Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an urgent plea Thursday to U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill, telling them that without a new tranche of funding to combat Russian aggression, Ukraine will lose the war.

The White House requested $24 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine earlier this year. But there is growing Republican concern about providing U.S. aid to Ukraine, combined with broader difficulties passing either a short-term continuing resolution or a full 2024 budget funding the U.S. government past a September 30 deadline.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer summed up the meeting with Zelenskyy, telling the members, “If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war.”

Later in a statement, Schumer emphasized the danger of not passing the supplemental funding request, saying, “It is very clear that if we were to have a government shutdown, or pass a CR without Ukrainian aid, the damage that would occur on Ukraine’s campaign would be devastating.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a major supporter of U.S. aid to Ukraine in the Senate, was tight-lipped afterwards, only telling reporters it was “a good meeting.”

On Wednesday, McConnell applauded the appointment of an inspector general for the oversight of Ukraine aid.

“Thanks in large part to the requirements Senate Republicans have attached to our aid since the beginning of Russia’s escalation, the United States has unprecedented visibility into how Ukraine is using American weapons,” McConnell said in a statement.

Zelenskyy also met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Thursday ahead of a Pentagon announcement of a new security package of more air defense and artillery capabilities for Ukraine.

Pentagon press secretary, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, told reporters Thursday that “everything is on schedule” with the delivery of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine and that if there is a government shutdown, F-16 training in the U.S. for Ukrainian pilots would still take place.

From the beginning of hostilities in February 2022 to May 2023, the U.S. has provided more than $76.8 billion in assistance, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The share of Americans who say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine has steadily increased since the start of the war in February 2022, according to a June 2023 Pew Research Center survey.

Just 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said the amount of U.S. aid to Ukraine was excessive but more than 44% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said the amount of aid was too high. One-third of all Americans told Pew that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a threat to U.S. interests.

On the House side of the U.S. Capitol, where concerns are growing in the Republican majority about continuing U.S. aid to Ukraine, the reception for Zelenskyy was far more muted. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the Ukrainian president behind closed doors, but the speaker’s office did not release any photographs of the meeting.

“It was a very candid, open, forward-looking discussion,” Jeffries said in his weekly press conference Thursday.

Jeffries said the war between Ukraine and Russia is “a struggle on the global stage between democracy and autocracy, between freedom and tyranny, between truth and propaganda, between good and evil.”

More-conservative members of the Republican majority have objected to passing the Ukraine supplemental request along with funding for the U.S. government.

In an opinion piece published earlier this week by news network Fox, Republican Representative Mike Waltz wrote that “while most Americans are sympathetic to Ukraine and understand that Russian President Vladimir Putin must be prevented from his goal of recreating the old Soviet Union, President Joe Biden has not been a good-faith partner. The Biden administration has neither explained the American objective in Ukraine nor his strategy to achieve it.”

Waltz went on to call for greater burden sharing of aid to Ukraine by European countries and said “the United States must invest its savings in its own security. It should match the dollar value of any aid it gives to Ukraine with securing our southern border.”

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the U.S. is in the top tier of countries providing aid to Ukraine, giving from 0.25% to 0.45% of its annual gross domestic product to aiding Ukraine, while Scandinavian countries such as Sweden provide slightly more at 0.75%.

But most Republicans recognize the need to include more aid.

“They need it and they’re going to get it,” Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters after Zelenskyy’s meeting Thursday morning with lawmakers.

“The majority support this. I know there’s some dissension on both sides, but as I said, war of attrition is not going to win. That’s what Putin wants because he wants to break the will of the American people and the Europeans. We can’t afford a war of attrition. We need a plan for victory.”

McCaul went on to say that lawmakers pressed Zelenskyy on several issues, including “accountability, speed of weapons [delivery] and a plan for victory.”

Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media magnate who created Fox News, is stepping down as leader of both Fox’s parent company and his News Corp. media holdings.

Fox said Thursday that Murdoch would become chairman emeritus of both companies. His son, Lachlan, will become News Corp. chairman and continue as chief executive officer of Fox Corp.

Lachlan Murdoch said that “we are grateful that he will serve as chairman emeritus and know he will continue to provide valued counsel to both companies.”

