Doug Klain

Unfortunately someone has been impersonating me on Signal and potentially other platforms. If you ever get a suspicious message from me, please feel free to reach out via other means.

Happy Independence Day, Ukraine. Nobody is doing more today to defend democracy than Ukrainians, and those of us who value liberty for all should help them prevail. З Днем Незалежності! 🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦

Took a @bikeshare.bsky.social to drop off my vote for @miguelfordc.bsky.social 🇺🇸

Bar-wide boos when Gianni Infantino and Marco Rubio came on at the #WorldCup game

Russia is giving Iran targeting data to kill Americans, plus the technology and tactics it developed in its war on Ukraine to help Iran stay in the fight. The Trump White House thoughtlessly pretended that Russia's war doesn't affect us. Dead wrong.

I'm a fan of hyperlocal news in DC but the battering of the Washington Post has definitely left a hole in the city. A "Washington Sun" with 100+ staff covering local and national is something to be excited about!

OTD in 2016 @msf.ca stopped sharing the locations of their Syrian hospitals with Russian Air Force cos we kept using the info to bomb them. The EU punished me for this by agreeing to open nordstrean 2. www.theguardian.com/world/2016/f...

Bezos's Washington Post notes that it was Texas that started the redistricting war—but rather than call for an end to partisan gerrymandering and give all voters a level playing field, the Editorial Board merely urges voters to reject *Democratic* gerrymandering.

Friends, an update: This week I joined @repmarcykaptur.bsky.social's team as her new Legislative Assistant for Military & Foreign Affairs. I'm thrilled to join Congresswoman Kaptur's team and to serve the people of Northwest Ohio. It's a big change, but an exciting one.

The second vid is out.

2000 Meters to Andriivka was snubbed by the Oscars, but it's still the absolute best documentary of modern warfare. When the soldiers who survived stood up after the film's premier in Kyiv last summer, they received a 15 minute standing ovation. Watch here 👇

Yes, because when I think of the “Russian threat” at this exact moment I obviously think about Greenland and nowhere else!

Great new @cepa.org report from Marianna Fakhurdinova on military assistance to Ukraine. Here's one of many findings: how have the weapons sent from the US to Ukraine impacted what systems the US still has available?

The ultimate lesson of the Weimar Era, historians say, lies not in any particular parallel, but in a point that is both obvious and often overlooked: Democracies are imperfect institutions that need to be constantly defended, because they can be torn down from within.

Seizing tankers in Russia’s shadow fleet is the right move. Often uninsured and aging, these vessels are floating espionage and environmental risks. Seizing them sends an important message to Moscow. Congress has legislation tee’d up to expand shadow fleet sanctions.

If the US is smart, we'll partner with our friends in Ukraine and learn from their remarkable wins in digital governance. It's smart policy (and politics!) to take the best ideas out there and use them 📲

5 years ago there was consensus that January 6 was a riot to overturn American democracy. Now the Trump admin is rewriting history—it pardoned the perpetrators, deleted records of their cases, and fired the prosecutors. @npr.org is preserving a public archive of what really happened.

What happened to “with Liberty and Justice for all?”

The NDAA is finally passed—so what’s in it for Ukraine? I break it down for @atlanticcouncil.bsky.social. My take: While it includes most welcome support for Kyiv, the NDAA’s Ukraine provisions are largely about mitigating potential harm from the Trump administration.

New: Zelenskyy told European leaders he feared the EU would drop a plan for a “reparations loan” to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian central bank assets, mainly over fears of upsetting Trump and losing support on Euro defence and security guarantees. w/ @henryjfoy.ft.com www.ft.com/content/ea36...

If we are indeed at the end of this latest round of Ukraine negotiations, it's important to keep in mind that the party to blame for a collapse in talks is Russia. Russia keeps pushing for more, even demanding fortified land it cannot take by force.

Just read through the new National Defense Authorization Act text to see what provisions are in for Ukraine. I’ll have a thread up later with the full breakdown but TL;DR is Congress is poised to pass some rather good legislation to assist Ukraine.

“The ghosts of corruption still haunt Ukraine’s corridors of power, but impunity is giving way to accountability,” writes Myroslava Gongadze. “This is exactly the transformation that many Ukrainians are fighting for, and one of the main reasons why Ukraine scares Putin so much.”

Here’s your must-listen podcast for the weekend 👇 @economist.com’s deep dive into Mindich-gate and the genuine heroism of Ukraine’s anticorruption investigators is excellent. This may be Ukraine’s largest-ever corruption scandal, but it’s also a genuine triumph for accountability and anticorruption.

“As long as Russia keeps making battlefield gains, it is unlikely to pursue meaningful negotiation to end the war,” writes @thestudyofwar.bsky.social’s George Barros. “All of the Trump administration’s diplomacy will amount to little until Russia’s advances are stopped cold.”

What did we think was going to happen? Just two weeks ago, the United States threatened to withhold arms sales for Ukraine that were *already paid for* by European allies. After a year of policy like that, it's hard to make the case that the United States is reliable.

Department of Defense Law of War Manual, Sec. 18.3.2.1 states the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders. What’s its key example? Wait for it . . . It’s "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."

It's actually a crazy result that Canada was able to join Europe's €150 billion rearmament scheme but talks with London broke down, so the United Kingdom won't take part.

Rep. Don Bacon: "We saw that WSJ article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from an agreement from Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously."