraine — The UK hit five banks and three wealthy individuals with sanctions in response

Discussion: Insider, Politico, KyivPost, Metro.co.uk, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Guardian and Houston Public Media

Joseph R. Biden Jr / The White House:

Executive Order on Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting Certain Transactions With Respect to Continued Russian Efforts to Undermine the Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity of Ukraine … By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States …

Politico:

As Putin sends troops into Donbas, White House avoids the ‘I’ word — Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk regions Monday night, following his decision earlier in the day to recognize those regions as independent republics, and no longer part of Ukraine.

Discussion: Washington Examiner, Wall Street Journal, CBS News, NBC News, Insider, NATO, The Daily Caller, The Guardian, New York Times, Reuters, Укр …, Radio Free Europe/Radio …, Newsy, KNSD-TV, HuffPost and Mediaite

David Ignatius / Washington Post:

Surprising cracks, if small ones, appear in Kremlin support for Putin on Ukraine — President Vladimir Putin presented a theatrical justification for war with Ukraine on Monday, but initial Russian military actions along the border were limited — and there seemed to be a few small cracks …

Discussion: CNN, Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Daily Beast, CBS News, Politico and Breitbart

Lili Bayer / Politico:
EU, UK leaders vow sanctions over Putin's recognition of breakaway Ukraine regions

Discussion: Politico, CBS News, Ordinary Times, The Guardian, Meduza.io, Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reason, Washington Post, Axios, New York Daily News, BuzzFeed News, Politico, Just Security, Reuters, Billboard, Mediaite, The Guardian, New York Post, Outside the Beltway, Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC, Atlantic Council, Caitlin's Newsletter, Radio Free Europe/Radio …, KNSD-TV, Daily Kos, Rolling Stone, After all my years …, Macovei, Fox News, Townhall, YesXorNo, National Review, Menagerie, the Newsletter, The Daily Caller, Avi's Newsletter, Al Jazeera, Instapundit, RedState, The White House, Wall Street Journal, The Moderate Voice, UPI, The Last Refuge, Vox, The Daily Wire, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, RedState, Associated Press, One America News Network, TheJournal.ie, GoldFix, HuffPost, Radio Free Europe/Radio …, CNN, Washington Times, PBS NewsHour, Power Line, The Hill, Mediaite, Financial Times, Politico, Washington Free Beacon, European Council, TheBlaze, Political Wire and UPI

New York Times:
Wooing Allies, Publicizing Putin's Plans: Inside Biden's Race to Prevent War

Discussion: The Hill, Nonzero Newsletter, Associated Press and CNN

Bloomberg:
U.S. Orders Personnel Out of Ukraine on Threat From Russia

Discussion: Washington Post, United States Department …, New York Times, Изв …, One America News Network, The Daily Caller, Insider, TheBlaze and Voice of America

Lucy Fisher / Telegraph:
Oligarchs lobby Foreign Office in bid to avoid sanctions

Discussion: New York Post, Associated Press and Bloomberg

Meduza.io:
The day after Developments in Russia and around the world following Moscow's recognition of eastern Ukraine's two breakaway ‘republics’

Discussion: National Review

Reuters:
Syria supports Putin's recognition of Ukraine breakaway regions

Discussion: Political Wire and CNN

Senator Ted Cruz:
Sen. Cruz Issues Statement after Putin Escalates Aggression Against Ukraine and Deploys Troops

Discussion: WTOP News, Raw Story, Associated Press, Letters from an American, Postcards from the End, Washington Post, CNN and CNN

Stephen Fidler / Wall Street Journal:

Putin's Endgame: Unravel the Post-Cold War Agreements That Humiliated Russia — Moscow's military forces threaten Ukraine, but the bigger prize is restoration of Russia's sphere of influence stretching through Eastern Europe — The world's attention is on eastern Ukraine, where Moscow's forces circle.

