Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Congress finally got it together.

Overruling a few outspoken far-right Republican members, on April 20 the U.S. House belatedly approved crucial aid for nations and peoples that desperately need it.
 The wide vote margins reflected bipartisan support for all three measures. Here are the numbers:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shakes hands with U.S. Representative Tom Suozzi (D, NY-03) on April 5, while U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (background), U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (D, IL-05), and U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson (R, IA-02) stand nearby. Photo originally posted on Zelenskyy’s X/Twitter account.

Traveling to a strategically important foreign country as part of a Congressional delegation is an honor—but you wouldn’t guess that from how Iowa’s current representatives in Washington avoid talking about the experience.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst and U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on April 5 in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv Oblast. Zelenskyy posted that he briefed the bipartisan delegation “on the situation on the battlefield, our army’s urgent needs, and the scale of the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.” He also “emphasized the vital need” for Congress to approve another military aid package to Ukraine.

Neither Ernst nor Hinson announced the visit in a news release or mentioned the trip on their social media. Since April 5, Hinson’s official Facebook page and X/Twitter feed have highlighted topics ranging from Hamas to Iowa women’s basketball, biofuels, a fallen World War II soldier, border security, “Bidenomics,” drought conditions, and solar eclipse safety. During the same period, Ernst used her social media to praise Iowa women’s basketball while bashing Hamas and President Joe Biden’s so-called electric vehicle “mandates,” “border crisis,” “socialist student loan schemes,” and federal policies on remote work.

Communications staff for Ernst and Hinson did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s emails seeking comment on the trip and their views on further military aid to Ukraine. Both have voted for previous aid packages.

U.S. Department of State photo of NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on July 12, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Two events within a few months of each other 75 years ago forever altered the political and military landscape of the world. Their combined effects play an an important role in today’s diplomatic chess game.

On April 4, 1949, twelve Western nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, DC to create the Organization by that name, abbreviated to NATO. The signatories were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.

Over the next 75 years NATO’s membership expanded eastward through Europe to include today’s 32 nations, with Sweden’s signature affixed earlier this month.

U.S. Representative Zach Nunn met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, members of the Ukrainian parliament, and intelligence officials in Kyiv on February 9 as a member of a bipartisan U.S. House delegation.

At this writing, Nunn has not posted about the trip on his social media feeds or announced it in a news release, but he appears in pictures others shared from the visit, and is second from the left in the photo above.

Four of the five members of Congress on this delegation serve on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A committee news release mentioned that Nunn “sits on the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions and currently serves as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.”

Representative Mike Turner, who chairs the Intelligence committee, said at a news conference in Kyiv, “We came today so that we could voice to President Zelenskyy and others that we were seeing that the United States stands in full support of Ukraine.”

Photo by Lev Radin, taken during the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, available via Shutterstock.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Instead of “beware the Ides of March,” maybe we should beware the Ides of January. For as a soothsayer warned Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar of impending assassination and the end of empire—driven by the supposed effect of the full moon on human affairs in the middle of the month—we should beware the Iowa GOP caucuses, which may herald the onset of a second Donald Trump presidency.

In what would resemble an early Halloween prank upon our nation, Iowa may boost Trump’s candidacy, to the detriment of our democracy.

Every member of Congress from Iowa voted on September 30 for a last-ditch effort to keep the federal government open until November 17. The continuing resolution will maintain fiscal year 2023 spending levels for the first 47 days of the 2024 federal fiscal year, plus $16 billion in disaster relief funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is the amount the Biden administration requested. In addition, the bill includes “an extension of a federal flood insurance program and reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.”

U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Ashley Hinson (IA-02), Zach Nunn (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) were among the 126 House Republicans who joined 209 Democrats to approve the measure. (Ninety Republicans and one Democrat voted no.) House leaders brought the funding measure to the floor under a suspension of the rules, which meant it needed a two-thirds majority rather than the usual 50 percent plus one to pass.

Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were part of the 88-9 majority in the upper chamber that voted to send the bill to President Joe Biden just in time to avert a shutdown as the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

House members considered several other federal budget bills this week and dozens of related amendments—far too many to summarize in one article. As I watched how the Iowa delegation approached the most important votes, a few things stood out to me.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a dramatic, crisp, and impactful address to the American Congress in Washington on December 21.

Dramatic because it brought front and center the danger the Ukrainian people face continuously from Russian aggression. Crisp because Zelenskyy wasted no words in describing Ukraine’s situation. And impactful because his message aligned his country’s fate with proud moments in American history.

The U.S. Senate completed its work for the year on December 22, when senators approved an omnibus bill to fund the federal government through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, 2023.

The bill allocates $1.7 trillion in federal government spending ($858 billion for the military, and $772 billion in non-defense spending). The Washington Post broke down the funding by appropriations area.

The legislation also provides $44.9 billion more in aid to Ukraine, and $40.6 billion for disaster aid. It changes some Medicaid rules, which will preserve coverage for many new mothers and children. It also includes some policies not related to federal spending, such as reforms to the Electoral Count Act, workplace protections for pregnant or breastfeeding employees, and a ban on installing TikTok on government-owned devices.

Eighteen Republicans joined the whole Democratic caucus to pass the omnibus bill. Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were among the 29 Republicans who opposed the bill on final passage (roll call). But they supported some amendments added to the bill on December 22, as well as several GOP proposals that failed to pass.

Emily Silliman shares what she’s learned while closely following events in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

Three months after the Russian Federation invaded a sovereign country with more than 40 million residents, it’s clear Ukrainians are winning this war. 

This past month was supposed to bring a major push by Russia in the east, after having lost the battle of Kyiv, withdrawn, and re-deployed forces to the eastern theater. Russia appears to want to capture more of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (regions), and control as much of the Black Sea coast as possible, as well as maintaining control of Crimea. 

Although that plan made some sense, the Russian armed forces didn’t stick to it. Instead, they wasted effort on multiple lines of attack, including a push toward Kryvyi Ryh, the home town of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine has very effectively stopped the invaders on all fronts, with a couple of exceptions, with some towns going back and forth between Ukrainian and Russian forces. 

The Russian Federation’s Foreign Ministry announced on May 21 that it was expanding the list of U.S. citizens who are permanently banned from entering Russia.

In addition to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other Biden administration officials, Russia has sanctioned hundreds of members of Congress. All four Iowans who serve in the U.S. House were on the initial sanctions list, which Russia released last month. The expanded “stop list” also includes U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, who welcomed the news.

Iowa’s senior Senator Chuck Grassley is absent from Russia’s updated list. His communications staff did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiry about the matter.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

I’m primarily of Nordic ancestry, somewhere between 62 and 83 percent. Let’s say, approximately three-quarters. Despite my Germanic name, my family tree is rooted in Norway, as is my wife Paula’s. Mindful of this heritage, Paula and I traveled to Norway with my parents in 1998, to visit locations from which our ancestors departed almost 150 years earlier to begin their new lives in the U.S.

One community we sought out was Grue, population 5,000. As we entered town, in the best Norwegian tradition, we made for a local coffee shop. The waitress asked if our visit was linked to the Grue Church fire.

Not really. But wait, what Grue church fire? (Clearly, we had not done our homework.) No, we were there mostly to gaze upon tombstones of distant relatives. But tell us a bit about this fire…

All four Iowans serving in the U.S. House of Representatives were among 398 members of Congress the Russian Federation sanctioned on April 13. The Russian Foreign Ministry described the move as a reaction to the Biden administration’s sanctions against hundreds of Russian parliamentarians.

U.S. Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-01), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02), Cindy Axne (IA-03), and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) have all voted for military assistance to Ukraine in recent weeks. And it’s unlikely any are bothered by the prospect of being denied entry to Russia.

In fact, Hinson tweeted that the sanctions were a “badge of honor,” adding,

Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and freelance writer who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party.

