Volodymyr Zelensky, a comic actor with no political experience who played an accidental Ukrainian president on TV, was sworn in as president on Monday. During his inauguration ceremony, Zelensky announced he is "dissolving the Verkhovna Rada," or parliament, setting up snap elections. Parliamentary elections had been scheduled for October, but Zelensky campaigned on cleaning out parliament of lawmakers he accused of corruption and self-enrichment. "People must come to power who will serve the public," he said on Monday.
Zelensky, 41, crushed outgoing President Petro Poroshenko in last month's presidential runoff election, earning 73 percent of the vote. In his inaugural address, Zelensky said his top priority is ending the five-year-old conflict with Russian-back separatists in Eastern Ukraine. "I'm ready to do everything so that our heroes don't die there," he said. "I'm ready to lose my popularly and, if necessary, I'm ready to lose my post so that we have peace." Zelensky gave his address in Ukrainian, but he switched to Russian to express his conviction "that for this dialogue to start, we must see the return of all Ukrainian prisoners."
Zelensky has released few details of his governing agenda, but he laid out a broad vision for Ukraine in his address. "We must become Icelanders in football, Israelis in defending our land, Japanese in technology," he said, and "Swiss in our ability to live happily with each other, despite any differences." Although he was trained as a lawyer before becoming a TV star, Zelensky gave a nod to his fame as a comedian. "Throughout all of my life, I tried to do everything to make Ukrainians laugh," he said. "In the next five years I will do everything so that Ukrainians don't cry." Peter Weber
Amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in Florida, Republicans are making some adjustments to their August convention.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel on Thursday announced the Republican Party's convention next month, which is set to take place in Jacksonville, Florida, will be scaled back, The Washington Post reports. According to the report, Republicans will limit admittance for the first three days of the convention to just regular delegates, which is roughly 2,500 people, though this will be expanded to around 6,000 to 7,000 people for the last day when delegates can bring a guest and alternate delegates can come as well.
Additionally, McDaniel said the convention will "utilize a number of indoor and outdoor venues," including the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, and Politico reports that "Republicans expect the president to deliver his acceptance speech outdoors, but those plans have not been finalized." Most of the convention had already been moved to Florida from its original location in North Carolina.
"When we made these changes, we had hoped to be able to plan a traditional convention celebration to which we are all accustomed," McDaniel said. "However, adjustments must be made to comply with state and local health guidelines."
Florida has been shattering records for its number of new COVID-19 cases, and numerous Republicans have said they won't attend the convention due to the pandemic. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) earlier this week recommended that Floridians avoid gatherings of 10 or more people and "areas where large numbers of people congregate." Brendan Morrow
You can apparently count Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) among the solid majority of Americans who are unimpressed with President Trump's COVID-19 response. In a brutal Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, for example, 62 percent of registered voters said Trump is hurting the effort to fight COVID-19, while 67 percent said they don't trust the information he shares about the disease. Unlike most Americans, though, Hogan has a front-row seat to Trump's response, both as a governor and chairman of the National Governors Association.
Hogan published a detailed, withering critique of Trump's response in an op-ed Thursday in Trump's least-favorite newspaper, The Washington Post. He started with the extraordinary effort he and his Korean-born wife, Yumi Hogan, made to fly 500,000 COVID-19 tests in from South Korea in April, sending them into safe hiding under armed guard because "the federal government had recently seized 3 million N95 masks purchased by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker."
This airlift from Seoul "shouldn't have been necessary," Hogan writes, but "I'd watched as the president downplayed the outbreak's severity and as the White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals. Eventually, it was clear that waiting around for the president to run the nation's response was hopeless."
Dr. Anthony Fauci and other federal health experts gave a dire, "unfiltered," and prescient briefing to Americans governors in early February, Hogan writes, and "it was jarring, the huge contrast between the experts' warnings and the president's public dismissals" He detailed things Trump did and said, and more importantly, the things he did not do.
