«З українських портів загалом вийшли вже 16 суден із зерном для семи країн на трьох континентах. Це Європа, Азія, Африка»
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«І абсолютно всі посадовці держави-терориста, а також ті, хто їм допомагає в цій шантажистській операції з атомною станцією, мають відповідати в міжнародному суді»
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Головнокомандувач ЗСУ також повідомив, що активні бойові дії тривають на 1300 кілометрах фронту
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«Це чергова хвиля обшуків, які зазвичай відбуваються раз на пів року. Як правило, кримських татар звинувачують у причетності до терористичної організації»
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«Навіть якщо Росії вдасться ґрунтовно відремонтувати мости, вони залишаться ключовою вразливістю»
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У відомстві назвали «великою втіхою» прибуття до Равенни корабля з кукурудзою та сою з України
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The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating former President Donald Trump for possible violations of the Espionage Act and other crimes after the FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents from his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, earlier this week. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the latest.
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A divided Congress gave final approval Friday to Democrats’ flagship climate, tax and health care bill, handing President Joe Biden a back-from-the-dead triumph on coveted priorities that the party hopes will bolster its prospects for keeping control of Congress in November’s elections. 

The House used a party-line 220-207 vote to pass the legislation, which is but a shadow of the larger, more ambitious plan to supercharge environment and social programs that Biden and his party envisioned early last year.

Even so, Democrats happily declared victory on top-tier goals like providing Congress’ largest ever investment in curbing carbon emissions, reining in pharmaceutical costs and taxing large companies, a vote they believe will show they can wring accomplishments from a routinely gridlocked Washington that often disillusions voters. 

“Today is a day of celebration, a day we take another giant step in our momentous agenda,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. She said the measure “meets the moment, ensuring that our families thrive and that our planet survives.” 

Republicans solidly opposed the legislation, calling it a cornucopia of wasteful liberal daydreams that would raise taxes and families’ living costs. They did the same Sunday but Senate Democrats banded together and used Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote to power the measure through that 50-50 chamber. 

“Democrats, more than any other majority in history, are addicted to spending other people’s money, regardless of what we as a country can afford,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican. “I can almost see glee in their eyes.” 

Biden’s initial 10-year, $3.5 trillion proposal also envisioned free prekindergarten, paid family and medical leave, expanded Medicare benefits and eased immigration restrictions. That crashed after centrist Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said it was too costly, using the leverage every Democrat has in the evenly divided Senate. 

Still, the final legislation remained substantive. Its pillar is about $375 billion over 10 years to encourage industry and consumers to shift from carbon-emitting to cleaner forms of energy. That includes $4 billion to cope with the West’s catastrophic drought. 

Spending, tax credits and loans would bolster technology like solar panels, consumer efforts to improve home energy efficiency, emission-reducing equipment for coal- and gas-powered power plants, and air pollution controls for farms, ports and low-income communities. 

Another $64 billion would help 13 million people pay premiums over the next three years for privately bought health insurance. Medicare would gain the power to negotiate its costs for pharmaceuticals, initially in 2026 for only 10 drugs. Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket prescription costs would be limited to $2,000 starting in 2025, and beginning next year they would pay no more than $35 monthly for insulin, the costly diabetes drug. 

The bill would raise around $740 billion in revenue over the decade, over a third from government savings from lower drug prices. More would flow from higher taxes on some $1 billion corporations, levies on companies that repurchase their own stock and stronger Internal Revenue Service tax collections. About $300 billion would remain to defray budget deficits, a sliver of the period’s projected $16 trillion total. 

Against the backdrop of GOP attacks on the FBI for its court-empowered search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate for sensitive documents, Republicans repeatedly savaged the bill’s boost to the IRS budget. That is aimed at collecting an estimated $120 billion in unpaid taxes over the coming decade, and Republicans have misleadingly claimed that the IRS will hire 87,000 agents to target average families. 

Representative Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, said Democrats would also “weaponize” the IRS with agents, “many of whom will be trained in the use of deadly force, to go after any American citizen.” Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked Thursday on “Fox and Friends” if there would be an IRS “strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person.” 

Few IRS personnel are armed, and Democrats say the bill’s $80 billion, 10-year budget increase would be to replace waves of retirees, not just agents, and modernize equipment. They have said typical families and small businesses would not be targeted, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen directing the IRS this week to not “increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold” that would be audited. 

Republicans say the legislation’s new business taxes will increase prices, worsening the nation’s bout with its worst inflation since 1981. Though Democrats have labeled the measure the Inflation Reduction Act, nonpartisan analysts say it will have a barely perceptible impact on prices. 