“Today in History” compiled by the Associated Press is my favorite daily newspaper column. The cogent lessons allow me to recall – with surprise – many historical events but usually I learn new facts.

The posting on March 20, recalling 2014 and 2018 events plus a March 20, 2022 article speaks volumes:

-March 20, 2014: “President Barack Obama ordered economic sanctions against nearly two dozen members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and a major bank that provided them support, raising the stakes in an East-West showdown over Ukraine.”

-March 20, 2018: “In a phone call to Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump offered congratulations on Putin’s re-election victory; a senior official said Trump had been warned in briefing materials that he should not congratulate Putin.”

-March 20, 2022: “President Biden has called Mr. Putin a war criminal. . . . (Biden) must declare that the sanctions crippling Russia will remain in full force, with no exit ramps, as long as Mr. Putin remains in power” (Wall Street Journal).

What a contrast of presidents!

Herb Strentz: Trump’s lies may be troubling, but the failure of our elected GOP leaders to speak up against them should be even more troubling.

The aphorism “If a man bites a dog, that’s news,” has been attributed to a few newspaper characters. One was John Bogart (1848-1921), city editor of the New York Sun, one of that city’s liveliest newspapers in the late 19th century.

That’s why some 100 years later, I named our Sheltie puppy “Bogie.” That was much easier than making something out of Alfred Harmsworth — a British newspaper guy also credited with the line.

“Man bites dog!” defined news as something out of the expected or quite contrary to our daily experiences. You know, like Donald Trump telling the “truth.”

President Joe Biden has signed into law a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill, which funds the federal government through September 30. The president’s action on March 15 ends a cycle of short-term continuing spending resolutions that kept the government operating on spending levels approved during Donald Trump’s administration.

The enormous package combines twelve appropriations bills covering portions of the federal government, as well as an additional $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine and several unrelated pieces of legislation. One of those reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act through 2027, a task that had remained unfinished for years. Congress last reauthorized the 1994 legislation addressing violence against women in 2013, and that authorization expired in 2019.

Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst was a key negotiator of the final deal on the Violence Against Women Act and celebrated its passage this week.

Sondra Feldstein is a farmer and business owner in Polk County.

I predict that Republicans will begin to turn on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week, certainly before the end of the month.

Today’s GOP is incapable of supporting, for any length of time, any person, cause, or idea that is also widely supported by those they abhor. And they abhor anyone who doesn’t believe in their culture wars, who doesn’t believe in the Big Lie, who doesn’t believe in their conspiracy theories about one-world government.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley posted a screenshot of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following a virtual meeting with numerous members of Congress on March 5.

Grassley shared the photo with his more than 670,000 Twitter followers at 11:44 am, commenting, “Joined a zoom mtg w President Zelenskyy. we don’t hv a minute to waste in helping Ukraine fight off Putin who is killing innocent ppl to benefit his own ego.”

U.S. Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota blasted Republican Senators Steve Daines and Marco Rubio, who posted similar screenshots of Zelenskyy while the meeting was ongoing. Phillips tweeted, “The Ukrainian Ambassador very intentionally asked each of us on the zoom to NOT share anything on social media during the meeting to protect the security of President Zelenskyy. Appalling and reckless ignorance by two US Senators.”

Dan Piller: A prolonged war that disrupts Ukraine’s grain production could reverse Iowa’s decline in world export markets.

“Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat” –Socrates

The longstanding boast of Iowa farmers that they “feed the world” has been made increasingly hollow in recent years as emerging grain export powers Brazil, Russia, and Ukraine have grabbed significant shares of the world’s markets from the long-dominant United States.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the attacks on Black Sea ports of Kherson, Mariupol, and eventually, Odessa will likely shut off Ukraine from its sea shipping lifeline. A lengthy war would bring into question the ability of Ukrainian farmers to prepare their fields and plant the spring crop.

The possible elimination of Ukraine as a major corn and wheat producer and exporter, even for a short period, could reverse Iowa farmers’ decline in world export markets.

Ira Lacher: Westerners in general and Americans in particular seem to have abandoned the notion of sacrifice.