Besides Fox News, Murdoch started the Fox broadcast network, the first to successfully challenge the Big Three of ABC, CBS and NBC. He is owner of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

Murdoch is a force in the conservative world, where Fox News Channel has profoundly influenced television and the nation’s politics since its start in 1996.

Murdoch vowed in a letter to employees that he would remain engaged at Fox.

“In my new role, I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas, Murdoch wrote. “Our companies are communities, and I will be an active member of our community. I will be watching our broadcasts with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest.”

There was no immediate word on why Murdoch’s announcement came now. Ironically, it is the week author and Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff is publishing a book, “The End of Fox News,” speculating on what will happen to the network when the patriarch is gone.
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Infighting among Republicans in the House of Representatives over spending bills has brought the United States to within 10 days of a government shutdown, creating uncertainty among the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors who would be affected.

Unless Congress is able to pass the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government — or can agree on a stopgap measure providing temporary funding — the authority of many federal agencies to spend money will expire at midnight on September 30.

At the heart of the dispute is the decision by some of the most right-wing members of the House to repudiate an agreement that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated earlier this year with President Joe Biden to avoid a default on the nation’s debt. A handful of House Republicans want to cut spending below the amount agreed to in that deal.

They are demanding significant cuts to domestic spending, as well as to the aid that the U.S. has been providing to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. Because McCarthy’s party has control of the House by only a handful of votes, defections by even a few members of his party mean that he does not have the majority needed to pass the appropriations measures.

McCarthy in a bind

It would be possible for McCarthy to bring appropriations bills to the floor and pass them with support from House Democrats, but the hard-right element of his caucus would regard that as a betrayal, possibly leading them to call for a vote to strip McCarthy of the speakership.

As part of the deal that secured his election as speaker, McCarthy agreed to be subject to a rule under which a single member of the House can force a vote on a motion to strip him of the job.

Arriving at the Capitol on Wednesday, McCarthy signaled to reporters that he has not given up hope of reaching a deal to avoid a shutdown.

“It’s not September 30 — the game is not over,” he said.

What a shutdown means

The term “government shutdown” is somewhat misleading, because in the event of a funding gap, much of the federal government will continue to operate. Services deemed essential to public safety and the national defense will not lapse. Additionally, government activities funded by multiyear appropriations will be able to continue. This includes, for example, many of the infrastructure projects funded by legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act.

However, even though much of the government would continue to operate, federal workers would not be paid. That includes members of the military. A law passed after the most recent serious shutdown codified the practice of paying government employees back for their lost wages once a shutdown ends. However, experience has shown that forcing federal employees to work without receiving paychecks can be extremely disruptive to their personal economic well-being.

Members of Congress would remain on the job, as would their essential support staff, but many nonessential employees of Congress would be furloughed, along with many of the employees of government contractors that help keep Capitol Hill functioning. Unlike federal employees, the employees of contractors are not guaranteed to receive pay lost during a shutdown.

The federal court system would continue to operate for at least a while because it would be possible to draw on previously appropriated funds and ongoing fee income, and to reallocate money earmarked for things like nonessential travel.

 

Off-ramp possible

Government shutdowns have occurred multiple times since the 1980s, but most of them have been short, affecting one business day or less. Four have lasted longer than a single business day, the most recent being in 2018-19 when the government was partly shut down for 35 days. This shutdown was partial because several appropriations bills had been passed.

Congress has also walked to the brink of a shutdown many times, only to avoid it with a stopgap funding measure known as a continuing resolution or a last-minute spending deal.

Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told VOA that even short and narrowly averted shutdowns have an appreciable impact on the functioning of the federal government because resources have to be reallocated to prepare for the possibility of ceasing operations.

“It’s not like flipping a switch,” Stier said. “Everybody knows, if they’re involved in a complicated operation, to close it down not only is difficult, but starting it back up is incredibly difficult and costly, too. So a one-day shutdown has real cost and consequences, even though federal employees will do everything they can to ensure that the harm is not felt by the public.”

‘Increasingly painful’

Stier said that while the public might not notice a brief shutdown, when government operations cease for a longer time, their absence becomes increasingly obvious.

Passport applications are not processed. Small Business Administration loans are not made. Children cannot be enrolled in the federal Head Start program. These and many other unavailable services begin to take a toll on individuals and the broader U.S. economy.