The GOP also says the bill would raise taxes on lower- and middle-income families. An analysis by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which didn’t include the bill’s tax breaks for health care and energy, estimated that the corporate tax boosts would marginally affect those taxpayers but indirectly, partly due to lower stock prices and wages. 

The bill caps three months in which Congress has approved legislation on veterans’ benefits, the semiconductor industry, gun checks for young buyers and Ukraine’s invasion by Russia and adding Sweden and Finland to NATO. All passed with bipartisan support, suggesting Republicans also want to display their productive side. 

It’s unclear whether voters will reward Democrats for the legislation after months of painfully high inflation dominating voters’ attention and Biden’s dangerously low popularity with the public and a steady history of midterm elections that batter the party holding the White House. 

The bill had its roots in early 2021, after Congress approved a $1.9 trillion measure over GOP opposition to combat the pandemic-induced economic downturn. Emboldened, the new president and his party reached further. 

They called their $3.5 trillion plan Build Back Better. Besides social and environment initiatives, it proposed rolling back Trump-era tax breaks for the rich and corporations and $555 billion for climate efforts, well above the resources in Friday’s legislation. 

With Manchin opposing those amounts, it was sliced to a roughly $2 trillion measure that Democrats moved through the House in November. He unexpectedly sank that bill too, earning scorn from exasperated fellow Democrats from Capitol Hill and the White House. 

Last-gasp talks between Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, seemed fruitless until the two unexpectedly announced agreement last month on the new package. 

Manchin won billions for carbon capture technology for the fossil fuel industries he champions, plus procedures for more oil drilling on federal lands and promises for faster energy project permitting. Centrist Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, also won concessions, eliminating planned higher taxes on hedge fund managers and helping win the drought funds.
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A Republican-leaning state in America’s socially conservative heartland recently shocked both sides of the long-running battle over abortion, calling into question the conventional wisdom about how and where the procedure might be restricted or banned. 

Voters in Kansas cast ballots last week on a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have eliminated an existing right to abortion. The amendment was expected to pass handily in a state no Democratic presidential contender has won in nearly 60 years and where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 15 percentage points in the 2020 election. 

Voters rejected the ballot measure, preserving abortion rights. 

“The consensus was that Republicans in Kansas were going to ban abortion like in many other conservative states,” University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock told VOA. “But we got a big surprise. Kansas voted to uphold abortion protections and the only way to explain it is that the vote exposed a rift. There seems to be a difference between what Republican politicians want and what voters – including some Republican voters – want.” 

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in June, it gave each U.S. state the ability to decide whether to allow or ban abortion. 

Until last week, initial results seemed to follow states’ partisan leanings, with Republican-controlled states moving to outlaw abortions and Democrat-led states preserving and, in some cases, moving to bolster abortion protections.  

For example, just days after the Kansas vote, lawmakers in another conservative breadbasket state, Indiana, became the first in the post-Roe era to pass a law banning most abortions. Before the Supreme Court’s June ruling, several Republican-led state legislatures had passed so-called “trigger laws” that restricted or ended access to the procedure once Roe was overturned. 

“The difference between Kansas and the states like Indiana,” Bullock said, “is that in Indiana politicians in the legislature voted on the proposed laws, while in Kansas, the public got to vote directly. It turns out that distinction makes a big difference.” 

And the Kansas vote was decisive, defeating the anti-abortion-rights amendment 59% to 41%. 

While the result will impact the lives of women and families across the Sunflower State, Bullock believes the shock waves could be far reaching. 

“Politicians and activists from around the country are watching and analyzing what happened in Kansas,” he said, “and you might see both sides employing the lessons they’re learning when the fight comes to their own states.” 

Rift among Republicans 

Ann Mah, a Democratic member of the Kansas State Board of Education, remembers the moment she first thought abortion rights backers could win the amendment battle. 

“You have these Republican politicians who are always moving to the right to appeal to the loudest members of their base so they can win their primary,” she told VOA, “But I was getting the sense some conservative voters were becoming uneasy with the amount these proposed abortion policies were reaching into their private lives.” 

One day as the vote neared, Mah spoke with a neighbor she described as “ultra-conservative.”  

“We don’t agree on hardly anything, me and this person,” she said, “but he came to my house and asked for a ‘Vote No’ yard sign because he didn’t support the amendment. That’s when I knew we had a chance.” 

Not everyone believes what happened in Kansas will carry over to other states, however.

“I’m not from Kansas or Indiana so I can’t speak to what people do in those states,” said Sarah Zagorski, communications director at Louisiana Right to Life, an anti-abortion-rights advocacy organization, “but I can say that one negative result in a state isn’t necessarily indicative of how the country feels about abortion. For pro-life people here in Louisiana, they just won’t be voting for radical abortion extremists and their policies.” 

