Author: Bill Henery
Bill Henery
Bill Henery is a veteran political journalist, author, and respected columnist at The NewYorkBudgets. With a career that began in 1987, Henery has spent decades covering the shifting landscape of American politics. He is best known for his in-depth reporting on major political events, including the highly contested 2000 U.S. Election, and has become a trusted voice in political journalism.
For President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, the meeting in the Oval Office was meant to be a chance to hit the reset button. He did everything to get the mood right. He got President Trump to giggle with a joke about golf. He offered him a book. And he kept the compliments flowing, thanking Mr. Trump for providing South Africa with respirators during the Covid-19 pandemic. “It really touched my heart,” Mr. Ramaphosa said. In the build up to Mr. Ramaphosa’s meeting in the White House on Wednesday, South African officials stressed that they would not focus on Mr.…
Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was diagnosed on Friday with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, his office said in a statement on Sunday. The diagnosis came after Mr. Biden reported urinary symptoms, which led doctors to find a “small nodule” on his prostate. Mr. Biden’s cancer is “characterized by a Gleason score of 9” with “metastasis to the bone,” the statement said. The Gleason score is used to describe how prostate cancers look under a microscope; 9 and 10 are the most aggressive. The cancer is Stage 4, which means it has spread. “While this represents…
A Russian drone attack killed at least nine people on Saturday after hitting a shuttle bus carrying civilians in the Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine, according to local residents and Ukrainian authorities. The deadly strike came hours after Ukrainian and Russian officials sat down face to face for the first time in more than three years in Istanbul. At the brief meeting, the two sides agreed on a deal to swap 1,000 prisoners each. But the talks and the frenetic swirl of diplomatic activity leading up to them did nothing to bring the two sides closer to negotiating an end to the…
In the diplomatic maneuvering over the war in Ukraine, many Ukrainians and their European allies have accused President Trump of offering the Kremlin too many concessions to secure a quick peace deal. Things look very different from Russia’s bunkers and military hospitals. To many Russian soldiers and their nationalist supporters, the peace proposals from Washington amount to far too little. In interviews, 11 Russian soldiers who are fighting or have fought in Ukraine expressed deep skepticism of diplomatic efforts that on Friday produced the first direct peace talks in three years, but were brief and yielded little. Speaking by telephone, the soldiers said they…
Qatar, a nation roughly the size of Connecticut with a population smaller than Brooklyn’s, has leveraged its immense natural gas wealth to secure outsize influence in Washington and across the American academic and defense establishment. Over the past two decades, the Gulf monarchy has quietly spent billions of dollars on U.S. military cooperation, educational partnerships, and lobbying efforts—building a powerful soft power machine that has reshaped its image from regional outlier to indispensable partner. At the core of Qatar’s U.S. influence strategy is Al Udeid Air Base, a sprawling American military installation outside Doha that hosts over 10,000 U.S. troops…
Democrats are sounding the alarm and demanding answers on potential conflicts of interest in the Trump family’s business dealings with a pardon-seeking former cryptocurrency CEO. Trump’s trip to the Middle East has highlighted the various foreign investments Trump and his family have received since Trump’s return to the White House, and Democrats are eager to highlight what seems like obvious corruption. Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and several other senators sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding answers about the Trump family’s business affiliations with Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former CEO of Binance,…
You may remember Tony Hinchcliffe as the stand-up comedian who, last fall, maligned the island of Puerto Rico in an inflammatory set during a rally in New York for the Trump presidential campaign. Despite the criticism for those comments, Mr. Hinchcliffe landed a Netflix deal in March for three specials based on his long-running live comedy podcast, “Kill Tony.” That show is ranked modestly at No. 51 on Spotify and No. 178 on Apple Podcasts’ top charts, which track the most popular podcasts in the United States based on a combination of various factors: streams, downloads, subscribers and other mystery metrics. Yet…
A candidate for Oregon’s state legislature—who was later elected to represent southwest Portland and East Beaverton—had her team hire a designer for her campaign website last year. According to a staff member familiar with the work, the web developer was hired from freelance platform Upwork after a phone interview. There were no red flags during the interview process, nor did the developer indicate that there would be anyone else working on the website, the staffer said. The contract started May 10, the site went live around mid-July, and the contract ended on August 27. The budgeted cost was $2,000. However,…
For weeks, wealthy individuals have been scooping up the Trump family’s cryptocurrency in hopes of amassing enough to qualify for one of 220 seats at a dinner with President Donald Trump himself. In the words of Trump’s own website: “The competition is fierce. Own $TRUMP—or watch from the sidelines.” Now, the leaderboard is final and the winners from around the world are set to descend on Washington, D.C., to rub shoulders with the world’s most powerful man. So, who is going? While the leaderboard is public, the identity of each winner—obscured by pseudonymous blockchain addresses—is not. But an analysis by Fortune revealed…
After nearly seven months in captivity, U.S.-Israeli dual national Edan Alexander was released from Hamas custody on Monday, marking the final release of a living American hostage held in Gaza. His freedom, brokered through a rare multi-party diplomatic channel led by former President Donald Trump, is being hailed in Washington as a major humanitarian victory—but has drawn sharply mixed reactions across the Israeli political spectrum. The 20-year-old New Jersey native, who was serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) when he was captured during Hamas’s October 7, 2024, cross-border assault, was handed over to Red Crescent representatives near the Rafah…