Two days after President Donald Trump expressed disappointed with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia launched another major missile and drone attack at Ukraine’s capital overnight Wednesday, killing at least two people and wounding 16 more, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukrainian police said on Thursday morning that Russian missiles struck eight different districts in Kyiv, targeting residential areas, the BBC reported.

“Residential buildings, vehicles, warehouses, office and non-residential buildings are burning,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv Regional Administration. According to the Ukrainian government, a 68-year-old woman and a 22-year-old police officer were killed at a metro station during Russia’s bombardment.

Zelensky added that Russia fired 18 missiles and launched 400 drones targeting Kyiv. The latest Russian offensive came just one night after Putin hit Ukraine with the largest drone and missile attack since the start of the war.

“This is a clear escalation of terror by Russia — hundreds of ‘shaheds’ every night, constant strikes, and massive attacks on Ukrainian cities,” Zelensky posted on X. “This demands that we speed things up. Sanctions must be imposed faster, and pressure on Russia must be strong enough that they truly feel the consequences of their terror. There’s a need for quicker action from our partners in investing in weapons production and advancing technology.”

Last night, Russia launched a massive combined strike that lasted nearly 10 hours. 18 missiles, including ballistic ones, and around 400 attack drones were used — nearly 200 of them were "shaheds."

The main target of the attack was Kyiv and the region. Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava,… pic.twitter.com/jtBo0YYQ8d

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 10, 2025

As President Trump continues to seek a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, Putin has stepped up his aggression in the war. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Putin, telling reporters on Tuesday, “We get a lot of bulls*** thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

Trump said earlier this week that the United States will send more defensive weapons to Ukraine, so the country can “defend themselves.”

“I’m disappointed, frankly, that President Putin hasn’t stopped,” Trump added.

Some Republicans in Congress, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in the House and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the Senate, are pushing Trump to impose sanctions on Russia and punish Putin for his refusal to work with Ukraine and the United States on a peace agreement. The president is reportedly considering the idea of hitting Russia with new sanctions and punishing nations that trade with Putin.

“[Trump] told me he thought it would be helpful,” Graham said, referring to his bill that would place a 500% tariff on any country that imports Russian uranium, gas, or oil. “We want to be a team. We want to help the president. This is an effort to give the president leverage he doesn’t have today.”

This month, America commemorates the 100th anniversary of a landmark cultural event that taught us about the dangers of censorship. July of 1925 witnessed the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” where a Dayton, Tennessee, public school teacher was put on trial for violating a state law that prohibited teaching human evolution.

The teaching of scientific ideas should never be banned, much less criminalized. We like to think of censorship as something from the dark ages of the past, before our modern enlightened era vanquished intellectual intolerance. But 100 years after Scopes, we have what the late Supreme Court Justice Scalia once called “Scopes-in-reverse,” where scientists and scholars face reprisals if they challenge neo-Darwinian evolution.

For about 20 years I’ve been collecting examples of academic speech codes that prevent faculty from discussing scientific alternatives to Darwin. For example:

Back in 2005, Cornell’s interim president devoted a State of the University Address to denounce “intelligent design (ID),” arguing that it has no place in science classrooms. “The answer is that intelligent design is not valid as science, that is, it has no ability to develop new knowledge through hypothesis testing…” Also in 2005, the president of the University of Idaho instituted a campus-wide speech-code, where “evolution” was “the only curriculum that is appropriate” for science classes. This was done in retaliation against biology professor Scott Minnich, who had just testified in favor of intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial — a case which ultimately banned ID from public schools in Dover, PA. Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago evolutionary biologist and atheist blogger, once wrote that “adherence to ID…should be absolute grounds for not hiring a science professor.” In 2013, Coyne attacked Eric Hedin, a physics professor at Ball State University (BSU), for briefly teaching about ID in an honors seminar. BSU’s president then caved, and issued a speech code declaring that “intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses.” In 2020, two Norwegian scientists published a paper in Journal of Theoretical Biology citing the work of leading ID theorists and arguing for “a Design Science.” Facing pressure, the journal’s editors then issued a disclaimer addressing no substantive arguments in the paper but implementing another speech code, announcing: “intelligent design is not in any way a suitable topic for the Journal of Theoretical Biology.”

Perhaps the most ironic recent example of evolutionary censorship will take place this month at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, not far down the road from Dayton, as it celebrates a “Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial Centennial Symposium.” Co-organized by Vanderbilt’s Evolutionary Studies Institute and the National Center for Science Education, the symposium includes many credible speakers from science, philosophy, and law. Intelligent design is on the schedule, and there is an entire session devoted to the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Yet exactly zero pro-ID scientists or scholars are slated for the symposium.

In February, and again in May, I emailed the organizers of the Scopes Symposium, offering to provide names of credible pro-ID scientists who would be open to participating in their event. No one even replied.

The irony is palpable: a symposium that is supposed to be remembering the dangers of censorship regarding evolution is itself practicing censorship regarding evolution.

An even worse irony is that Vanderbilt’s website hosts an official “Dialogue Vanderbilt” / “Commitment to Free Expression” page which boasts of the university’s supposed commitment to “bringing together people of differing viewpoints for a common purpose.” The page continues:

Transformative education, pathbreaking research and the timeless search for truth all require a wide variety of viewpoints, the uninhibited exchange of ideas, the persistent challenging of conventional wisdom, and courageous and vigorous debate.

A university that dutifully transmits canonical knowledge, but is not at the same time alive with diverse perspectives, probing critique and the practice of query and argument, is a university in name only.

The page then lauds the importance of “institutional neutrality,” quoting former Vanderbilt Chancellor Alexander Heard stating: “A university’s obligation is not to protect students from ideas, but rather to expose them to ideas, and to help make them capable of handling and, hopefully, having ideas.”

The one-sided Scopes Symposium completely rejects these ideals, aiming to “protect” students from non-Darwinian viewpoints — directly violating the Chancellor Heard’s warning. By Vanderbilt’s own standards, apparently it is “a university in name only.”

A century ago, religious fundamentalists excluded evolution from education. Yet today, evolution advocates do the same to intelligent design. Vanderbilt’s Scopes symposium is just the latest reminder that in our modern era of “Scopes-in-reverse,” the power dynamic has shifted 180 degrees, but the problem of censorship still remains.

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Casey Luskin holds a PhD in Geology from the University of Johannesburg and a law degree from the University of San Diego. He is Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute and co-author of the book “Science and Human Origins.”

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.