The War Room:  Hours after the Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made a risky visit to Ukraine to deliver US assurances of security, Russian missiles struck five railway stations across Ukraine.

  Also over the weekend, Russian missiles hit the port city of Odessa on the Black Sea, which had not been attacked since the opening days of the war. Among those killed were a young mother and her three-month-old daughter.

  Austin and Blinken had travelled by train from Poland to visit in Kyiv with Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky. Austin told reporters, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” He said, “It had already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly, and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

  “Russia is failing,” Blinken said. “Ukraine is succeeding.”

  The two US officials said they told Zelensky Ukraine will get more than $700 million in new military aid and that the Biden  administration will return to Kyiv the US diplomats evacuated at the opening of the war. 

Not Quite Right : French President Emmanuel Macron pummeled his right wing opponent Marine Le Pen yesterday in the election for prime minister, winning a second five-year term and assuring some degree of political stability in his country and Europe during the troubling Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

  In the as yet unofficial results, Macron won  58.5 percent of the vote to Le Pen’s 41.5 percent. Even so, it was a victory of a kind for Le Pen, who five years ago won just 33.9 percent to Macron’s 66.1. 

  Le Pen is anti-immigrant and would ban in France the traditional head scarves worn by Muslim women. She wants a revision in the French Constitution to establish a national preference for access to employment and social housing and would restrict child benefits to French citizens.

  France has not re-elected a president since 2002 and Macron is not considered to be flawless. As he has assumed a degree of international leadership against the current Russian aggression, in some ways he’s more popular abroad than in his own country. But he has spurred the French economy and dealt effectively with the Covid-19 crisis, while being a savvy political centrist.

  Russia’s Vladimir Putin congratulated Macron with a message saying,  “I sincerely wish you success in your state activities, as well as good health and well-being.” 

Not a Prayer: The Supreme Court is expected to hear today the case of a former Bremerton, Washington football coach who was ordered to stop leading prayers on the field following games and ultimately lost his job.

  It’s a challenge to the 60-year precedent that public schools cannot endorse prayer and religion in school. The now majority conservative court has been very protective of religious rights in recent years. 

  For years Joe Kennedy had quietly taken a knee after games and prayed. Then others started to join him. Finally after a homecoming game he was joined in his postgame prayer by members of the public, a state legislator, and the media. “Spectators jumped over the fence to reach the field and people tripped over cables and fell,” the district said in its brief. “School band members were knocked over.”

  The next week, a group of Satanists demanded equal access to the field.

  Kennedy’s brief to the court says, “Teachers and coaches remain individuals with First Amendment rights on school premises, and the suppression of the individual religious expression of teachers and coaches is not permitted, let alone required, by the First Amendment.” 

The Obit Page: Orrin Hatch, the Republican who served seven terms as a US senator from Utah, died over the weekend in Salt Lake City at age 88.

  Hatch was a child of the Great Depression, one of nine children who grew up in Pittsburgh. He lost siblings in infancy and in World War II.

  Serving in the Senate for 42 years ending in 2019, he was one of the prime movers in the modern conservative movement, advising presidents, shaping thousands of pieces of legislation, and stacking the Supreme Court with a conservative majority. He allied himself with President Trump.

The Spin Rack: New cases of Covid-19 are up 51 percent over the past two weeks in the US. — Spring wildfires in Arizona, Nebraska, and New Mexico have burned 150,000 acres and destroyed hundreds of structures. — Wynn Bruce, a climate activist from Boulder, Colorado, died after setting himself on fire Friday in front of the Supreme Court in an Earth Day protest.

Marriage Expert: Former President Donald Trump, an expert on marriage who’s been married three times, predicted the end of the marriage of Britain’s Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle.

  In an interview with Piers Morgan, Trump said, “Harry is whipped like no other person I think I’ve seen.”

  Trump said, “So, I want to know what’s going to happen when Harry decides he’s had enough of being bossed around. Or maybe when she decides that she likes some other guy better. I want to know what’s going to happen when it ends, OK?”

  Morgan asked,  “You think it’s gonna end?”

  “I do,” Trump answered. “I’ve been a very good predictor, as you know,” he said with his usual humility. “I predicted almost everything. It’ll end and it’ll end bad.”

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