☕️ THE CRIMEAN CONUNDRUM ☙ Thursday, April 24, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Zelensky grabs the blame baton; Trump plants a poison pill in Ukraine aid; NM judge meets karma; Trump hammers woke colleges; SCOTUS rips gender smut books a new porthole.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Today’s roundup includes a trio of progress: Zelensky seems intent on becoming the scapegoat for losing his own war; Trump’s poison pill that puts the blame squarely on Ukraine; gangster-loving New Mexico judge begins to feel the wheels of justice driving over his back; Trump signs more orders escalating his war against woke colleges; and in some overdue good Supreme Court news, the Justices tear woke school books a new orifice.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Behold the emerging end-game narrative, as the Proxy War devolves into its predictable sorry conclusion. NBC ran its story yesterday below the headline, “Trump slams Zelenskyy for rejecting Ukraine-Russia negotiations, saying a deal was 'very close.’ The sub-headline added, “High-level talks in London aimed at bringing a pause to fighting in Ukraine disintegrated after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff pulled out.” If he’s not careful, pugnacious comedian and understated dresser Zelensky is about to be left holding the bag.

U.S. negotiators had organized a high-profile Wednesday meeting to discuss terms for a permanent cease-fire plan with top Ukrainian officials in London. The US intended to present a deal the Russians had allegedly agree to, which would have completely and indefinitely halted the fighting while a final peace deal could then be negotiated at leisure.

Problems arose when Kiev’s thespian-in-chief got an advance copy of the agenda. His bloodshot eye was immediately drawn, not to his side of the ledger, but to something the U.S. had offered Russia to lock in Putin’s agreement. Specifically, the Americans offered to recognize Crimea as Russian territory. But the deal did not require Ukraine to make the same concession. It was win-win.

But winning was too much for the vertically-challenged Martial Law Administrator. He blew his short stack. Zelensky, enraged, got in front of Ukrainian media before yesterday’s talks began and delivered a defiant diatribe that would make a South African military dictator blush. Never Crimea! We won’t do it! We won’t let YOU do it! And more ranting to the same effect.

Secretary of State Rubio and Special Envoy Steven Witkoff immediately pulled out, scratched, and canceled their reservations, and let the junior members of the team handle the Ukrainians instead. Surprising no one, the discussions came up empty, or as NBC put it, “the high-level talks disintegrated.”

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, who attended the short-lived meeting explained, “Our people will not accept a frozen conflict disguised as peace.” Whatever that means.

Crimea is literally the dumbest place imaginable to stake out a red line.

🚀 Crimea is a jagged peninsula shaped like a lion’s paw, jutting defiantly into the northern Black Sea, sun-scorched in summer, wind-lashed in winter, and soaked in the blood of centuries of conflict. The storied peninsula has been claimed, conquered, and coveted by civilizations from the Greeks, Scythians, and Byzantines to the Tatars, Ottomans, and finally, the Russians, when Catherine the Great annexed it in 1783, calling it “the jewel in her southern crown.”

During World War II, the Russians clawed Crimea back from invading Nazis at unfathomable cost and upon heroic Soviet defense that became stuff of Russian legend. Decades later, in 1954, while both countries were part of the united USSR, General Secretary Khrushchev gifted the territory to Ukraine as a comradely gesture. Thirty years later, the Soviet Union crumbled like a cheap taco, and Crimea —along with its crucial military location on the Black Sea— became officially Ukrainian.

Just over ten years ago in 2014, during Ukraine’s color revolution, at a time when ethnic Russians living in Crimea were experiencing violent discrimination by Ukrainian officials, Russia invaded the peninsula, claiming occupation was necessary to protect its citizens who lived there. Now Crimea is a beautiful and haunted militarized resort, a paradoxical mashup of beaches and bunkers, vineyards and ammo depots, castles and missile silos.

Shortly after invading —against no resistance— Russia held referenda elections. The Crimeans voted in large numbers to join the Russian Federation. So Russia amended its constitution to recognize Catherine’s jewel as having been restored to the Rodina.

To this day, Ukraine and NATO countries continue to refuse to recognize the referendum or Russia’s annexation as either legal or permanent. But there is no realistic pathway for Ukraine to recover Crimea. Ever. Recent limited hangouts revealed that Ukraine’s 2023 Glorious Spring Offensive —at its peak military capability— was really meant to push through the Russian lines and establish a beachhead in Crimea.

