Good morning, it’s Wednesday.
Here’s an unusually newsworthy note: It’s Ukraine Independence Day, (also Independence Day of Ukraine), the country’s main state holiday, which commemorates its 1991 break from the Soviet Union – a moment that takes on additional weight and importance given the ongoing war in which the Ukrainian people are fighting to maintain their freedom from Russia.
The Soviet Union dissolved in the 1990s. On July 16, 1990, the Ukrainian government declared state sovereignty. A year later, July 16 was honored as Ukraine Independence Day.
Almost a year later – August 1991 – there was a coup to restore communist rule in the Soviet Union, but it failed. On August 24, the Ukrainian parliament adopted the Act of Independence of Ukraine, and a yellow and blue flag the symbol of independence – appeared on the building that houses the Verkhovna Rada (the country’s unicameral parliament).
On this day, just over three decades ago, the Parliament of Ukraine formally declared an independent, sovereign, and democratic Ukrainian state, establishing the territorial integrity of Ukraine as sovereign and inviolable – a move that was upheld by an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians in a national referendum held later that year in December.
Today, of course, that independence is in jeopardy, and the U.S. is warning that Russian might step up its attacks on Ukrainian civilian facilities and government infrastructure to make a point in the coming days. The Ukrainian government has issued a ban on celebrations in its capital tomorrow in response.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pledged that any Russian attacks in or around this date would provoke a powerful response.
Ironically, this Independence Day is coming exactly six months after Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine.
In lieu of Soviet-style military-themed events, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long viewed as wasteful, Ukraine’s military is lining a traditional parade route with the burned-out husks of Russian military equipment.
The display in Kiev on Khreshchatyk Street has been very popular.
I have to confess that I am woefully uninformed when it comes to the history of Ukraine. Prior to this war, I am ashamed to say that I probably wouldn’t have even been able to find it on a map.
Ditto Crimea, over which Ukraine is fighting to restore its rule since the region was annexed by Russia in 2014 in a precursor to this year’s invasion.
I also feel like news of the war has sort of fallen out of the headlines…or, at least is given less play than it was just a few months ago.
One significant exception to that is coverage of the terrifying situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which was taken over by Russian forces about five months ago. Workers there are now running the plant at gunpoint. These workers are pretty much all that stands between us and a significant nuclear disaster.
World leaders are warning of another Chernobyl or Fukushima, but a few experts are – mercifully – dismissing those claims as overblown. Still, the situation is very worrying. The greatest concern right now is not a full-scale meltdown or explosion, but a leak of radiation that would be on a smaller scale, yes, but nonetheless very damaging.
Hopefully, none of that comes to pass and this all gets resolved, though when, I’m not sure.
Meawhile, U.S. security assistance is shifting to a longer-term campaign that will likely keep more American military troops in Europe into the future, including imminent plans to announce an additional roughly $3 billion in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces to fight for years to come.
On a slightly more upbeat note, there’s only a slight chance of a rain shower today – nothing like the torrential downpours we witnessed yesterday – skies will be partly cloudy, and temperatures will be in the mid-to-high 80s.
Congressional and primary election results….
Rep. Jerry Nadler successfully defended his seat in Manhattan’s newly drawn 12th Congressional District, capping off a competitive Democratic primary that pushed the 30-year member of the House into a faceoff against his colleague, Rep. Carolyn Maloney.
“I’m really sad that we no longer have a woman representing Manhattan in Congress,” Maloney told her teary-eyed boosters, later adding: “In Congress, it is that when women are at the table, great decisions get made.”
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, won his primary contest, according to The AP, defeating state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, a state senator who challenged him from the left.
Biaggi’s loss halts a trend of young progressive insurgents unseating powerful New York Democrats in recent cycles
Former federal prosecutor Dan Goldman beat a crowded field of Democrats — including incumbent Rep. Mondaire Jones — vying for a new congressional seat in Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn.
Goldman is poised to be the first new member of Congress most residents of the Manhattan and Brooklyn-based district have had in decades, after a chaotic redistricting process carved out a brand new district in the heart of New York City with no incumbent.
Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, a progressive, was down less than 2 percentage points shortly before 11 p.m. She did not concede, even as Goldman staked his claim to victory.
GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis and Democratic former Rep. Max Rose will square off in November for the right to represent the Staten Island-based 11th Congressional District — a replay of the 2020 matchup in which Malliotakis unseated Rose.
Democrat Pat Ryan has won a special election for New York’s 19th Congressional District in a race that garnered national attention ahead of November’s midterm contests.
The contest was seen as a bellwether of the national mood because Ryan had focused on abortion rights while his opponent, Republican Marc Molinaro, had tried to run on issues embraced by the GOP nationwide, such as crime and inflation.
The outcome marked the latest in a string of recent House special elections in which Democrats have outperformed recent baseline numbers in the districts.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, has become the latest member of the far-left “Squad” to survive a primary challenge from a more moderate member of Democratic Party, defeating Westchester County legislator Vedat Gashi.
As of 10 p.m., Robert Zimmerman was leading in the Congressional District 3 primary with approximately 38.36% of the votes, with about 67% of the scanners counted, according to unofficial results. The seat is currently held by Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi.
Former Town of Hempstead supervisor Laura Gillen has declared victory in the four-way primary race to become the Democratic candidate for a seat in New York’s 4th U.S. Congressional District.
Nick Langworthy, the New York State Republican Party chairman, defeated Carl Paladino in a primary in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, delivering a win for the party establishment against perhaps its most polarizing figure.
The result is something of a loss for the “Ultra MAGA” wing of the Republican party and a victory for establishment Republicans, who hoped to keep the gaffe- and scandal-prone Paladino far away from the halls of Congress.
Langworthy has spent most of the campaign widely characterized as the underdog. Even the internal polls that he released showed him with “momentum” rather than a lead.
Steuben County Republican Chairman Joe Sempolinski has won the special election for New York’s current 23rd Congressional District, defeating Democrat Max Della Pia, chairman of the Tioga County Democratic Committee.
Sempolinski will serve out the remainder of former Rep. Tom Reed’s term. Reed had already planned not to run for re-election, but then resigned in May to work for the lobbying arm of a public relations firm, prompting this special election for his seat.
Sempolinski, a former Reed staffer, was the unanimous choice of local party leaders. After four months, he will be replaced by the winner of the November general election for the redrawn 23rd district, which also includes southern and eastern Erie County.
“I am looking forward to hitting the ground running and making sure constituent services are back up and working” Sempolinski, 39, said after securing the victory. “We have no time to waste.”
Francis Conole won a four-person Democratic primary election for Central New York’s seat in Congress, landing the party’s nomination that had eluded him just two years ago.
Republican Brandon Williams will take on Conole in November. The winner of the general election will replace retiring Rep. John Katko (R-NY). According to FiveThirtyEight, the newly formed district currently favors Democrats by 2%.
The political far left emerged victorious last night in four high-profile state Senate primaries despite efforts by New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his allies to counter its growing power in Democratic-dominated Albany.
Bronx Sen. Gustavo Rivera declared victory last night following a dramatic primary campaign that saw his own party back a more moderate challenger in the Democratic contest.
“Financiers, national Republicans, charter school backers – all these folks – a million dollars – and they couldn’t get us,” Rivera told supporters while declaring victory at a Bronx bar.
Several other incumbents and progressives easily sailed to victory, including Sens. Robert Jackson, whose redrawn district covers Washington Heights and other northern Manhattan neighborhoods.
In Brooklyn, Democratic socialist Jabari Brisport declared victory over challenger Conrad Tillard, a pastor endorsed by Mayor Adams despite a history of offensive rhetoric about Jews, LGBTQ+ individuals and women.
In the state Senate District 59 race between DSA-backed Kristen Gonzalez, former City Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley and Mike Corbett, a former staffer to City Councilmember Costa Constantinides, Gonzalez was on top by about 6,000 votes.
Longtime state Sen. Kevin Parker was expected to score the lone win for the establishment by beating DSA-backed challenger David Alexis, who had 37.64% of the vote compared to 45.80% for Parker with 98.69% of votes counted.
In Florida, Democrats chose Rep. Charlie Crist as their gubernatorial nominee, betting that the ex-GOP governor who campaigned on a return to political decency was their best bet to try to defeat Gov. Ron DeSantis, the polarizing Republican incumbent.
