President Joe Biden has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a White House visit this summer.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden extended the invitation during a phone call Monday with Zelenskyy, who has publicly raised concerns about the U.S. president’s plan to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and about a nearly completed Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline that would allow Russia to bypass Ukraine.
Biden made the invitation during a call that had been planned in advance of Biden’s trip to Europe that culminates with a stop in Geneva next week for a face-to-face meeting with Putin as tensions in the U.S.-Russia relationship remain high.
Ukraine has harbored hopes for increased military aid during the Biden administration and is looking for backing in its bid for NATO membership.
In midterm elections, Mexico president’s grip on Congress slips
Mexico’s leftist ruling coalition was on track to lose its absolute majority in Congress following midterm elections Sunday, putting the brakes on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s ambitious plans to overhaul the country’s economy and society.
The ruling Morena party was expected to hold between 190 and 202 seats in Mexico’s lower house of Congress, a decline of up to 60 lawmakers, according to preliminary results released Monday by the country’s electoral board.
Although Morena, together with allies, will still be the dominant force in the 500-seat legislature, the coalition is expected to fall well short of the two-thirds majority required to change the Constitution and push for López Obrador’s reform agenda.
In particular, the results will make it harder for López Obrador to advance his flagship plan to return the energy sector to state control and appear to show the limits of his mandate for reforms he has billed as Mexico’s “Fourth Transformation.”
Raymond Donovan, Reagan’s former labor secretary, dies at 90
Raymond Donovan, a construction company executive who resigned as secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor following grand larceny and other charges of which he was later acquitted by a jury, died last week in New Vernon, New Jersey. He was 90.
Donovan became famous for asking rhetorically, after his acquittal, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
Donovan served as labor secretary in the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1985, resigning after a judge refused to dismiss an indictment filed in September 1984 by the Bronx district attorney.
The indictment accused Donovan and nine others of grand larceny, false recordkeeping and false statements in connection with construction money prosecutors said should have gone to a minority-owned subcontractor in a 1979 New York City subway project.
About the Author
The Latest
Featured