They never even got close.

🚀 Zelensky said that a cease-fire deal that includes anybody recognizing Crimea means surrendering the Ukrainian dream of taking back the peninsula. Kiev’s nebulous obsession with someday pushing Russia back out will be over. In reality, right now, Ukraine is losing the war for the whole country, and Trump’s cease-fire deal, dangling right in front of them, could immediately stop the bleeding.

But because the fantasy of recovering Ukraine is so powerful, Zelensky shot down even talking about it. “Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea,” he vowed, so “there’s nothing to talk about here.” (Again, the deal never required Ukraine to recognize anything, but that’s how Kiev’s cocaine-addled former president sees it.)

President Trump had a lot to say about it in one of his extended Truth Social posts. The President made several very revealing and blame-shifting comments, decorated with spears of exclamation, like “It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about!” And, “The statement made by Zelenskyy today will do nothing but prolong the ‘killing field,’ and nobody wants that!”

Finally, the President reiterated his running refrain that the war was not his fault. “I look forward to being able to help Ukraine, and Russia, get out of this Complete and Total MESS, that would have never started if I were President!”

It’s beginning to look like the Ukrainians —Zelensky and the oligarchs really calling the shots— soon need to make some difficult decisions. But there’s so much war money sloshing around Europe right now that all the incentives are completely topsy-turvy.

As NBC’s headline showed, Trump is setting Zelensky up for the fall when this thing finally goes completely sideways.

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An update story: That was fast! The New York Post ran an article yesterday headlined, “Dem Judge Joel Cano banned by New Mexico Supreme Court after alleged Tren de Aragua gang member arrested in his home.”

For Portland readers, back in early March, Homeland Security raided this New Mexico judge’s home and found a 23-year-old Tren de Aragua gang member (an illegal alien) living in the judge’s casita (guest house) where he was polishing his illegal firearms. Three days following the arrest, Judge Cano wisely resigned from the bench.

Yesterday, just a few weeks later, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Cano “can never hold a judicial office again, be a candidate for a judicial office, and cannot exercise any judicial authority in the state,” including weddings. Boom.

You might wonder why the New Mexico Supreme Court didn’t disbar ex-judge Cano and preclude him from practicing law. My informed guess it’s because he hasn’t been convicted or even charged with any crime. Yet. Due process precludes taking away someone’s livelihood no matter how badly things look, but the Supreme Court can nix a judge for reasons relating the appearance of low morals.

As I said, Joel Cano hasn’t been charged with anything yet. Were I advising him, which I am not, I would suggest he retain a criminal defense attorney immediately. If not sooner. I could already think of a half dozen federal charges for the ex-judge, and that’s just off the top of my head (and I don’t even practice criminal law).

So, disbarment may yet be in Cano’s cards. In other words, this ain’t over. He’s going to have to eat the whole grande burrito.

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The UK Guardian ran a story yesterday headlined, “Trump signs orders cracking down on diversity and inclusion at US universities.” More orders. More fronts opening in the war with woke colleges.

The most important of the series of new orders ended use by any federal agency of the so-called “disparate impact” theory of racial discrimination, which allowed agencies to conclude there was de facto discrimination at a school or business if there were too few minorities as a statistical sample.

Imagine a donut shop that requires applicants to pass a written math test to get hired, like measuring glaze-to-dough ratios or inventory forecasts. If minority applicants disproportionately fail the test, the EEOC could prosecute the shop for the “disparate impact” claiming it is presumptive evidence of racial discrimination.

Now imagine the same scenario, but linked to college SAT admission scores.

In a different time, a university might have said, “We only admit students with SAT scores above 1300.” Sounds neutral and non-discriminatory, but if that policy resulted in significantly fewer minority students being admitted on paper, then under the “disparate impact” theory, the school could be accused of systemic racism— even if nobody involved acted with racial intent.

The moronic logic is that, if too many kids from certain groups are scoring lower on the SAT, then the test itself —or relying on it— must be discriminatory. Do universities were forced to either ditch the test, lower the standards, or get sued.

In other words: disparate impact says that, if equal rules produce unequal outcomes, then the rules themselves are racist— even if they’re literally graded by Scantron machines instead of people.

Dropping disparate impact is a game-changer.

Another order aimed at college accreditors, who currently use DEI metrics in accrediting universities. The order directed Education Secretary and WWE boss Linda McMahon to hold accreditors accountable, with “denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination of accreditation recognition, for accreditors’ poor performance or violations of federal civil rights law.”