“It becomes an increasingly painful and costly proposition,” he said. “In the last instance, we saw 35 days of a shutdown. The estimate was that billions of dollars were lost in the economy, and I believe that the costs were probably underestimated.”

Federal workers stressed

The federal workers who would be most directly affected by a government shutdown are frustrated with Congress, said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

Kelley told VOA that, as with the broader American public, many federal employees live paycheck to paycheck and would suffer if they were suddenly left unpaid.

“Our members are frustrated. They are nervous. They are wondering and worried about, ‘OK, how am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to make sure my family is fed?’” Kelley said.

“Federal workers go to work every single day and do their job. We need Congress to do their job,” Kelley said. “Because a government shutdown will impact not just federal employees, but our communities. We’re asking Congress to get this job done.”

Ukraine funding

Congress briefly considered a continuing resolution on Tuesday, before it was pulled from the floor out of concern that it lacked the votes to pass. The resolution did not include supplemental funding for Ukraine that the Biden administration has requested.

While a majority of members of Congress support continued U.S. aid for Ukraine, a small number of mostly Republican lawmakers are reluctant to send more money to Kyiv, making the supplemental funding a complicating factor in the discussion of the spending bill.

Several House Republicans who support continued aid for Ukraine told VOA on Wednesday that it would be necessary to consider Ukraine funding as a standalone matter, not as part of the discussion of how to fund the government.

“We need to figure out our bigger issue first with funding our own Defense Department and funding other agencies, and then we can talk about a supplemental,” said Republican Mike Gallagher.

“Putting Ukraine funds in a [continuing resolution], I don’t think that’s the right way to go. We’re not going to get it passed,” said Republican Rich McCormick. “I think it’s a separate issue that needs to be addressed by adults. We need to have a very complex conversation about the history of Ukraine, where the money has already gone, and the success [Ukraine has] already had, going against the third-largest army in the world.”

Kateryna Lisunova, VOA Ukrainian Service congressional correspondent,  contributed to this report.
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 The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, putting him in place to succeed Gen. Mark Milley when he retires at the end of the month.

Brown’s confirmation on an 83-11 vote, months after President Joe Biden nominated him for the post, comes as Democrats try to maneuver around holds placed on hundreds of nominations by Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville over the Pentagon’s abortion policy. The Senate is also expected to confirm Gen. Randy George to be Army Chief of Staff and Gen. Eric Smith as commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps this week.

Tuberville has been blocking the Senate from the routine process of approving military nominations in groups, frustrating Democrats who had said they would not go through the time-consuming process of bringing up individual nominations for a vote. More than 300 nominees are stalled amid Tuberville’s blockade and confirming them one-by-one would take months.

But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, reversed course on Wednesday and moved to force votes on Brown, George and Smith.

“Senator Tuberville is forcing us to face his obstruction head on,” Schumer said. “I want to make clear to my Republican colleagues — this cannot continue.”

Tuberville did not object to the confirmation votes, saying he will maintain his holds but is fine with bringing up nominations individually for roll call votes.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that Brown’s confirmation, along with expected votes on Smith and George, is positive news. But “we should have never been in this position,” he said.

“While good for these three officers, it doesn’t fix the problem or provide a path forward for the 316 other general and flag officers that are held up by this ridiculous hold,” Kirby told reporters.

Brown, a career fighter pilot, was the Air Force’s first Black commander of the Pacific Air Forces and most recently its first Black chief of staff, making him the first African American to lead any of the military branches. His confirmation will also mark the first time the Pentagon’s top two posts were held by African Americans, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as the top civilian leader.

Brown, 60, replaces Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley, who is retiring after four decades in military service. Milley’s four-year term as chairman ends on Sept. 30.

Tuberville said on Wednesday that he will continue to hold up the other nominations unless the Pentagon ends its policy of paying for travel when a service member has to go out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care. The Biden administration instituted the policy after the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion and some states have limited or banned the procedure.

“Let’s do one at a time or change the policy back,” Tuberville said after Schumer put the three nominations up for a vote. “Let’s vote on it.”

