We're At War With Russia. Congress Needs To Act.

While the debate to impeach or not impeach rages, there's a part of the Mueller Report that requires direct and immediate attention:

Russia interfered, meddled, messed with our 2016 election cycle.

And they're threatening to do it again.

Referring to Amy MacKinnon at Foreign Policy:

Indeed, there was one conclusion in the 22-month investigation that no one in Washington was disputing on Friday—with the possible exception of Trump himself. It came on Page 1: “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

Russia experts say the extensive detail about Russian activities in the Mueller probe reveals much about Moscow’s game plan—and what U.S. counterintelligence officials should watch for—in future elections, starting with 2020.

“Make no mistake: They are at war with us. Whether we want to recognize it or not,” said Daniel Hoffman, who served as CIA station chief in Moscow under the Obama administration...

What Russia - and their authoritarian boss Putin - wants is full Western destabilization. They want Europe in-fighting, torn asunder by Nationalist factions. They're meddling in election after election, trying to taunt republics and democracies with the belief that such governance is weak.

You think Russia will pull back, now that they've been exposed through Mueller's investigation into their tricks? No, no they won't:

...It was also an operation that Russia intended to be discovered, knowing the backlash it would cause, Hoffman said, suggesting that the political strife over the Mueller report is itself evidence that the Kremlin’s tactics are still succeeding.

“I think the fallout [from the discovery of Russia’s role] is far more damaging. It’s an amplification of their themes,” he said. “The strategy was to pit us against ourselves.” And having discovered how well that strategy has worked up to the present, Moscow will be encouraged to keep applying it.

“All the partisan fodder here is going to make it difficult for Democratic and Republican lawmakers to come together and form a real strategy to counter Russia,” Hoffman added...

Russia is counting on the Republicans to run interference, to block any attempt to impose tighter security on our electoral system. There's a lot Congress could do in spite of any trump intervention, such as imposing harsher sanctions on Putin and his cronies and passing reforms to improve our Internet and technology security to crimp Russia's cyberwar stunts.

But will a Senate run by Mitch McConnell - who already blocked for trump (and Putin) by denying Obama's request to reveal the early evidence of Russian meddling - agree to make moves that he would automatically assume hurts his chances of retaining control? McConnell remains the center force of partisanship in Congress - obstructionist and rule-breaking - who is in many respects causing more damage to our nation than anything trump wants to do.

The smartest move Pelosi and the Democratic House should do right now is issue stronger sanction laws against Russia, dare McConnell to ignore a move that most Americans would support. It's the most obvious, bipartisan move Congress could make.

We're at war, Mitch. You're going to have to choose a side: America or Putin. And it's not really a choice, you sonofabitch. Side with Putin and history condemns you forever.