| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. Via the Associated Press: On this day in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a freeze on wages and prices to combat inflation. | | |  | The big idea | | Why it's hard to prove war crimes |  Police officers work in the investigation process following the killing of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine on April 6. (Photo by Heidi Levine for The Washington Post). | | | Laptops and phones, eyewitness accounts, Russian soldiers' confessions and their "pocket trash": These are some of the things investigators hunting in Ukraine for evidence of war crimes by Moscow's forces are looking for to prove cases that may take years to try. "There's things they need to do: To take the pictures, collect articles, including the so-called 'pocket trash,' any phones that have been left behind," interrogate prisoners, and talk to eyewitnesses, Stephen Rapp, a former State Department ambassador at large for war crimes, told The Daily 202. Laptops and phones are treasure troves of data: Metadata helping to pinpoint their owners' movements, as well as messages home or official directives, photos, videos, personal notes. But pocket trash? What's pocket trash? As Russian soldiers pressed toward Kyiv, they may have picked up Ukrainian supplies, or mementos, or kept notes of their movements or written orders from commanders, that could help place them at the site of atrocities, Rapp explained. (I get it. I just found a restaurant matchbook in a blazer. An investigator could use it to show I was there.) Sometimes, investigators find official documents from the accused party that help make their case. Rapp said the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), on whose board he sits, has collected 1.3 million official Syrian government records helping to document war crimes by the regime of Bashar Assad. | | The question at the center of the investigation is whether prosecutors can prove who did it, and how high up the chain of command they can go. Intent and authorship matter more than tragic tales of those who have suffered and died at the hands of invading Russian forces. | - "My own experience has been that we win or lose all these cases on linkage, not on dead children or victims that have experienced horrible wounding or rape torture and death," said Rapp. "Sometimes there is evidence from that individual, or from the wounds, that would tell us who did it. But it's that who-did it-question that often gets missed."
| | It's not enough to show Russian missiles and shells gutted apartment buildings in cities like Mariupol. "In the context of bombardment, it's often very hard to prove war crimes because the attacking force will always say it was aiming at a military target. And it's hard to disprove that," Rapp explained. Other important evidence: Confessions from Russian soldiers and intercepted communications between generals in Moscow and commanders in the field through to soldiers carrying out the invasion and, potentially, atrocities. My colleagues Isaac Stanley-Becker and Vanessa Guinan-Bank reported Thursday: "Germany's foreign intelligence service claims to have intercepted radio communications in which Russian soldiers discuss carrying out indiscriminate killings in Ukraine." "In two separate communications, Russian soldiers described questioning Ukrainian soldiers as well as civilians and then shooting them, according to an intelligence official familiar with the findings who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity." | | On the ground, Ukraine's prosecutor general has the lead. That office deploys judicial police investigators and regular police officers, abetted by nongovernmental organizations that specialize in gathering war-crimes evidence, Rapp said. As my colleague Robert Klemko reported earlier this week: "The prosecutor general's office estimates the country is using about 50,000 investigators from five different law enforcement agencies to investigate war crimes. They are conducting interviews across the country and meticulously documenting evidence that they hope to use in war crimes prosecutions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the military force he sent to invade Ukraine." The United States has been helping Ukraine's government. | | "The United States continues to work methodically to collect, to preserve, to analyze evidence of atrocities and to make this information available to the appropriate bodies," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in remarks at NATO headquarters on Thursday. | - "We're supporting a multinational team of experts that's assisting a war crimes unit set up by Ukraine's prosecutor general, with a view toward eventually pursuing criminal accountability. These efforts will also ensure that Russia cannot escape the verdict of history," he said.