The votes come as a host of military officers have spoken out about the damage of the delays for service members. While Tuberville’s holds are focused on all general and flag officers, they carry career impacts on the military’s younger rising officers. Until each general or admiral is confirmed, it blocks an opportunity for a more junior officer to rise.

That affects pay, retirement, lifestyle and future assignments — and in some fields where the private sector will pay more, it becomes harder to convince those highly trained young leaders to stay.

The blockade has frustrated members on both sides of the aisle, and it is still unclear how the larger standoff will be resolved. Schumer did not say if he will put additional nominations on the floor.
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The Federal Reserve left its key interest rate unchanged Wednesday for the second time in its past three meetings, a sign that it’s moderating its fight against inflation as price pressures have eased. But Fed officials also signaled that they expect to raise rates once more this year.

Consumer inflation has dropped from a year-over-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.7%. Yet it’s still well above the Fed’s 2% target, and its policymakers made clear Wednesday that they aren’t close to declaring victory over the worst bout of inflation in 40 years. The Fed’s latest decision left its benchmark rate at about 5.4%, the result of 11 rate hikes it unleashed beginning in March 2022.

The Fed’s hikes have significantly raised the costs of consumer and business loans. In fine-tuning its rate policies, the central bank is trying to guide the U.S. economy toward a tricky “soft landing” of cooling inflation without triggering a deep recession.

The Fed’s decisions Wednesday underscored that even while its policymakers approach a peak in their benchmark rate, they intend to keep it at or near its high for a prolonged period. Besides forecasting another hike by year’s end, Fed officials now envision keeping rates high deep into 2024.

They expect to cut interest rates just twice next year, fewer than the four rate cuts they had predicted in June. They predict that their key short-term rate will still be 5.1% at the end of 2024 — higher than it was from the 2008-2009 Great Recession until May of this year.

The policymakers’ inclination to keep rates high for an extended period suggests that they remain concerned that inflation might not be falling fast enough toward their 2% target. The job market and the economy have remained resilient, confounding expectations that the Fed’s series of hikes would cause widespread layoffs and a recession.

“The process of getting inflation sustainably down to 2% has a long way to go,” Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference. “We’ve seen progress, and we welcome that, but we need to see more progress” before concluding that it’s appropriate to end the rate hikes.

At the same time, Powell said he feels confident that the end of the rate-hiking cycle is near: “We’re fairly close, we think, to where we need to get.”

Treasury yields moved sharply higher Wednesday after the Fed issued a statement after its latest policy meeting and updated its economic projections. The yield on the two-year Treasury note, which tends to track expectations of future Fed actions, rose from 5.04% to 5.11%.

In their new quarterly projections, the policymakers estimate that the economy will grow faster this year and next year than they had previously envisioned. They now foresee growth reaching 2.1% this year, up from a 1% forecast in June, and 1.5% next year, up from their previous 1.1% forecast.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices and is considered a good predictor of future trends, is now expected to fall to 3.7% by year’s end, better than the 3.9% forecast in June. Core inflation, under the Fed’s preferred measure, is now 4.2%.

The approach to rate increases the Fed is now taking reflects an awareness among the officials that the risks to the economy of raising rates too high is growing. Previously, they had focused more on the risks of not doing enough to slow inflation.

In generating sharply higher interest rates throughout the economy, the Fed has sought to slow borrowing — for houses, cars, home renovations, business investment and the like — to help ease spending, moderate the pace of growth and curb inflation.

Though clear progress on inflation has been achieved, gas prices have lurched higher again, reaching a national average of $3.88 a gallon as of Tuesday. Oil prices have surged more than 12% in just the past month.

And the economy is still expanding at a solid pace as Americans, buoyed by steady job growth and pay raises, have kept spending. Both trends could keep inflation and the Fed’s interest rates high enough and long enough to weaken household and corporate spending and the economy as a whole.

While overall inflation has declined, the costs of some services — from auto insurance and car repairs to veterinary services and hair salons — are still climbing faster than they were before the pandemic. Still, most recent data is pointing in the direction the Fed wants to see: Inflation in June and July, excluding volatile food and energy prices, posted its two lowest monthly readings in nearly two years.
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Critics warn decorum is falling apart at the seams in the U.S. Senate after the Democratic leadership changed the rules to end the requirement of wearing a jacket and tie in the tradition-bound chamber.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday told the Senate Sergeant at Arms that the chamber’s unwritten dress code need no longer be enforced.

