A former CNN anchor and a retired chemistry professor are facing off in a Democratic primary to pick a challenger to U.S. Rep. Nick LaLota in an eastern Long Island congressional district that has been in Republican hands for a decade.
John Avlon, who was a senior political analyst at CNN, is running in Tuesday's election against Nancy Goroff, a professor emeritus at Stony Brook University. She was the Democratic candidate in the district in 2020, but lost by about 10 percentage points.
Democrats have made the suburban New York City district a priority this year in their bid to reclaim a majority in the House of Representatives. It's one of several districts in the reliably Democratic states of New York and California that are seen as crucial to their chances.
The race could hinge on personality and voters' views about which candidate gives Democrats the best chance to win. Their positions on policy matters are so similar that a local newspaper, The East Hampton Star, headlined its story about a recent debate between them: “Avlon and Goroff Debate, Largely Agree.”
Many Democrats, including local officials and incumbent members of Congress, have lined up behind Avlon as a fresh face who might have a better chance of toppling LaLota, the Republican incumbent.
“Republicans didn’t think they’d have to fight in this district,” Avlon said in an interview. “They didn’t think they’d have a real fight on their hands and now they do.”
But Goroff isn't rolling over. She loaned her own campaign $1.2 million, according to federal records, Her allies have also sought to attack Avlon for his early career job as a speechwriter in the office of Rudy Giuliani when he was the mayor of New York City.
She said she's confident a Democrat can win in the district, which stretches from the sandy Hamptons on the eastern tip of Long Island more than 80 miles westward to the outer ring of commuter suburbs east of New York City.
“I think it’s very much purple and we are working to make sure that in this district, we activate people who want to see someone who’s working hard," Goroff said in an interview. "Whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, they’re looking for someone who is actually willing to do the work."
The question looming after the primary is whether a Democrat can retake the seat from a Republican.
President Joe Biden won the district in 2020 by a very small margin, but Democratic state lawmakers changed its borders slightly earlier this year to make it slightly more Republican, potentially giving other Democrats on the island a better chance at winning their races.
Since losing her election bid in 2020 to then U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, Goroff helped start an advocacy group that organizes around politically fraught school board races. Her campaign says she successfully helped defeat 20 right-wing candidates.
Avlon is best known for his time as a CNN personality, but he also worked as an editor at The Daily Beast, an online news site. He also helped create the centrist political group No Labels and authored books on political polarization.
Both Democrats favor protecting abortion rights and warn against what a federal government controlled by Republicans could do to curtail women's reproductive rights more broadly. Their criticisms of LaLota are similar, characterizing the freshman congressman as too deferential to Donald Trump and more interested in political stardom than getting legislation across the line.
Both candidates point to a host of explanations for why Republicans have thrived in recent elections on Long Island, which has been receptive to conservative candidates in recent elections. Their explanations include lagging Democratic turnout, the strength of particular candidates and voter fears about crime in New York City spilling over into the suburbs.
In a statement, LaLota said, “While they fight to see who can appease the far left the most, I’m focused on putting results over rhetoric and fighting for the community I grew up in.”
One exception to the Republicans' success was the recent special election in a congressional district once represented by George Santos that includes parts of the New York City borough of Queens and northern Long Island. In that race, Democrat Tom Suozzi, an established political figure in the area, defeated a lesser-known Republican, Mazi Pilip. He did so in part by running a centrist campaign that Democrats hope to replicate in other suburban races in the fall.
Avlon hopes to duplicate that winning formula. He often talks about how Democrats need to pull in moderates and independent voters, as well as some Republicans who have grown dissatisfied with the GOP under Trump.
“There's a reason I'm running as a common sense Democrat,” he said. “In any swing district the candidate and the party who seizes the center will win.”
Ed Cox, chairman of the New York Republican Party, said it's going to be difficult for a Democrat to win on the island this year, especially in this district, given its shift to the GOP over the last decade and its more Republican-friendly configuration after redistricting.
“Long Island is once again a Republican bastion,” he said.