| | The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has opened its own investigation. But it has limited means and will be "focused on high-level actors, those that the state doesn't have the tools to go after," Rapp said. In theory, that means senior Russian generals or the most talked-about target of prosecution in Washington: Putin. "It'll be more challenging than any other case that international justice has done to date. That said, one cannot say 'never,'" he said. But it would require "enormous political and economic leverage," like telling Russia it cannot "reenter the international economic system" unless he stands trial. And even then nothing is a done deal. "The wheels of accountability can move slowly," Blinken told NBC News on Wednesday. "But they move, and someday, someway, somewhere, those who committed these crimes and those who ordered the crimes will be held accountable." | | |  | What's happening now | | Food prices soar to record levels on Ukraine war disruptions |  A worker handles wheat grain delivered to the Big Mills of The South flour milling facility in Chouf, Lebanon, on March 29. (Hasan Shaaban/Bloomberg New) | | | "Prices for food commodities like grains and vegetable oils reached their highest levels ever last month largely because of Russia's war in Ukraine and the 'massive supply disruptions' it is causing, threatening millions of people in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere with hunger and malnourishment, the United Nations said Friday," the Associated Press's Nicole Winfield reports. | Biden detailee entangled in Secret Service bribery scheme | | "An affidavit filed Wednesday night in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. revealed that one of the Secret Service agents involved in the bribery scheme was a special agent assigned to First Lady Jill Biden's protective detail. Another was a Uniformed Division officer at the White House," RealClearPolitics's Susan Crabtree reports. | At least 50 killed in airstrike on Kramatorsk train station, Ukrainian officials say | | "At least 50 people were killed and 98 injured Friday at the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, in what they said was a Russian missile attack while evacuees were waiting to escape an expected Russian onslaught in the region. Washington Post reporters who arrived at the station 15 minutes after the attack counted at least 20 dead, including two children, amid the destruction," Dalton Bennett, Andrew Jeong, Julian Mark, Miriam Berger and Adela Suliman report. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | DeJoy is poised to remake a resurgent USPS. Now comes the hard part. |  Louis DeJoy, postmaster general of the U.S. Postal Service, departs from a signing event for H.R. 3076, the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, in the State Dining Room of the White House on Wednesday. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News) | | | "As DeJoy heads into his third year at the helm of the agency, the Postal Service is set to emerge from the pandemic with healthier finances and business prospects than most could have imagined. It's buying new delivery trucks, shipping hundreds of millions of coronavirus test kits to American homes and launching new services to compete with Amazon and other private-sector package shippers. And, as DeJoy has come to realize, the bulk of his work and the 10-year transformation plan he unveiled in March 2021 — to stem annual losses, reconfigure the agency's decrepit network and reorient its business strategy — is barely underway," Jacob Bogage reports. | China is Russia's most powerful weapon for information warfare | | "Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine cratered last month after Russian state news channels were blocked in Europe and restricted globally. But in recent weeks, China has emerged as a potent outlet for Kremlin disinformation, researchers say, portraying Ukraine and NATO as the aggressors and sharing false claims about neo-Nazi control of the Ukrainian government," Elizabeth Dwoskin reports. "With over a billion followers on Facebook alone, China's state-controlled channels offer Russian President Vladimir Putin a powerful megaphone for shaping global understanding of the war — often called a 'special operation' in line with Kremlin rhetoric." | From judge to justice in 6 weeks: How Schumer got Jackson confirmed | | "Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin knew exactly when Ketanji Brown Jackson would be confirmed, even weeks before President Joe Biden made his choice: by April 8," Politico's Marianne Levine and Burgess Everett report. "With a fragile 50-50 Democratic majority and an unpredictable pandemic, the majority leader and Judiciary Committee chair mapped out a strategy that went from nomination to confirmation in a six-week sprint, with zero breaks and a specific target date that they decided upon way back in late January. It's rare for Senate leaders to meet self-prescribed deadlines for huge votes, but Jackson's historic ascension to become the first Black female Supreme Court justice essentially went through without a hitch." | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Biden plan to combat inflation with U.S. manufacturing faces skepticism |  President Biden embraces Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as they watch the Senate vote on her nomination to be