The relaxed attire rule applies to all of the chamber’s lawmakers, but the switch was seen as a special deal for Democratic Senator John Fetterman, whose love of shorts and hoodies has turned dress-down Friday into dress-down every day.

Fetterman’s dress style, or perhaps lack of style, became his signature on the campaign trail before entering the Senate this year. He also gained sympathy from many after he underwent treatment for clinical depression soon after taking office.

Schumer said senators will be able to wear what they want, even if “I will continue to wear a suit.”

But the new rules, first reported by Axios, were met with mockery on the right.

Republican Susan Collins joked to NBC that she planned to “wear a bikini.”

“I think there is a certain dignity that we should be maintaining in the Senate, and to do away with the dress code, to me, debases the institution,” she said.

Senator Bill Hagerty, a Republican, told Fox Business that the move was “just another step in the movement by the Democrats to transform America, to take us to a place that is much less respectful than we historically have been.”

Lawmakers who dropped in to vote in gym clothes or other unusual attire had previously been able to circumvent the rules by keeping one foot in the adjacent cloakroom, according to U.S. media.

Fetterman said he may “dress like a slob,” but the sartorial sniping meant “the right have been losing their mind.”

Both the House and Senate have in recent years relaxed rules to allow women to wear sleeveless dresses. And in 2019, the House green-lighted religious headwear to allow for the hijab worn by Representative Ilhan Omar.
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At the U.N. General Assembly in New York, U.S. President Joe Biden sought to convince world leaders that his vision of American leadership and multilateral approach to foreign policy will help solve the world’s most pressing problems. He again denounced Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine as a violation of a core tenet of the U.N. Charter. VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report from New York.
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House Republicans plan to hold their first hearing next week in their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

The hearing — scheduled for Sept. 28 — is expected to focus on “constitutional and legal questions” that surround the allegations of Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s overseas businesses, according to a spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee.

Republicans — led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — have contended in recent weeks that Biden’s actions from his time as vice president show a “culture of corruption” and that his son used the “Biden brand” to advance his business with foreign clients.

The spokesperson also said Republican Representative James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of Oversight, plans to issue subpoenas for the personal and business bank records of Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden “as early as this week.” McCarthy appointed Comer to lead the inquiry in coordination with Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Ways & Means Chairman Jason Smith.

The White House has called the effort by House Republicans in the midst of the presidential campaign “extreme politics at its worst.”

“Staging a political stunt hearing in the waning days before they may shut down the government reveals their true priorities: To them, baseless personal attacks on President Biden are more important than preventing a government shutdown and the pain it would inflict on American families,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday.

McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry last week after facing mounting pressure from the far-right House members to take action against Biden or risk being ousted from his leadership job. At the same time, the speaker is struggling to pass legislation needed to avoid a federal government shutdown at the end of the month.

The California lawmaker launched the inquiry without a House vote, and it’s unclear if he would have enough support to approve it from his slim GOP majority. Some lawmakers have criticized the evidence so far as not reaching the Constitution’s bar of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

An inquiry is a step closer to an impeachment of the president, a constitutional tool which until recently was rare in Congress.

But McCarthy and other Republicans have been facing months of direct challenges from Trump — who is now the Republican front-runner to challenge Biden in next year’s election — to move forward with proceedings against his opponent. The action also is seen as an effort to distract attention from the indicted former president’s legal challenges and turn a negative spotlight on Biden.

The impeachment inquiry is expected to build upon the work that Comer and others have done since gaining the House majority in January. There are several investigative lanes but Comer has been tasked with following the money that went through Biden’s son’s and brother’s various businesses accounts.

The chairman has claimed repeatedly that the Biden family engaged in an influence-peddling scheme but has yet to directly tie any of that to the president.

Republicans have focused much attention on an unverified tip to the FBI that alleged a bribery scheme involving Biden when he was vice president.

The bribery claim, which emerged in 2019 and was part of Trump’s first impeachment, relates to the allegation that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor in order to stop an investigation into Burisma, the oil and gas company where Hunter Biden was on the board.