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

Fans of Star Trek know that trope well — Spock uses it to justify his life-threatening actions in the second Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, and Captain Kirk agrees.

Much of what I learned in life comes from two sources: baseball and Star Trek. So it would seem I must adopt this all-too-important mantra that helps make the characters the heroes they are.

We seem to be taking this sort of approach to the latest chapter of the pandemic, as infection rates, hospitalizations, and even death rates fall, and state after state and country after country begin to toss aside the necessities of keeping massive numbers from overwhelming our healthcare don’t-call-it-a-system.

Janice Harbaugh is a retired counselor and teacher, a fifth generation Iowan and fifth generation Greene Countian. She writes for Greene County News Online covering county government and writing occasional features.

My heart is in Ukraine.

In 1999, my husband and I met a foreign exchange student sponsored by a program in Jasper County. Alona was from a village in Ukraine and she lived with us on our acreage near Mitchellville for several months.

We learned about the history of eastern Europe, the conditions in Ukraine, her family, and her hopes for the future as we traveled around Iowa, showing her our history and treasures. She told us people in Ukraine know Iowa because of agricultural exchanges.

We would visit family in Greene County and I told her this is some of the richest soil in the world. Alona would tease me that soil in Ukraine is “deeper and a little blacker.”  

Once upon a time, American politicians shied away from criticizing the president during a foreign policy crisis. But Republicans have given President Joe Biden little credit in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Reacting to Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1, both Governor Kim Reynolds and Senator Joni Ernst suggested that Biden was to blame for the tragic turn of events.

Like many, I’ve been consumed this week by the horrifying news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although Vladimir Putin and his hostility to democracy occupied a lot of my head space in my “past life” covering Russian politics, I never imagined all those years ago that he would go so far as to annex Crimea, let alone launch a full-scale assault on Ukraine.

Foreign policy and military strategy are not my areas of expertise, so I have no insight on how Putin imagines he could benefit from this invasion. Even if he manages to install a puppet government in Kyiv, how will Russian forces maintain control of Ukraine, and how will the Russian economy weather the crushing sanctions? What’s his endgame?

I reported extensively on Putin’s rise to power in late 1999. Russian President Boris Yeltsin had appointed the virtually unknown security official as prime minister that August. But Putin didn’t become popular until a few months later, through a military campaign in the breakaway Republic of Chechnya. The Russian people broadly supported that war, in part due to slanted media coverage, and also because of apartment bombings (that may have been instigated by Russian security forces) and widespread racist attitudes toward Chechens.

Perhaps Putin hopes to replicate that formula for his political benefit. But I find it hard to believe that any significant share of the Russian population support all-out war against Ukraine. Who really believes that a country with a democratically-elected Jewish president needs to be “denazified” by force?

It’s been more than 30 years since I visited Ukraine’s beautiful capital city and the Black Sea resort town of Sochi. For that matter, I haven’t visited Russia in more than two decades. Even so, I’m heartbroken to see the avoidable loss of life on both sides. Please spare a thought for the citizens of Ukraine—whether they are Ukrainian- or Russian-speaking—because I don’t think anyone outside the Kremlin wants this war.

Most of Iowa’s leading politicians reacted to the invasion on February 24. I’ve compiled their comments after the jump.

As anyone could have predicted, Iowa’s Republican U.S. senators voted this week to acquit President Donald Trump on charges that he had abused his power and obstructed Congress. Bleeding Heartland covered Senator Joni Ernst’s explanation for her votes here. Senator Chuck Grassley laid out his reasoning in a fifteen-minute floor speech and news release on February 3. Two days later, he submitted a longer rebuttal of the impeachment charges for the Senate Record.

Grassley’s February 5 statement mostly covered the same ground in greater detail, with one exception: it included a mild rebuke of Trump. Iowa’s senior senator avoided expressing those sentiments on camera.