It also ordered DOJ to investigate “unlawful discrimination” in higher education.

The orders continued what the Guardian called “an all-out attack on US universities since the president took office in January.” Hilariously, the paper, trying to make Trump sound unhinged, reported “he has claimed universities have been taken over by ‘Marxist maniacs and lunatics.’”

Well. A rose by any other name is still a stinky plant, and so on.

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It’s not all bad news from the Supreme Court this week. On Tuesday, ScotusBlog published a story headlined, “Supreme Court likely to rule for parental opt-out on LGBTQ books in schools.” By likely, ScotusBlog meant they tore the school board’s drag queens a new lower access point.

The above shows two pages from one of the textbooks involved in the lawsuit. It teaches kindergartners, “My pronouns are like the weather; they change depending on how I feel.” That’s confusing enough, but when you add that they are telling kids they can also swap body parts depending on how they feel, things get really cuckoo.

A group of Maryland public school parents weren’t okay with that. So they sued for the right to opt out their elementary-school-aged children from any instruction including such baffling and revolting LGBTQ+ themes. The Washington, DC-area school board refused to let them opt out, of course, and the parents claimed it violated their religious beliefs.

The case was a political powderkeg. The surprising lack of media coverage speaks volumes to where the culture is headed. (Activists held a twisted drag show outside the Supreme Courthouse during the arguments, which persuaded nobody, but spiked sales of eye bleach.)

The plaintiff parents were religiously diverse. They included Muslims, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Roman Catholics. The lower courts all sided with the school board. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals sneered that “the parents had not demonstrated that exposing their children to the storybooks compelled the parents to violate their religion.”

This time though, we have good Supreme Court news. During nearly two-and-a-half hours of oral argument, a majority of the justices seemed clearly to agree with the parents, and several justices even wondered aloud: what’s the harm in simply letting parents excuse their children from the objectionble instruction?

Haha, the school board’s lawyer was hamstrung. He couldn’t afford to admit what the real harm was. The real harm the schools are afraid of is, in order to give parents an opt-out from the lessons, the schools will have to tell them the lessons are happening in the first place. I’ll bet $50 that 90% of Maryland parents have no idea what kind of gross stuff the teachers are spoon-feeding their kids. By “LGBTQ+ books,” they mean pornographic smut with erotic overtones.

CLIP: Laura Ingraham’s piece on the Oral Arguments including mashup (8:30).

Anyway, since the schools’ lawyer couldn’t say that an opt-out would force schools to give away their gross little sex secrets, he had to dissemble and obfuscate, leaving the judges wondering what the heck the argument was even about. If the parents simply want to have their children excused from instruction using these storybooks, Justice Alito asked, “what is the big deal about allowing them to opt out?”

Were I there, I would have added that we’ve already found it constitutional for parents to opt out of public schools entirely and become homeschoolers. Why should letting parents opt out of parts of public school not also be constitutional? The whole, after all, is just the sum of the parts, and so forth.

The conservative majority seemed intensely skeptical of the school board’s argument that mere exposure to school materials does not compel someone to violate their religious beliefs. Chief Justice Roberts disagreed with that logic, wondering whether giving unwanted and objectionable moral instruction to five-year-olds isn’t automatically coercive and immediately violates a family’s deeply held religious beliefs.

For their part, two of the liberal Justices wondered what the big deal was about making kids learn about legal alternative lifestyles, and fretted over creating ‘chaos’ by letting parents decide what materials their children can and can’t be exposed to. The notion, apparently, is that purple-haired, tattooed teachers are better equipped than parents to make those kinds of decisions.

My pronouns are: “public schools suck and are cesspools of bottom-feeding activists.” Four years ago, my sentiment was an outlier. But once again, we can thank the pandemic for ripping off the leather puppy mask, when school-by-computer allowed parents to finally learn for themselves the kinds of bizarre ideologies their kids were really being taught.

It’s a funny old world. Who knows whether we’d have gotten to this place of sanity without the FBI raiding soccer moms for criticizing school board members. And recall that, earlier this week, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court also found that gender means biological sex.

Now, thanks to covid, another conspiracy theory has become Supreme Court majority opinion. Progress. It seems the tide has turned in the conservative counter-revolution.

Have a tremendous Thursday! Show up again tomorrow morning, before the bell, for your Friday roundup of essential news and commentary.

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