HOLD — This undated photo, provided by Goroff for Congress, June 10, 2024, shows Nancy Goroff, a Democrat candidate for Congress in New York's District 1. (Courtesy Goroff for Congress via AP)
FILE — John Avlon attends The Hollywood Reporter's annual Most Powerful People in Media cocktail reception, at The Pool, April 11, 2019, in New York. Avlon is the incumbent Democrat candidate for Congress in New York's District 1. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
Families bid a tearful goodbye as 21 critically ill children were set to exit Gaza for treatment abroad on Thursday. It’s the first medical evacuation since the territory’s sole travel crossing shut down in early May after Israeli forces captured it, Palestinian officials say.
The kids and their adult escorts left Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis bound for the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing with Israel. It was not clear where they would receive treatment.
Kamela Abukweik burst into tears after her son got on the bus heading to the crossing with her mother. Neither she nor her husband were cleared to leave.
“He has tumors spread all over his body and we don’t know what the reason is. And he constantly has a fever,” she said. “I still don’t know where he is going.”
The nearly nine-month Israel-Hamas war has devastated Gaza’s health sector and forced most of its hospitals to shut down. Dr. Mohammed Zaqout, the head of Gaza’s hospitals, said over 25,000 patients require treatment abroad, including some 980 children with cancer, a quarter of whom need “urgent and immediate evacuation.”
International criticism is growing over Israel’s campaign against Hamas as Palestinians face severe and widespread hunger. The eight-month war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and basic goods to Gaza, and people there are now totally dependent on aid. The top United Nations court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,600 people in Gaza, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Currently:
— Gunfire, lawlessness and gang-like looters are preventing aid distribution in Gaza, an official says.
— A Palestinian was shot, beaten and tied to an Israeli army jeep. The army says he posed no threat.
— The U.S. military shows reporters the pier project in Gaza as it takes another stab at aid delivery.
— Ship attacked in Red Sea in latest maritime assault likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
— Man who police say urged ‘Zionists’ to get off NYC subway train faces criminal charge.
— Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s the latest:
UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. Security Council is again demanding that Yemen’s Houthi rebels halt all attacks on ships in the region and is calling for the conflicts disrupting maritime security to be addressed — without naming the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza.
The resolution, which also extends the requirement that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres report monthly on Houthi attacks, was approved Thursday by a vote of 12-0 with Russia, China and Algeria abstaining.
It condemns the Houthis’ ongoing attacks, which the rebels say are aimed at pressuring Israel to end the war in Gaza, and emphasizes the need to address its root causes – “including the conflicts contributing to regional tensions and the disruption to maritime security in order to ensure a prompt, efficient and effective response.”
The Iranian-backed Houthis have targeted more than 60 vessels mainly in the Red Sea by firing missiles and drones. Their campaign has killed four sailors, seized one vessel and sank two since November.
A U.S.-led airstrike campaign has targeted the Houthis since January, with a series of strikes on May 30 killing at least 16 people and wounding 42 others, the rebels say.
The U.N. resolution “urges caution and restraint to avoid further escalation of the situation in the Red Sea and the broader region.” It also encourages all parties to pursue diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the situation.
The resolution is a follow-up to one adopted Jan. 10 that condemned and demanded an immediate halt to Houthi attacks. The earlier resolution's requirement for the secretary-general to report monthly to the council on the attacks expires on July 1.
Speaking on behalf of the United States and Japan who sponsored Wednesday’s resolution, U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told reporters after the vote that the measure underscores “the importance of the exercise of navigational rights and freedoms of vessels of all states in the Red Sea” and demands the Houthis immediately halt their attacks.
“These attacks threaten international peace and security with negative implications for global commerce and flows of humanitarian assistance,” he said.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Anna Evstigneeva said Moscow supports the safety of navigation in the waters adjacent to Yemen including the Red Sea, but she accused the West of using the January resolution to justify its attacks on the Houthis and said the new resolution included similar provisions.