President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial ended on February 5 with U.S. Senate votes to acquit on both counts: 52-48 for “not guilty” on abuse of power and 53-47 for “not guilty” on obstruction of Congress. Republican Senator Mitt Romney joined the 47 members of the Democratic caucus to convict on the abuse of power charge; the other vote fell along straight party lines.

Public comments from Iowa’s Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley over the past several months indicated that neither would seriously consider convicting Trump under any circumstances. Both opted not to subpoena documents the White House refused to provide during the House investigation, and voted not to hear any testimony from witnesses the president sought to keep quiet. So yesterday’s votes were no surprise.

Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a closer look at Ernst’s public explanation for her vote. A separate Bleeding Heartland post will cover Grassley’s justification for voting to acquit.

All Republicans in the U.S. Senate are so far presenting a united front to defend President Donald Trump against any full examination of the charges against him. But more than most of her colleagues, Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst is becoming the public face of Trump’s defense.

She is also the leading voice in Congress for a talking point Ernst floated earlier this month: Trump has more firmly supported Ukraine against Russian aggression than did President Barack Obama.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst has brushed off as “moot” a new finding that the Trump administration broke federal law by withholding security assistance to Ukraine during the summer of 2019.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a January 16 report that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) violated the Impoundment Control Act when it withheld funds from the Defense Department. “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law.”

Ernst has long advocated increasing our country’s military support for Ukraine. But speaking to Iowa media this morning (audio), she suggested the GAO findings were not relevant, since Ukraine eventually received the assistance Congress approved.

While testifying before the U.S. House Intelligence Committee on November 21, former National Security Council official Fiona Hill urged Congressional Republicans not to “promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.” She was referring to the idea that “Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.” Hill added, “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Meanwhile, “American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election,” Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg reported for the New York Times on November 22, citing three officials familiar with the classified briefing.

Nevertheless, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley persisted.

As evidence mounts that President Donald Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to boost his domestic political prospects, Grassley has advanced the narrative that Ukrainian government officials interfered in the 2016 election to support Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst repeatedly insisted today that she will evaluate any evidence about President Donald Trump’s wrongdoing as a “jurist.” But in her first conference call with Iowa reporters since mid-September, Ernst didn’t sound like a juror with an open mind about the case.

On the contrary, the senator expertly echoed White House talking points, from denouncing a “political show” and unfair process to using Trump’s derisive nickname for a key House committee chair.

U.S. Representative Steve King (IA-04) was among House Republicans who interrupted a secure hearing on October 23 to protest the Democrats’ impeachment process.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst is among Ukraine’s most vocal supporters in Congress. While in college, she visited the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR as part of an agricultural exchange. Now a member of the bipartisan Senate Ukraine Caucus, she has met with high-level Ukrainian officials in Washington and Kyiv, advocating for the U.S. to “make it clear to Russia that we will stand by Ukraine in the face of unjustified aggression.”

Yet Iowa’s junior senator has been silent this week as multiple news organizations reported that President Donald Trump abused his power to seek political assistance from his Ukrainian counterpart.

This post’s title came from the unintentionally humorous Bloomberg News analysis by Jennifer Jacobs and Kevin Cirilli: “America Meets Trump’s Secret Weapon: Ivanka.” The nut graph declared, “Ivanka […] might be her father’s single strongest asset for changing his perception among women, one of Trump’s weakest demographic groups, strategists and campaign insiders said.” Support came primarily from Ivanka’s brothers Donald Jr. (“She’s an impressive woman”) and Eric (“I think she brings in independents. I think she brings in Democrats quite frankly”). Unnamed strategists described Ivanka as “a character witness” who can be a “bridge between her father and women,” thanks to her “refined and feminine, but unmistakably Trump” brand. Lacking data to bolster that assertion, Jacobs and Cirilli wrote, “Even Trump’s opponents agreed that Ivanka, a balm to her dad’s shock-jock tactics, is a strong weapon for Trump.” The only detractor quoted was the former leader of a stop Trump super-PAC, who called Ivanka “smart, poised, graceful and dignified.” No question, she is. So was Ann Romney. The 2012 presidential election still had the largest gender gap ever recorded.