Democrats have countered that the Justice Department investigated the Burisma claim when Trump was president and closed the matter after eight months, finding insufficient evidence to pursue it further. Other countries were also pushing for the firing of the Ukrainian official, viewing him as corrupt. And a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s has testified to Congress that the bribery allegation is untrue.
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Le Diner en Blanc – or ‘dinner in white’ – has gone global since its inception in Paris about three decades ago. In 2014, Washington launched its own version of the visually striking event, and since then some 25,000 people have attended. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.
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World leaders get their chance to address the U.N. General Assembly beginning Tuesday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President Joe Biden among the speakers at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Zelenskyy is making his first appearance at the annual meeting since Russia invaded his country in early 2022.

“For us it’s very important that all our words, all our messages will be heard by our partners,” Zelenskyy told reporters Tuesday as he visited a New York hospital where Ukrainian soldiers have been treated for amputations.

Zelenskyy said ahead of his speech that Ukraine would put forth a proposal “on how to fortify the principle of territorial integrity and improve the U.N.’s capacity to thwart and halt aggression.”

He is due to follow his speech by attending a Wednesday session of the U.N. Security Council about the situation in Ukraine. Russia is one of the five veto-holding permanent members of the council.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opens Tuesday’s addresses. Also scheduled to speak Tuesday are Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Other speakers include the presidents of Poland, Cuba, South Africa, Argentina, Nigeria and Senegal.

Tuesday’s agenda also features the second day of talks focusing on how to achieve a set of worldwide development goals

Guterres said Monday that only 15% of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are on track to be reached by 2030.

“Instead of leaving no one behind, we risk leaving the SDGs behind. … The SDGs need a global rescue plan,” Guterres said.

He said the summit is “the moment for governments to come to the table with concrete plans and proposals to accelerate progress.”

The goals include ending poverty, ending hunger, ensuring access to affordable energy, taking urgent action to combat climate change and promoting gender equality.

They were set in 2015 with the aim of being achieved by 2030. Halfway to that marker, progress is slow, and in some instances is even going backward.

The U.N. gathering will also spotlight climate change with the U.N.’s Climate Action Summit Wednesday. Guterres will host the event, which aims to reverse backsliding on Paris climate agreement goals.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Amid concerns that their Sustainable Development Goals aren’t on track, world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Monday adopted a political declaration that brings hope to developing countries. Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the details from the United Nations.
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At the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva Monday, the legal team for jailed American journalist Evan Gershkovich called on member states to prioritize his case.

Speaking to the U.N.’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, the lawyers and advocacy group Article 19 said that Gershkovich’s “wrongful detention violates his human rights under international law.”

The statement comes one day before a hearing scheduled in Moscow on Tuesday on Gershkovich’s appeal against the extension of his pretrial detention.

The Wall Street Journal reporter’s original pretrial detention was scheduled to expire on May 29 but has since been extended until November 30.

Ahead of that hearing, the U.S. ambassador to Russia visited Gershkovich in jail last Friday, marking the latest in what have been infrequent consular visits since he was detained on espionage charges in March.

The recent consular visit by Ambassador Lynne Tracy is only the fourth such visit granted since Gershkovich’s arrest nearly six months ago.

In a Friday post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the U.S. Embassy in Russia said, “He remains strong and is keeping up with the news —including his parents’ appearance at the UN this week.”

On September 13, Gershkovich’s mother, father and sister joined U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a press conference, where she called on Moscow to immediately release the journalist.

Thomas-Greenfield urged the international community and U.N. member states to “stand with us, to stand on the side of justice, and to condemn Russia’s flagrant violations of international law.”

During the press conference, Gershkovich’s family members urged global leaders to prioritize Gershkovich’s plight during the U.N. General Assembly, which is taking place this week in New York.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

During the comments at U.N. headquarters on Monday, Article 19 and lawyers representing the Journal urged states to “bring Evan home and condemn Russia for attacking and jailing journalists for doing their jobs.”

The statement was delivered during the interactive dialogue with the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention at the 54th Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“Evan’s wrongful detention violates his human rights under international law, is an affront to the free press, and is designed to stop journalists from exercising their right of free expression,” the statement said. “Each day that Russia continues to wrongfully detain Evan is another day that Russia keeps him from writing the insightful, enlightening and independent journalism that has been the hallmark of his career.”
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