an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images) | | Biden's actions and words since Warsaw align with walked-back declaration that Putin must go | | "The White House might have walked back President Joe Biden's declaration that Vladimir Putin 'cannot remain in power' in Russia, but his words and actions since then fall in line with the boldest statement of his term," Roll Call's John T. Bennett reports. | A federal appeals court upholds Biden's vaccine mandate for federal workers | Biden secures his first Supreme Court justice. Will it be his last? | | "As the November elections edge closer, Senate Republicans are signaling the revival of hardball tactics, refusing to rule out a full-scale blockade against a Biden nominee for the remainder of his four-year term if a vacancy were to arise," NBC News's Sahil Kapur reports. | Jackson's ascent highlights Biden's complex record on race | | "For many, a pivotal question remains: Will Biden be remembered as a president who elevated a historic number of Black people to prominent positions, empowering a new generation of rising leaders? Or will his legacy be blighted by unfilled promises and unseized opportunities, especially when it comes to voting rights and police reform?" Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reports. | Covid creeps ever closer to Biden | | "The outbreak has jolted a Washington establishment that's been eager to leave Covid behind and offered an up-close reminder of the pandemic threat that still hangs over the nation and Biden's presidency. It's also raised fresh questions about how best to protect the 79-year-old commander in chief, who vowed this year to 'get out' of the White House more often — yet faces an ever-present elevated risk of severe illness," Politico's Adam Cancryn reports. | Joe Biden's 'cardboard box' presidency | | "It was a key theme of Joe Biden's 2020 campaign, unstated but powerful, and a vivid contrast with the public-train-wreck incumbent: If elected, he was going to be boring. Promise kept," Michael Schaffer writes for Politico Magazine. "But 18 months into Biden's weekends-in-Wilmington, nana-and-pop, no-superspreader- events-at-the-White-House presidency, the drawbacks of that style are also becoming clear: A boring presidency is, um, boring. Which carries a political cost in a Permanent Washington that, for better or worse, thrills to displays of executive-branch social fireworks." | | |  | Biden's nominees, visualized | | | |  | Hot on the left | | Will Biden keep his word and pardon federal cannabis offenders? | | "In the fall of 2020, Daniel Muessig was urging everyone he knew to get out and vote. He lived in the swingiest of swing states and, while he'd supported Bernie in the primaries, he was now convinced of the importance of carrying Pennsylvania for Joe Biden," Ben Burgis writes for the Nation. "Millions of people who share Daniel's politics had come to the same conclusion. The difference is that Daniel was facing a federal prison sentence—and he had every reason to believe that a Biden presidency would save him." A bold new strategy: Daniel has "pushed hard for insurgent democratic socialists, even selling his customers on his favored candidates while he packaged up their weed, but he's also sucked it up and voted for the most mediocre centrists to keep right-wing Republicans out of office. Now, he's giving everyone the opposite advice. Along with 2020 Bernie Sanders organizer Daniel Ezra Moraff, Daniel Muessig is pushing a high-risk strategy to make Biden keep his promise—no pardons, no votes." | | |  | Hot on the right | | McConnell pressed on contradiction with Trump and moral red lines |  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) walks to a lunch on Capitol Hill on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | | | Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sat down with Axios's Jonathan Swan on Thursday. McConnell said that he has "an obligation" to support former President Trump if he's the Republican nominee in 2024 and repeatedly showed his loyalty to the party. Other highlights: | - "McConnell would not commit to Supreme Court hearings for Biden nominees if the GOP takes the majority in November. "I choose not to answer the question," he said.
- McConnell also stood by Justice Clarence Thomas' decision not to recuse himself despite wife Ginni Thomas' activism to overturn the 2020 election.
- McConnell said the GOP agenda will focus on inflation, the border and crime if the party wins Senate control in the midterms.
| | Watch the full interview here: | | |  | Today in Washington | | | At 12:15 p.m., Biden, Vice President Harris and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson-designee will speak about her confirmation. | | |  | In closing | | A Zelensky impersonator escapes Ukraine — helped by fake Putin, Kim Jong Un |  Impersonators of Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky meet in Poland. (Umid Isabaev) | | | This story is a roller coaster from start to finish. "When you look exactly like the man leading a country during a war, life becomes even more strange, and fast. As Umid Isabaev, 41, started contemplating his own precarious position, he was offered help from two unusual figures: Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un," Jennifer Hassan reports. "Not the real ones, of course, but by two men who earn a living impersonating them." | | Thanks for reading. See you next week. | | |