Jacobs and Cirilli rightly noted that unlike Democrats, Donald Trump “hasn’t called for” making quality child care more affordable, a goal Ivanka flagged in her convention speech. They could have added, nor has the GOP nominee endorsed “equal pay for equal work,” for which Ivanka promised her father would fight. Hillary Clinton has been emphasizing those and related issues like paid family leave in almost every campaign appearance for more than a year. I doubt she or her strategists are losing sleep over Trump’s “secret weapon.”

If any campaign analysis could make you lie awake in terror, it would be Josh Marshall’s July 23 post at Talking Points Memo about Trump’s entanglements with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I’ve enclosed excerpts below, but you should click through to read the whole piece.

I knew Trump had occasionally praised Putin, and vice versa. I’d seen a small army of Russian trolls stir things up for Trump on Twitter last year. I knew Trump was getting favorable spin from the Kremlin-backed English-language television network and from Russian-language websites with ties to the authorities. I had read that Trump campaign operatives “gutted” GOP platform language related to Russian interference in eastern Ukraine. On Thursday, I saw Trump’s startling interview with the New York Times, in which he signaled he might not honor our country’s obligations to NATO allies attacked by Russia, if those countries had not “fulfilled their obligations to us.”

Though I was vaguely aware Trump had some business dealings in Russia, I didn’t appreciate until reading Marshall’s post that “Trump’s financial empire is heavily leveraged and has a deep reliance on capital infusions from oligarchs and other sources of wealth aligned with Putin.” Marshall observed, “if Vladimir Putin were simply the CEO of a major American corporation and there was this much money flowing in Trump’s direction, combined with this much solicitousness of Putin’s policy agenda, it would set off alarm bells galore.”

Having seen how Putin uses financial leverage to bring people in line, I’m ready to skip the alarm bell ringing and raise the threat level to orange.

I spent a decade covering Russian politics, including the election cycle when Putin rose to power and the early years of his presidency. My main research focus was Putin’s wide-ranging campaign to reassert state power over the Russian media.

Putin had a lot of weapons in the toolkit, such as physically restricting journalists’ access to some stories; enacting new laws on media coverage of terrorist conflicts; using government authority to issue or deny broadcast licenses; refusing to air political advertising created for an opposition figure; and launching criminal investigations or civil lawsuits against journalists, editors, and owners.

One of the most potent methods for taming the Russian media was getting entities in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence to turn the financial screws on Putin’s critics.

Putin has been using state-controlled corporations to go after disobedient news organizations or their key investors since his earliest months on the national scene, indeed before his election as president in March 2000. The first blood drawn in Putin’s effort to neuter Russia’s leading private television network NTV came in February 2000, when the gas monopoly Gazprom abruptly demanded repayment of a $211 million loan to the network’s parent company.

After various forms of legal and monetary pressure wrested NTV away from a troublesome oligarch, several prominent journalists and managers landed jobs at a different tv network with a smaller broadcast area. But before long, a pension fund linked to a state-controlled oil company used its position as a minority shareholder to force that network into liquidation. The move made no economic sense. The pension fund refused buyout offers and eliminated any prospect of recouping its investment by pursuing a legal strategy to take the network off the air. The band of NTV refugees found jobs at a third television company, this time partnering with someone “who [had] direct access to the president.” Financial problems finished off that network in a little more than a year. Its major investors included an oligarch with close ties to Putin, but he didn’t lift a finger to cover the company’s debts as the broadcast license hung in the balance.

Putin has altered many aspects of his country’s political life. Those still working in the Russian field could speak about how he expanded his power over other sectors. My window onto Putin’s leadership style leaves no doubt in my mind: it’s not just plausible but probable that if Trump companies were deeply indebted to Russian business interests, the Kremlin would try to use those relationships to its advantage.

As if Trump’s comically narcissistic temperament, dishonesty, short attention span, use of divisive language and race-baiting, and lack of constructive ideas weren’t enough to disqualify him from serving as president.