Discussion: The Home Stretch, Intervals In Time, TIME and From the Right

Politico:

‘Cold War, Part 2’: How Putin is dragging America back to the bad old days — Welcome to the new Cold War. And like the last one, strap in for a long and costly military and diplomatic duel with the Kremlin. — On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially recognized the independence …

Discussion: Fox News, KTLA, Politico and CBS News

Tom Nichols / The Atlantic:
Putin Chooses a Forever War

Discussion: CNN, BizPac Review, Mediaite, Reuters, Quillette, ABC News, Washington Post, HotAir, New York Times and Florida Phoenix

Daniel W. Drezner / Washington Post:
The lose-lose outcome in Ukraine

Discussion: Washington Examiner, The Guardian, Bloomberg, Just Security, The Jacked Up Journal, spiked, New York Post, Metro.co.uk and The Daily Beast

Walter Russell Mead / Wall Street Journal:
Why Putin Is Outfoxing the West

Discussion: Spin, strangeness, and charm, BizPac Review, New York Times, Wide World of News and Defense Priorities

Robert Kagan / Washington Post:
What we can expect after Putin's conquest of Ukraine

Discussion: The Guardian

Mary Louise Kelly / NPR:
Why Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons — and what that means in an invasion by Russia

Discussion: The Unz Review, Fox News, The Daily Wire and Politico

Josh Rogin / Washington Post:
The West has a ‘united’ but failing Ukraine strategy

Discussion: Bloomberg, CultureWag, Straight Talk Info … and Balloon Juice

Burgess Everett / Politico:

Rick Scott pushes own GOP agenda as McConnell holds off — Senate Republican leaders have no plans to release an alternative agenda as they try to win back the majority this fall. So Rick Scott is pursuing his own plan. — The Florida Republican senator is devising a conservative blueprint …

Discussion: NBC News, The Dispatch, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story and The Guardian

Matt Taibbi / TK News:

When Boring People Turn Dangerous: Canada's Insane Power Grab — The Canadian government's decision to freeze bank accounts in the trucker protests is a mad leap toward bureaucratic dystopia — On Christmas Eve, 2018, New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin published, “How Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings.”

Sara Fischer / Axios:

Democrats tune out national news during Biden era — A new poll from Gallup and the Knight Foundation finds that younger Democrats are driving a huge decline in national news consumption in the U.S. — Why it matters: It marks the first time since the study began in early 2018 …

New York Times:

The Long Crusade of Clarence and Ginni Thomas — The Supreme Court justice and his wife battled for years for a more conservative America. New reporting shows how far she was willing to go after Donald Trump's 2020 election loss. — The call to action was titled “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?”

Discussion: Lawyers, Guns & Money, Raw Story and POLITICUSUSA

Michael R. Bloomberg / Bloomberg:

San Francisco Shows Democrats Have a Seismic Challenge Ahead — The political earthquake that just occurred in San Francisco should be a dire warning to the national Democratic Party, because the same fault line stretches across the country and the tremors are only increasing.

Discussion: Washington Times

Ronald Brownstein / CNN:

Red states are remaking the civil liberties landscape — The bitter resistance to multiracial democracy — (CNN)From Florida, Georgia and Tennessee through Texas, South Dakota and Montana, Republican-controlled states are approving a torrent of culturally conservative hot-button legislation …

Discussion: Washington Post and Fox News

Jill Lawrence / USA Today:

Canadian truckers' COVID ‘freedom’ fight is absurd next to Ukraine's struggle with Russia — Canadian truckers are fighting for the right to shun a lifesaving vaccine while Ukrainians are fighting for their lives. … There's nothing like a real crisis to expose the folly of one that's fake …

Discussion: Politico, Mediaite, Toronto Star, Associated Press, We Love Trump and National Newswatch

Daniel Dale / CNN:
Fact check: Debunking more false Fox claims about the Canadian convoy protests

Discussion: Breitbart, CTV News, The Hill and Fox News

Fox News:

Bob Beckel, former co-host of ‘The Five,’ dead at 73 — The Democratic strategist was a founding co-host of the long-running Fox News show — Sean Hannity reflects on the life of Bob Beckel — Bob Beckel, a Democratic strategist and former co-host of “The Five,” has died at age 73.