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Days after the White House announced plans to step up military support for Syrian rebels, President Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland. Nation Editor and Publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel and Nation contributor Stephen Cohen joined All In with Chris Hayes last night to take stock of US-Russia relations and demand an “off-ramp” for escalating US engagement in the Syrian conflict. 

—Jake Scobey-Thal

Last week, thousands gathered in Arkansas for Walmart’s shareholder meeting. But while celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Jennifer Hudson and Hugh Jackman performed for the crowd of stock-owners and workers flown in by the company, members of OUR Walmart, a group of workers organizing for higher wages and better working conditions, protested outside.

The Nation’s Josh Eidelson joined Democracy Now! and Kalpona Akter, Executive Director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, and Scott Nova, Executive Director of the Workers Rights Consortium, to discuss the Walmart strike on Democracy Now! this morning. He also appeared on Al-Jazeera.

–Rebecca Nathanson

The first couple’s recent trip around the commencement circuit included remarks at historically black colleges and universities slapping black youth for “fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper,” in Michelle’s words, rather than pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. “This fixation, this insistence, on blaming black youth for problems that they didn’t create is completely unacceptable,” Nation writer Aura Bogado says. “What I would have liked to have heard” from the president, “if he feels intimate with this black audience, is an ask for these graduates to fight systemic racism.” Bogado joins a panel on HuffPost Live to parse the Obamas’ words.

—James Cersonsky

Mondays in Raleigh are not the same this spring. Read Phoebe Zerwick’s report.

Two cheers for Michele Bachmann’s exit-right from Congress. Though Bachmann’s unsavory politics (and money) have left the building, Nation editor-in-chief Katrina vanden Heuvel says, “Bachmannism is far from finished.” Bachmann perfected a style of slander and falsehood that, “in the cult of false equivalence that distorts too much of our media coverage, has been quasi-legitimized.” Appearing on The Young Turks, vanden Heuvel breaks down Bachmann’s legacy.

—James Cersonsky

From the ashes of Senator Frank Lautenberg rises a new authoritarian politics. Read John Nichols’s take on Chris Christie’s most recent machinations.