A grave presidential address on Ukraine and a landmark court case

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A grave presidential address on Ukraine and a landmark court case

February 16, 2022

Stephen Collinson and Shelby Rose

When a loss is a win for Sarah Palin

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin arrives at a federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday, February 15, 2022.

Sarah Palin roared onto the national political scene in 2008 as a special kind of pioneer.

Though it was not obvious at the time, Alaska's first female governor, picked from near political obscurity to be Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate, was an early indicator of a coming transformation in American politics. Palin stirred a populist, grass-roots anti-establishment movement with her culture war campaigning that sprang from deep disillusionment with both parties, eight years before Donald Trump tapped the same angry seam on his ride to power.

Despite an extraordinary debut at the Republican National Convention, Palin never fulfilled early potential, due to her own lack of readiness and the McCain campaign's failure to prepare her for cutthroat national politics. Since then, Palin has toured the conservative media circuit and garnered tabloid headlines over her personal life and refusal to accept Covid-19 protocols.

But now she's slugging it out against her old adversaries in what conservatives like to call the liberal media in a trial that could have massive implications for libel laws and American journalism.

Palin sued The New York Times and its former editorial page editor James Bennet in 2017 after they published an article that erroneously linked a map that Palin's political action committee had posted to a shooting in 2011 that had killed six people and injured then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. When it comes to taking on the media establishment, it doesn't get much bigger than the Gray Lady. In an unusual move on Monday, the judge in the trial announced he would dismiss the suit, even while the jury was still deliberating, saying Palin's team had not met the burden of proof over the key issue — that the Times had acted with "actual malice" — the standard for defamation cases brought by public figures. A day later, the jury unanimously came to the same conclusion.

Though Palin lost this round, the story is unlikely to end here. Appeals are expected, potentially all the way up to the Supreme Court. Some conservative analysts believe several of the justices on the high court's new right-wing majority might be ready to revisit precedent dating to 1964.

Such a case could increase the penalties for journalists who make honest mistakes and change the way the trade operates. And win or lose, by taking on the media, Palin will again be hailed by conservatives as a trailblazer.

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The world and America

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'I say these things not to provoke'

After several days of behind-the-scenes diplomacy, Biden gave a 10-minute speech at the White House that had multiple messages -- to President Vladimir Putin, to the Russian people, to Ukrainians, to US allies and, perhaps most importantly, to Americans. Biden said Russia now had 150,000 troops surrounding Ukraine and that the US had not so far verified claims by leaders in Moscow that some forces were going back to their bases. But he insisted the door for diplomacy was open.

Here are the highlights of his address.

-- Biden said a Russian invasion is still "distinctly possible."

-- He told the citizens of Russia he did not believe they wanted war in Ukraine.

-- The President vowed that US support for NATO allies in Europe was "sacrosanct."

-- He warned of drastic economic consequences for Russia if it invades.

-- He indicated that NATO would not bow to Russia's demands to withdraw from Eastern Europe.

-- But the President said short of that, there was room for a security discussion with Moscow.

-- He also warned that a Russian invasion wouldn't be painless for Americans as energy prices rise.

"I say these things not to provoke, but to speak the truth, because the truth matters," Biden said.

(If) "we do not stand for freedom today ... we'll surely pay a steeper price tomorrow."

Texas is making voting harder

Texas already had some of the strictest voting regulations in the US, but now it's even tougher to cast a ballot in the Lone Star State, CNN's Kate Sullivan writes for Meanwhile.

Early voting started in Texas on Monday in primary elections to choose party candidates for US congressional seats, governor and six other statewide offices. And for the first time we're seeing how a new restrictive voting law passed by the Republican-controlled Texas legislature last year – rooted in ex-President Donald Trump's lies about election fraud, is affecting voters.

CNN's Fredreka Schouten spoke to a 74-year-old retiree in the Houston area who had to submit an application multiple times before finally getting her absentee mail ballot. Pam Gaskin's first attempt to get an absentee ballot was rejected because the forms she had downloaded from her county's website were outdated, and her second attempt was rejected because the driver's license number she provided didn't match the ID she had used to register to vote 46 years ago.

These election law changes have resulted in higher-than-usual rejection rates for absentee ballot applications, Schouten reports, and hundreds of ballots have been flagged so far for rejection over ID requirements.

The law imposes new ID requirements to vote absentee, makes it a crime for a public official to mail absentee ballot applications to voters who haven't requested them, limits early voting hours and bans drive-thru voting, among other provisions.

And this is just one of the many new restrictive voting laws Republicans have enacted across the country. Texas is one of 19 states that passed new voting restrictions last year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law.

If the early signs in Texas are anything to go by, Americans are going to find it much more difficult to exercise their democratic duty in a crucial congressional election year.

Thanks for reading.

On Wednesday, defense ministers from the NATO alliance meet in Brussels for a two-day summit chaired by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to discuss renewed tensions with Russia over Ukraine.