But former Louisiana state Representative Melissa Flournoy, a Democrat, believes the reality and consequences of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision are only just now registering for many.  

Flournoy pointed to a recent case that made national headlines in which a child victim of rape had to be taken to another state in order to terminate a pregnancy. 

“We’re confronted with this story about a 10-year-old girl who was raped, became pregnant, and was about to be denied an abortion – that’s shocking to most of America,” Flournoy told VOA. “It’s like, ‘Yes, we really are outlawing abortion in all circumstances.’ It’s disorienting, and the implications are coming into focus, even among some voters who consider themselves pro-life.” 

Polling data 

An Ipsos/USA Today poll released Wednesday found 54% of respondents would vote to keep or make abortion legal in their state, with 28% indicating they would vote against abortion-rights measures. 

While it’s more common for legislatures to handle these matters, voters are increasingly clamoring for a direct say. In Republican-controlled South Dakota, for example, the Kansas vote has spawned an effort to pursue a statewide referendum on reestablishing abortion rights in the state. 

Additionally, this November, voters in California, Kentucky, Montana and Vermont will have the opportunity to weigh in on abortion rights via the ballot box, while plans are being finalized to give residents in Colorado and Michigan that same opportunity. 

In fact, according to the Ipsos/USA Today poll, 70% of Americans say they want to vote on abortion via state ballots, including 73% of Democrats, 77% of Republicans and 67% of independents.  

“Opinion on reproductive choice isn’t only based on party lines,” said Cynthia Lash, chair of the Osage County Democratic Central Committee in Kansas, speaking with VOA. “In our state, several nonpartisan groups formed solely to defeat the amendment. They canvassed, they texted voters in all counties regardless of party affiliation, they developed yard signs, they held rallies — they were much more active than traditional campaigns in reaching out to everyone.”  

Osage County is deeply Republican, but even there, 56% of voters opposed the abortion-rights amendment last week.  

“In our small, rural county, only 17% of registered voters are Democrats,” Lash said. “Even in the unlikely case that every Democrat and unaffiliated voter voted against the amendment, that means 31% of Republican voters cast a ballot against the amendment as well. That’s how unpopular it was.” 

Not all anti-abortion activists, however, are convinced a vote against the amendment was a vote against restricting abortions. 

“In Kansas, voters rejected an amendment that allows the legislature to limit or allow abortions as those politicians see fit,” said Laura Knight, president of Pro-Life Mississippi. “Maybe those voters wanted a total ban of abortion. Maybe they felt the amendment wasn’t strong enough. We don’t know.”  

Electoral implications 

Some in the Republican Party worry they are pushing too far in banning abortion, months before midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. Congress. This past Sunday, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina compared the impact of anti-abortion initiatives to the fictional portrayal of an America in which women have no rights in a popular U.S. television series. 

“It will be an issue in November if we’re not moderating ourselves. ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ is not supposed to be a road map,” Mace said.

Others are urging anti-abortion officeholders to stay true to their beliefs. 

“Government officials are elected to vote their conscience, not to check in with the public on everything,” Tara Wicker, who leads Louisiana Black Advocates for Life, told VOA. “Children who are born of rape or incest are still innocent children and we should be protecting them, regardless of how popular that decision is among a subset of voters.” 

Bullock from the University of Georgia sees warning signs for advocates of abortion measures who ignore the will of voters. 

“Both sides have things they can learn from what we’re seeing in states like Indiana and Kansas,” he said, “and for Republicans, the warning is they seem to be pushing beyond what their voters want. It’s a lesson they’ve been confronted with before, but they don’t seem to be learning it.” 

At a time of economic uncertainty in America, the degree to which abortion could determine election outcomes remains to be seen. 

A recent poll in the swing state of Nevada by The Nevada Independent, a news website, and OH Predictive Insights, a market research company, showed abortion laws were the second most powerful issue for respondents – behind only the economy. But the gap between the two remained substantial (40% for the economy and 17% for abortion laws).

“Inflation and the economy as a whole is still front-of-mind for most Americans, but that doesn’t mean the abortion debate can’t impact elections this November,” Bullock said. “This is going to be a big issue for suburban white women, many of whom typically vote Republican. If 50,000 here or 100,000 there change their mind in especially tight districts or states, that’s enough to flip a result or two, and potentially even [determine] control of the [U.S.] Senate.” 
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«Зокрема, Star Laura стало першим судном класу Panamax, яке вийшло з порту «Південний» з початку реалізації «зернової ініціативи»
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Пам’ятник «поїхав на зберігання», а що буде замість нього – вирішуватимуть «всі разом, але вже після нашої перемоги»
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За словами Василя Небензі, Росія «захищає АЕС», у тому числі від можливих терактів
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«Абсолютно всі в світі мають реагувати негайно, щоб вигнати окупантів з Запорізької АЕС»
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За даними ЗМІ, Янушевич в 2014 році був люстрований і не мав право займати державні посади до 2024 року.
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Some 2,500 kilometers from Washington, D.C., the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol still looms large in the minds of Wyoming voters who will be heading to the polls on August 16 to decide if Republican Liz Cheney should keep her seat in Congress.