She stressed that the January resolution “cannot legitimize either the aggressive actions of the U.S. so-called coalition and that of their satellites in the Red Sea, or their missile strikes and bombardments targeting the territories of sovereign countries.”
“We urge all participants in the coalition to immediately halt illegal attacks and to transition to political and diplomatic means to reduce tensions in the waters adjacent to Yemen,” Evstigneeva said.
BEIRUT — Israel’s military says it has killed a Hezbollah member who was involved in firing explosive drones into Israel.
The military posted a video of Thursday’s drone strike that killed the Hezbollah member while riding a motorcycle in the village of Sohmor in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Hezbollah earlier said one of its members, Ali Ahmad Alaeddine, was killed adding that his funeral will be held on Friday in Yohmor.
The Lebanon-Israel border has been witnessing almost daily exchanges of fire since the Israel-Hamas war began in early October. Hezbollah says it will only stop fighting when Israel’s ends its offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 400 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah and other militants, but also over 80 civilians and non-combatants. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed by strikes launched from Lebanon.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Twenty-one critically ill children were set to exit Gaza on Thursday in the first medical evacuation since the territory’s sole travel crossing was shut down in early May, Palestinian officials said.
The nearly nine-month Israel-Hamas war has devastated Gaza’s health sector and forced most of its hospitals to shut down.
Family members bid a tearful goodbye to the children as they and their escorts left the Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis bound for the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing with Israel. It was not clear where they would receive treatment. The Israeli military body that coordinates civilian affairs in Gaza did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a press conference at Nasser Hospital on Thursday, Dr. Mohammed Zaqout, the head of Gaza’s hospitals, said the evacuation of the 21 children was being done in coordination with the World Heath Organization and three American charities.
Zaqout said over 25,000 patients in Gaza require treatment abroad, including some 980 children with cancer, a quarter of whom need “urgent and immediate evacuation.”
He said the cases included in Thursday’s evacuation are “a drop in the ocean” and that the complicated route through Kerem Shalom and into Egypt cannot serve as an alternative to the Rafah crossing.
The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, the only one available for people to travel in or out, shut down after Israeli forces captured it during their operation in the city early last month. Egypt has refused to reopen its side of the crossing until the Gaza side is returned to Palestinian control.
Six of the children were transferred to the Nasser Hospital from Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City earlier this week. Five have malignant cases of cancer and one suffers from metabolic syndrome. That evacuation was organized by the World Health Organization, which could not immediately be reached for comment.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has ordered new evacuations from the Gaza City neighborhoods that were heavily bombed and largely emptied early in the war. The latest orders apply to Shijaiyah and other neighborhoods where residents reported heavy bombing on Thursday.
First responders with Gaza’s Civil Defense, which is part of the Hamas-run government, said airstrikes hit five homes, killing at least three people and wounding another six. It said rescuers were still digging through the rubble for survivors.
Gaza City was heavily bombed in the opening weeks of the war, which began with Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack into Israel. Israel ordered the evacuation of all of northern Gaza, including the territory’s largest city, later that month. Hundreds of thousands of people have remained in the north, even as Israeli troops have surrounded and largely isolated it.
Shijaiyah residents in a messaging group shared video showing large numbers of people fleeing the neighborhood on foot with their belongings in their arms. They said several families were isolated by the fighting.
There was no immediate word from Gaza’s Health Ministry, which tracks casualties from the conflict.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A ship traveling through the Red Sea on Thursday reported being hit in an attack likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a private security firm said, the latest in the campaign targeting shipping over the Israel-Hamas war.
The ship issued a radio call off the coast of the rebel-held port city of Hodeida, saying it had been struck, the private security firm Ambrey said. A warship in the area was responding to the attack, Ambrey added.
It wasn’t clear if anyone was hurt or if the ship was damaged in the assault on the vessel. Neither the British nor U.S. militaries immediately reported the attack.
The Houthis did not immediately claim the attack. However, it can take hours or even days for them to acknowledge their assaults.
TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military says a soldier was killed and 16 others were wounded during a military operation in the West Bank overnight. It said Thursday that an explosive device detonated in the area of the northern city of Jenin, which has seen frequent raids and gunbattles with militants in recent years.
There were no immediate reports of Palestinian casualties. Israel says it has arrested over 4,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war in Gaza, including around 1,750 suspected of being Hamas members.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says over 550 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the latest Israel-Hamas war. Most have been killed during Israeli raids and violent protests, although the dead also include innocent bystanders and Palestinians killed in attacks by Jewish settlers. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has released photos that it says show a staffer with the aid group Doctors Without Borders wearing military fatigues at a gathering of Gaza militants.
The military says that Fadi al-Wadiya, who was killed in an airstrike earlier this week, was a “significant operative” in the Islamic Jihad group and was involved in its rocket program.
Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, did not respond to a request for comment on the photos, which were released late Wednesday. The aid group said earlier that it had no indication he was a militant.
The photos released by the military appear to show al-Wadiya wearing military fatigues in meetings with Islamic Jihad militants, but they could not be independently authenticated.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman who shared the photos on the social media platform X, said that al-Wadiya tried to leave Gaza for military training in Iran when he joined MSF in 2018, without providing evidence.
“Al-Wadiya exploited his position in a humanitarian organization to further terrorist operations,” Shoshani said.
Doctors Without Borders said al-Wadiya, a medic and physiotherapist, worked for the group between 2018 and 2022, before resuming work with the charity during the war. It said he was killed while riding his bicycle to work on Tuesday.
The group said he was the sixth of its employees to be killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, calling their deaths “unacceptable.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, asked about the competing claims on Wednesday, said the United States was not immediately able to resolve them.
The armed wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian militant groups are highly secretive, and fighters rarely identify themselves publicly for fear of being targeted in Israeli strikes.
Crew members perform maintenance on a fighter jet in the hangar bay of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
FILE - The USS aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, also known as 'IKE', sails in the Red Sea on Wednesday, June 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)
A truck carrying Gaza aid is about to enter a U.S ship, at the port of Larnaca, Cyprus, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. An official with the U.S. humanitarian assistance agency USAID says thousands of tons of food, medicines and other aid piled up on a Gaza beach isn't reaching those in need because of a dire security situation on the ground where truck drivers are either getting caught in the crossfire or have their cargo seized by "gang-like" groups. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Palestinian kids sort through trash at a landfill in Nuseirat refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 20, 2024. Israel's war in Gaza has decimated the strip's sanitation system while simultaneously displacing the vast majority of the population, leaving many Palestinians living in tent camps nearby water contaminated with sewage and growing piles of garbage. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians gather to fill water jugs near one of the strip's few functioning desalination plants in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 20, 2024. Israel's war in Gaza has decimated the strip's sanitation system while simultaneously displacing the vast majority of the population, leaving many Palestinians living in tent camps nearby growing piles of garbage. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian parents say goodbye to their sick son before leaving the Gaza Strip to get treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. Twenty one patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A Palestinian man reacts as he says goodbye to his sick daughter before leaving the Gaza Strip to get treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. 21 patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian children with chronic diseases say goodbye to their relatives as they leave the Gaza Strip for treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. 21 patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
An amputee Palestinian child sits in an ambulance with his relatives as he waits to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. 21 patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A Palestinian woman says goodbye to her sick son before leaving the Gaza Strip to get treatment abroad through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2024. 21 patients in the Gaza Strip evacuated the war-torn enclave in an initiative led by the World Health Organization for the children to receive life-saving treatment elsewhere. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A woman holds the body of her daughter Zena Naser, killed in an Israeli bombardment on a residential building in Maghazi refugee camp, outside the morgue of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Relatives and friends of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group march with their photos during a rally calling for their release in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Relatives and friends of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group march with their photos during a rally calling for their release in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Relatives and friends of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group march with their photos during a rally calling for their release in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israeli army tanks are seen in Wadi Gaza, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Israeli army tanks are seen in Wadi Gaza, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
