Former President Donald Trump described Ukraine in bleak and mournful terms Wednesday, referring to its people as “dead” and the country itself as “demolished,” and further raising questions about how much the former president would be willing if elected again to concede in a negotiation over the country’s future. Trump argued Ukraine should have made concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the months before Russia’s February 2022 attack, declaring that even “the worst deal would’ve been better than what we have now.” Trump, who has long been critical of U.S. aid to Ukraine, frequently claims that Russia never would have invaded if he was president and that he would put an end to the war if he returned to the White House.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is calling on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fire his country’s ambassador to the U.S. as Republicans criticize the war-torn leader’s visit to a swing-state Pennsylvania site producing munitions for the Russia-Ukraine war as a political stunt. The Republican Johnson’s demand Wednesday came as Zelenskyy addressed the United Nations in New York on the eve of his visit to Washington, D.C., where he has plans Thursday to brief lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the war effort before meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House. “The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Zelenskyy.

House Republicans on Wednesday voted to condemn President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, capping their work in Washington with legislation that carried no legal weight but drove a political point ahead of the November elections. The resolution passed 219 – 194 with 10 Democrats and all Republicans voting in favor. It condemned Biden, Harris and other officials in the administration for “decision-making and execution failures throughout the withdrawal from Afghanistan” as well as blamed them for the deaths of 13 U.S. service members who were killed by a suicide bomber at Kabul’s airport during the final days of the evacuation.

A federal judge on Wednesday approved a $600 million class-action settlement Wednesday that Norfolk Southern railroad offered to everyone who lived within 20 miles (32 kilometers) of last year’s disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Judge Benita Pearson gave the deal final approval after a hearing where the lawyers who negotiated it with the railroad argued that residents overwhelmingly supported it, attorneys for the residents and railroad spokesperson Heather Garcia told The Associated Press. Roughly 55,000 claims were filed. Only 370 households and 47 businesses opted out.

Waves of sanctions imposed by the Biden administration after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine haven’t inflicted the devastating blow to Moscow’s economy that some had expected. In a new report, two researchers are offering reasons why. Oleg Itskhoki of Harvard University and Elina Ribakova of the Peterson Institute for International Economics argue that the sanctions should have been imposed more forcefully immediately after the invasion rather than in a piecemeal manner. “In retrospect, it is evident that there was no reason not to have imposed all possible decisive measures against Russia from the outset once Russia launched the full scale invasion in February 2022,” the authors state in the paper.

A bipartisan congressional task force investigating the assassination attempts against Donald Trump is set to hold its first hearing Thursday as lawmakers rush to ensure candidate safety just weeks before the U.S. presidential election. The panel — comprised of seven Republicans and six Democrats — has spent the last two months trying to decipher the security failures that allowed a gunman to scale a roof and open fire at the former president during a July 13 campaign rally in Pennsylvania, killing a spectator. Now they are also investigating this month’s Secret Service arrest of a man with a rifle on Trump’s Florida golf course who also allegedly sought to assassinate the GOP presidential nominee.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted Thursday on charges that he took illegal campaign contributions and bribes from foreign nationals in exchange for favors that included helping Turkish officials get fire safety approvals for a new diplomatic building in the city. Adams, a former police officer, faces conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery charges in a five-count indictment that describes a decade-long trail of crimes. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan alleges in the indictment that Adams “not only accepted, but sought illegal campaign contributions” to his mayoral campaign.

With the impending implementation of new Israeli draft laws that threaten to force thousands of bnei torah into the military, posing an unprecedented threat to limud hatorah in Eretz Yisroel – the very lifeblood of the Jewish nation, the Lakewood Roshei Yeshiva have issued a Kol Korei for everyone to join this monumental Atzeres Tefillah on Sunday in the heart Lakewood. The Atzeres which will be attended by leading gedolim and Roshei Yeshiva, will start out with Mincha, and then Tehillim for our brethren in Eretz Yisroel and around the world, as the unprecedented threats continue to endanger Klal Yisroel. The Atzeres will also feature short speeches describing the gravity of this new law, and the threat it poses to the Olam Hatorah.

by Rabbi Yair Hoffman for the Sefas Tamim Foundation To subscribe to a weekly newsletter on Emes please email the author at yairhoffman2@gmail.com with the word “subscribe” in the subject line. The height of the golden era of the healing baths of Marienbad was in the late 1800’s until the Second World War.  Many famous people used to visit this resort town including King Edward VII of England, Emperor Franz Josef I of the Astro-Hungarian empire, Russia’s last Czar Nicholas II, Alfred Nobel, Rudyard Kipling, and lehavdil, the great Mashgiach of the Mir Yeshiva, Rav Yeruchem Levovitz zt”l among other Gedolim.

FBI agents entered the official residence of New York City Mayor Eric Adams and seized his phone early Thursday morning, hours before an indictment detailing criminal charges against the Democrat was expected to be made public. Adams was indicted by a grand jury on federal criminal charges that remain sealed, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Federal law enforcement agents were seen entering the mayor’s Manhattan residence at dawn Wednesday, with several vehicles bearing federal law enforcement placards parked outside.