The Montenegrin Parliament voted yesterday (July 28th) 57-3-11 for Finland, 57-2-11 for Sweden. I guess Dejan Đurović didn't feel it was worth voting against Swedish NATO membership. As you'd expect, all the members who voted "PROTIV" appear to be Serb nationalists.
The US Senate is scheduled to vote on August 1st!
Evidently the Italian National Assembly is voting tomorrow and the US Senate isn't voting today, but lol:
https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1554095814611443712?s=20&t=OAr5_W...
McCaskill -> Hawley was possibly one of the worst senate downgrades EVER.
Hawley is merely virtue signalling on an issue that deserves careful consideration, given Finland’s border with Russia. Virtue signalling is most of what he does, and it often plays against the Republican line.
McCaskill, by the end of her tenure, was neither an electoral titan nor true blue where it mattered.
There’ve been plenty of worse D->R switches than this in the last few decades - Feingold to RonJon comes to mind. I’m not even mentioning the “unremarkable D/R -> historical villain” downgrades that have brought some of the worst Senators to power (e.g. McCarthy).
There's been ample careful consideration on the issue. It's been over 70 years since NATO was formed and over 30 since the end of the Cold War. Public opinion on joining NATO in Finland and Sweden only flipped to majority support THIS YEAR. There's a clear pattern emerging where Russia invades countries that aren't in NATO, but won't invade those that are. Therefore the message its other neighbors get is that they should try to join NATO as quickly as possible.