"Governors always do the hard work, make the tough decisions and take the political heat," Hogan writes. "But an undertaking as large as a national testing program required Washington's help. We expected something more than constant heckling from the man who was supposed to be our leader. Trump soon disabused us of that expectation." Read the essay at The Washington Post. Peter Weber
Kanye West's alleged presidential campaign may or may not have already come to an end, but he's now set to actually appear on one state's ballot.
West, who claimed in a tweet earlier this month he was running for president in the 2020 election despite having not yet taken any steps toward doing so, will appear on the ballot in Oklahoma, USA Today reports. His representative paid the $35,000 fee and filed the paperwork required by the Wednesday deadline, according to The Associated Press.
"Kanye West is now qualified as an independent candidate for president of the United States in Oklahoma and will appear on the general election ballot," a Oklahoma State Election Board spokesperson said in a statement, per Fox News.
This is despite the fact that reports emerged this week suggesting West was exiting the race entirely, if he ever actually entered it. In a recent New York magazine report, Steve Kramer, who West had apparently hired to get him on the ballot in Florida and South Carolina, said, "He's out." Entertainment Tonight also quotes a source as saying, "Kanye isn't planning to run in the 2020 election after careful consideration," consideration that apparently wasn't taken prior to his tweet.
Still, West seemingly did recently file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, TMZ reports, although he hasn't yet filed the Statement of Candidacy form that actually "triggers candidacy status under federal campaign finance law," the report notes. Either way, by the time West had tweeted out his supposed plans to run for president, the deadline to appear on the November ballot had passed in multiple states, meaning West's grand plans to run the White House like Wakanda will probably have to wait another four years. Brendan Morrow
Brad Parscale, President Trump's campaign manager since February 2018, did not find out he was being replaced by his deputy, Bill Stepien, until right before the news became public Wednesday evening — hours earlier than planned, The New York Times reports. Parscale will stay on as senior adviser for data and digital operations, similar to the role he played in Trump's 2016 campaign, but it's not clear how much Trump's campaign shakeup will actually shake up the campaign.
"Trump is often described as his own campaign manager, and his political operation, which is overseen by Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and a senior White House adviser, has been tailored to his desires," the Times reports. In fact, according to several people involved in the campaign, "Kushner has served as the de facto campaign manager" throughout the 2020 re-election effort, and he was "a key figure in replacing" Parscale, whom he handpicked in 2016.
"Jared Kushner was the campaign manager yesterday, is the campaign manager today, and will be the campaign manager tomorrow," a source close to the White House told NBC News. "Brad took the bullet for Jared."
On the other hand, Parscale's ouster has been rumored for a while, thanks to his unusually high profile — including appearing in Trump's campaign ads — and newly lavish lifestyle. Trump is also dropping to double-digit deficits in national polls, and Parscale "suffered something of a mortal wound" after only 6,000 people showed up to Trump's Tulsa rally three weeks ago, an embarrassment "Trump could not let go of," the Times reports.
Parscale is close with Trump's adult children, though, and his company is the conduit to paying Eric Trump's wife and Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend. Several campaign aides emphasized to the Times that "Parscale was being asked to stay on, unlike others who have been let go from the Trump orbit." Peter Weber
The Supreme Court voted 5-4 early Thursday to clear the way for the execution of Wesley Ira Purkey, lifting two injunctions that had temporarily halted the second federal execution in 17 years. Purkey was convicted of the grisly rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl in 1998, and his lawyers had argued his dementia was so advanced now he "no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him." The same five conservative justices who had allowed the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee on Tuesday did not find that argument persuasive.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that "proceeding with Purkey's execution now, despite the grave questions and factual findings regarding his mental competency, casts a shroud of constitutional doubt over the most irrevocable of injuries." Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Stephen Breyer joined her dissent. Lee had been strapped to the execution gurney for several hours while the high court weighed his appeal, and when the Supreme Court gave the green light, he was quickly injected with pentobarbital. Purkey's execution will likely take place in a similarly expedited fashion. Peter Weber