Wyoming’s only representative in the U.S. House, two-term Congresswoman Cheney has staked her political career on being one of the few Republicans to openly criticize former President Donald Trump. But she has an uphill fight to win her party’s nomination in a state that delivered Trump his most lopsided win of the 2020 election, with almost 70% of the vote.

The Wyoming Republican Party primary has pitted Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, against the Trump-endorsed candidate, former attorney Harriet Hageman. The least-populated state in the nation, Wyoming has been solidly Republican for decades. But the debate over Trump has forced voters to decide exactly what it means to be a loyal Republican and has turned the primary contest into a test for the former president ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 for inciting the riot at the U.S. Capitol and has served as vice chair of the House select committee to investigate the January 6th attack. She was expelled from the state Republican Party for continuing to call Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election “the Big Lie.”

“Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior,” Cheney said during a January 6th Committee hearing last month. She has also suggested Trump should face federal charges for his actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

“We need a leader like Liz,” Jan Cartwright, a retired health care executive from Cheyenne, told VOA. “I think that it’s important for us to look at what happened with both the Trump presidency and then January 6, and I think that truth has to overcome lies. I believe that that’s what she’s trying to do, is to get to the truth.”

Trump has criticized the work of the January 6th Committee, suggesting it is unfair that the two Republicans investigating his actions also voted to impeach him.

“Liz Cheney hates the voters of the Republican Party, and she has for longer than you would know,” Trump said at a Casper, Wyoming, rally for Hageman in May.

“Wyoming deserves a congresswoman who stands up for you and your values, not one who spends all of her time putting you down and going after your president in the most vicious way possible.”

But some Wyoming voters have been turned off by Trump’s messaging, saying Cheney’s determination is a Wyoming value. Independent voter Don Maloff told VOA he is switching his party registration just so that he can vote for Cheney.

“Cheney is being stepped on by Trump, which is wrong in every which way,” Maloff said, adding that he admires Cheney’s work on the January 6th Committee even though he doesn’t think it will change anyone’s mind.

In their only debate, on July 1, the two candidates focused on Trump, with Cheney suggesting Hageman knew Trump’s election fraud claims were false.

“The election was not stolen. She knows it wasn’t stolen. I think that she can’t say that it wasn’t stolen because she’s completely beholden to Donald Trump,” Cheney said.

But Hageman contended Cheney was ignoring her constituents by focusing on the investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Our republic is not in danger because of President Donald J. Trump. President Trump was an excellent president for the United States of America and especially for the state of Wyoming,” Hageman said in the debate.

Polling in the days leading up to the Tuesday primary has Hageman leading Cheney by a significant margin, an indication that Hageman’s criticism of the January 6th Committee is connecting with many Wyoming voters.

“She cannot like Donald Trump. She can do whatever she wants to try to get him where he can’t run again, the whole January 6 — whatever that whole nonsense is all about — but the voters in Wyoming stand — for the majority — stand solidly behind Trump,” Randy Mulkey, a Cheyenne voter who works for a roofing company, told VOA.

Hageman is running television advertisements suggesting Cheney wants to be re-elected as the state’s sole U.S. House representative because she is comfortable among the Washington elite.

That argument resonates with Kelly Krakow, an insurance salesman from Alban, Wyoming, who is concerned about the state of the economy.

“Cheney’s just stepped over the line on too much stuff,” Krakow said. “And really, she doesn’t live in Wyoming. She hasn’t for a long time. And I don’t think she has the Wyoming values behind her.”

Cheney’s father, meanwhile, is campaigning for his daughter. The former vice president, who also represented Wyoming in Congress in the 1980s, recorded a television ad in which he calls Trump “a coward” who lied to his followers about his 2020 election loss, and praises his daughter for “standing up for the truth.”

Even if she loses her primary, Cheney is expected to continue the January 6th investigation in Congress until the end of her term early next year.
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За словами радниці міністра, Угорщина поводиться «як наркоман, який сидить на голці і не хоче відмовлятися від своєї залежності»
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На фото видно пошкоджену російську авіацію, зокрема, винищувачі типу Су-30СМ та бомбардувальники Су-24М
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