The War Room: A vital hydroelectric dam in the Russian occupied area of Kherson has breached, causing catastrophic flooding. The cause has not been given, but the dam has been under Russian control. Thousands of people are evacuating. 

 Both the US and Russia say Ukraine has begun its long-awaited counter offensive, but Ukraine is remaining quiet except for the sound of artillery. 

  The heaviest fighting appears to be east of where the assault was expected to start, but any military with smarts is not going to do what’s expected.

  The Russian Ministry of Defense said that it has repelled major Ukrainian attacks at five locations in the eastern Donetsk region,  inflicting heavy casualties.  

The Racing Form: Former Vice President Mike Pence filed the paperwork  declaring himself a candidate for president despite polling in the single digits. 

    Despite running to defeat Trump, Pence so far has not spoken critically about the former president, and has even gone out of his way to avoid testifying about potential crimes Trump may have committed. Rolling Stone says that what Pence has done is file a bid to be humiliated by Donald Trump. 

  Pence is expected to formally announce at a rally outside Des Moines tomorrow. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota are expected to announce today. That would make nine Republican candidates.

  New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu, an appealing and rational guy, says he’s not running because it’s more important just to make sure Trump is not nominated.

Trump World: Lawyers for Donald Trump met with Justice Department Attorneys yesterday to ask the government not to charge him in the case of the classified documents that the former president took with him to his Florida home and tried to keep despite efforts to retrieve them.  A meeting like that is often one of the last things that happens before the target of an investigation is indicted.

  Trump whined on his Truth Social website, ““HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S [sic] WERE CHARGED …” He rambles on about the crimes of Hillary and the Bidens.  

  Trump lawyers Lindsey Halligan, John Rowley, and James Trusty spent about two hours at the Justice Department and left without speaking to reporters. Present at the meeting was special counsel Jack Smith, but not Attorney General Merrick Garland.

  CNN, meanwhile, is reporting that an employee at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate drained the swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room housing computer servers that contained the logs of surveillance videos.

  The incident came two months after the feds retrieved classified documents from the Trump estate and consider it to be “suspicious.”

Migrant Dumping: California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newson has threatened Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with charges of kidnapping after a second plane carrying migrants landed in California, presumably sent by DeSantis. 

  Newsom says his administration is looking into who paid for the plane trips, whether migrants were misled, and whether laws were violated, including kidnapping.

  Newsom might have a case, but he has a record of making statements on hot issues he doesn’t have the legal authority to enforce.

The Obit Page: Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who was caught spying for Russia after the end of the Cold War and sentenced to life in prison, was found dead yesterday in his cell near Florence, Colorado. He was 79 and no cause of death was given.

  Hanssen’s espionage was described by the Department of Justice at the time as “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history.”

  Hanssen is believed to have approached Russian intelligence three years after joining the Bureau and ended up giving them vital information from 1979 to 2001. Identifying to the Russians as Ramon Garcia, he sold thousands of classified documents to the KGB detailing US  strategies for nuclear war and developments in weapons and technology. He revealed the existence of an eavesdropping tunnel built under the Russian embassy and gave up the names of KGB agents working for the US, some of whom were executed .

  Hanssen was deeply religious and the father of six children. He was a member of Opus Dei, but was also a sexual deviant who liked to be secretly filmed through a window having sex with his wife. 

The Spin Rack:  An F-16 pilot sent to intercept a business jet that later crashed in Virginia on Sunday reported that he had seen the jet’s pilot slumped in his seat. Four people died in the crash. The passengers were a young mother, her infant daughter, and nanny. — The bodies of three people missing after the collapse of an apartment building in Davenport, Iowa have been found in the rubble. The building was a century old. —  Oklahoma has approved the country’s first religious charter school. The school to be run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City would include religious teachings, including in math and reading, to be paid for by taxpayers. It is a direct challenge to the Constitutional separation of church and state. — Cornel West, the charactery progressive activist and professor, announced a third party presidential campaign with the People’s Party —  CNN boss Chris Licht apologized to the entire staff of the network after an unflattering profile of him in The Atlantic. “To those whose trust I’ve lost, I will fight like hell to win it back, because you deserve a leader who will be in the trenches, fighting to ensure CNN remains the world’s most trusted name in news,” Licht said. His days at CNN might be numbered. — Journalists at two dozen newspapers owned by the Gannett company walked off the job in protest of working conditions and low pay, which is nothing new at Gannett.

Below the Fold: The Bureau of Labor statistics says high egg prices are finally breaking.

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