In non-election news…
President Joe Biden is expected to announce today at the White House that he will cancel $10,000 in federal student loans per borrower making $125,000 a year or less, and extend the federal student loan payment pause for several more months.
In addition to that baseline of student loan debt forgiveness for individuals who fall under a certain income level, administration officials have also recently discussed the possibility of additional forgiveness for specific subsets of the population.
White House aides say the president has agonized over the decision, questioning whether cancellation should apply to students of both public and private universities and saying he does not want the relief to apply to those earning high incomes.
Biden’s public approval rating rose this week to its highest level since early June, following a series of legislative wins for his Democratic Party, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed yesterday.
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that if Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney were to run for president as an independent in 2024, she could single-handedly swing the election to Trump.
Stephen Goepfert, Biden’s personal aide, is set to leave the White House for a role at the DOT, marking the departure of a key cog on Biden’s team who has been by his side at every major moment since the first months of his 2020 presidential campaign.
“From the campaign to the White House, Stephen Goepfert has been by my side,” Biden said in a statement. “In moments big, small, and extraordinary, he’s been a trusted and loyal confidant who everyone counts on and who always delivers.
The US’s strategic oil reserves fell to their lowest level in 37 years last week as the releases ordered by Biden continued.
President Donald Trump took more than 700 pages of classified documents, including some related to the nation’s most covert intelligence operations, to Mar-a-Lago in January 2021, according to a letter the National Archives sent to his attorneys.
The letter, dated May 10, shows that months before the Aug. 8 FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, the intelligence community and the Justice Department had become alarmed by Trump’s handling of presidential records, which are government property.
In the two weeks since federal agents searched Trump’s Florida home, Biden has gone silent about the former president, declining to weigh in on the federal investigation into how the former president handled classified documents.
More than two years after Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a white Atlanta police officer, a prosecutor has determined that the officer who fired, as well as another officer on the scene, “committed no crimes” in the incident.
A former police detective admitted that she had helped mislead a judge into wrongly authorizing a raid of Breonna Taylor’s apartment in Louisville, Ky., setting in motion the nighttime operation in which the police fatally shot her.
A federal jury in Michigan found two men guilty of plotting to kidnap the state’s Democratic governor, ending one of the highest-profile domestic terrorism cases in recent history.
Marijuana and hallucinogen use among young adults reached an all-time record last year after having leveled off during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal survey data.
With state regulators set to begin accepting applications for the state’s first adult-use retailer licenses this week, Adams announced the launch of a new program to promote cannabis industry equity by supporting entrepreneurs most impacted by the drug war.
Public health researchers want to rename monkeypox, saying the term evokes racist stereotypes, reinforces offensive tropes about Africa and abets stigmatization that can prevent people from seeking care.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has a whopping 24-point lead over Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin with 11 weeks to go before Election Day, according to a new poll released yesterday.
ConEd has been dumping millions of gallons of wastewater — some of it heated to above 90 degrees and some containing toxic metals — into the Hudson River in a park with special protections for fish and other aquatic life, public records show.
The felon grandson of former Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro faces federal charges in the near-fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend.
An off-duty New York City police officer was hospitalized in critical condition after he was attacked by three men wanted for a score of robberies across the city, the police said.
Only 30% of young men ages 18 to 24 in New York City are collecting paychecks, a new analysis of government data by economist James Parrott at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School shows. Mayor Adams wants to change that.
An analysis by unionized New York Times journalists found that employees of color at the news outlet for years have received lower ratings in performance reviews, on average, than white employees.
North Country GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik is keeping up her criticism of the FBI for refusing to answer questions about its connections to Shahed Hussain, the owner of the stretch limo involved in the 2018 crash in Schoharie that killed 20 people.
A City Court judge dismissed all charges against Lexis Figuereo, one of the leading Black Lives Matter protesters in the Capital Region after the Albany County District Attorney’s Office admitted it failed to comply with evidence discovery rules.
A convicted Albany rapist who has spent 22 years in state prison is facing an unusual development in his fight for freedom — Albany County prosecutors cannot locate his case file.
Drivers heading into the Adirondack town of Johnsburg on state Route 28 may be puzzled when they reach the Warren-Hamilton county line and find themselves in “Johnsberg.” (The sign mistakenly swaps an “e” for the correct “u.”
