Zelensky’s Historic Address

Ukraine's president visits Washington as Congress scrambles to finalize its budget for 2023.

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Happy Thursday! President Biden signed a bill into law yesterday banning most private ownership of big cats, including tigers, lions, leopards, and cheetahs.

Unfortunately, the legislation does nothing about problematic ursine ownership.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • With a surge in respiratory viruses leading to shortages across the country, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday it will release Tamiflu, the prescription antiviral, from the Strategic National Stockpile to states that request it. Tamiflu hasn’t been quite as difficult to find in recent weeks as other medications—like children’s Tylenol—but the flu has been particularly pervasive so far this fall.
  • The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) announced this week it seized about 50 million fentanyl tablets and 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder in 2022, by their calculations enough of the synthetic opioid to produce 379 million “potentially fatal doses.” The 50 million tablets seized were approximately double what the DEA captured in 2021, when a record 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses.
  • President Joe Biden told a woman at a political rally last month that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is “dead, but we’re not going to announce [that it’s dead],” according to a recently resurfaced video of the exchange. Citing Iran’s crackdown on protesters and support for Russia’s war effort, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council told Axios Tuesday that resurrecting the Iran deal is “not our focus right now” and they “don’t see a deal coming together anytime soon.” On Wednesday, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on an Iranian manufacturing company and several Iranian officials—including the country’s prosecutor general and members of the Basij Resistance Forces paramilitary group—in response to the regime’s recent killing of two protesters.
  • The National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday the median existing-home sales price in the U.S. was $370,700 in November—down from a record $416,000 in June, but up 3.5 percent from November 2021—while sales of previously owned homes declined for the tenth straight month, down 35.4 percent year-over-year.
  • Incoming Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced Wednesday he is appointing Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington to lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) for the 2024 cycle, putting her in charge of efforts to recapture the House majority. The Republican National Committee announced Wednesday the GOP’s 2024 national convention will be held in Milwaukee from July 15-18, 2024.

Zelensky Addresses Congress

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on December 21, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images.)

Back in March, just three weeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a virtual address to Congress, pleading for America to come to the beleaguered nation’s aid. Nine months of brutal fighting later, Zelensky addressed Congress again Wednesday—and this time it was in person, his first known trip outside Ukraine since the war began.

Zelensky’s visit, geared towards shoring up what he described as “solid, bicameral, and bipartisan” American support, comes at a critical moment in the war, as Congress scrambles to pass an omnibus bill that includes $45 billion in military assistance to Ukraine before Christmas. The narrow Republican House majority that will take control of the lower chamber in January is expected to be less amenable to such spending.

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  1. Avatar photo
    AndreaLeane75

    It will be a real disgrace and yet another stain on the honor of the U.S. if Congress doesn't pass the Afghan Adjustment Act. These people deserve better from us.

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  2. Tim.Moore2

    If McCarthy does not have the huevos to shut down Marjorie Taylor Green and her ilk, then it is going to be a very long two years.

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  3. Ryan.C.White022

    The “problematic ursine ownership” link was incredible and gave me a hearty chuckle. Totally not what I was expecting.

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    Jaclynangelo

    I know I'm late to the Morning Dispatch (this being Friday morning and all), but I was curious about the link to the 'Welfare for Bees' article.

    Now, I consider myself a conservationist rather than an environmentalist. Put another way, I do not have a progressive attitude towards the preservation of our natural resources.

    Currently many roadsides are grass monocultures. I feel like replacing them with native plants to promote native pollinators which eventually feed native insect eaters is something appropriate. It even compliments Jonah's comparison of English and French gardens. I live in Northern Alabama and I would rather see American beautyberry, pink beardtongue, and asters instead of grass.

    I do think it's a poor long-term strategy to make this all about honeybees due to their non-native status. But this benefits our local species.

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    Stevenwoodward1228

    I can only hope wisdom outshines idiocy and the US continues supplying Ukraine with whatever they need to defeat Putin.

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    Mike B

    I hope Zelensky's speech shores up support. I thought it was pretty inspiring.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Jean-Christophe Jouffrey

    Dear Morning Dispatchers,

    "Biden claimed that, as VP, he presented his uncle with a Purple Heart, which his uncle didn't accept.

    Except his uncle died years before Biden became VP.

    There also appears to be no record of the Purple Heart, and WH hasn't shed much light."

    This is coming after Trump explaining that he knows it all and he is a genius, because his uncle was at MIT. “I had an uncle who went to MIT who is a top professor. Dr. John Trump. A genius. It’s in my blood. I’m smart.”

    There should be three legal requirements for people aspiring to be POTUS:
    1) they should disclose their tax returns, and they should be audited.
    2) they should not have any uncles.
    3) they should not have any children.

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    Victor Clairmont

    Could we not have given aid to Ukraine without trying to greenlight a 1.7 trillion dollar bill?

    Just, come on.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Jean-Christophe Jouffrey

    Dear Morning Dispatchers,

    "Zelensky’s visit, geared towards shoring up what he described as “solid, bicameral, and bipartisan” American support"

    For years now, and even long before Trump took his ride down the Golden Escalator, Ukraine and "Russia, Russia, Russia", have been at the center of the under-belly of American politics. (Those who attempted to picture what the center of the under-belly could be, should not have done so).

    Ukraine has been the playground of shady political operatives (such as Paul Manafort) and "businessmen" from both the Republican and Democratic sides in the USA, but on different sides in Ukraine.

    It is worth remembering here, even though I have done it not so long ago, the context of the "joke" made by McCarthy in 2016 about Trump being on Putin's payroll.

    It was immediately after talks with the then Ukrainian PM, who explained why Putin was giving money to Extreme Right populist politicians in the West.

    Here is the WaPo in 2017:
    "A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

    House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

    Before the conversation, McCarthy and Ryan had emerged from separate talks at the Capitol with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladi­mir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.

    News had just broken the day before in The Washington Post that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee, prompting McCarthy to shift the conversation from Russian meddling in Europe to events closer to home.

    Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

    Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

    The remarks remained secret for nearly a year."

    There was no "Russia, Russia, Russia" conspiracy on the part of the "Deep State", there was a Russia/Ukraine split on the Extreme Right, and on the part of Trump and his campaign, a series of attempt at "collusion", from Trump World Tower Moscow, to the Trump Tower Meeting, to "Russia if you are listening...", to Manafort sharing internal polling data with Putin's allies, etc.

    Once more, as Manafort shows, it was much more than Trump and long before Trump.

    So today, there is no chance that the same populist Extreme Right, will join a "solid, bicameral, bipartisan American support" for Ukraine: They shall do all they can to make it as wobbly as possible.

    Putin is hoping that he can rely on Russia's main weapon for century, the capacity for extreme suffering of the Russian people (which is the same for Ukrainians... Putin is partly right: they are more or less the same); and he is hoping that he can rely on the distress of the Liberal Democracies and their fickleness when they experience slight discomfort.

    It is a blessing for him that the Republicans have taken the House, although he would have preferred a bigger majority in the House, and in the Senate: Putin is certainly the first to think that Trump is incompetent and unreliable, a bad horse to bet on.

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  10. Bob Bowman

    President Zelensky delegated his command responsibilities in Ukraine and risked his life by traveling to the U.S. to make a direct appeal for continued funding for his nation's resistance against the Russian invasion. I believe most rational Americans greatly admire the courage and determination demonstrated by the Ukrainians thus far, and would agree with Zalinsky's reminder that this funding should not be viewed as charity, but as an investment in security by the western nations. I would think that his personal appeal would make it politically risky to deny his request for continued support.

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