Inducted by Long Island’s own Billy Joel, Bill Medley and the Righteous Brothers joined the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2003. Now 82, Bill sat down to chat with WHLI’s Rob Rush before he plays a show in nearby New Jersey.
Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision for The Society of Singers/AP Images
Local divers and police have discovered a car in Mount Sinai Harbor with human remains inside. A PT Cruiser was found about 55 yards from shore near the Cedar Beach boat ramp.
Suffolk County police confirmed that remains were recovered from the car and on Tuesday afternoon, the PT Cruiser was removed from the water. The police have not officially identified the remains yet but believe they may be a Long Island man who vanished nearly 15 years ago.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session.
The outcome capped an unusually tense weekend of work at the Capitol, the president’s signature legislative priority teetering on the edge of approval or collapse. In the end that tally was 50-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.
Three Republican senators — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined all Democrats in voting against it.
“In the end we got the job done,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said afterward.
The difficulty for Republicans, who have the majority in Congress, to wrestle the bill to this point is not expected to let up. The package now goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana had warned senators not to overhaul what his chamber had already approved. But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more problems ahead. House GOP leaders scheduled a Wednesday vote and vowed to put it on Trump’s desk by his July Fourth deadline, which is Friday.
It’s a pivotal moment for the president and his party, as they have been consumed by the now 887-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which was its formal title before Democrats filed an amendment to strip out the name. Republicans are investing their political capital in delivering on their sweep of power in Washington.
Trump acknowledged it’s “very complicated stuff” as he departed the White House for Florida.
“I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts,” he said. “I don’t like cuts.”
Senators work around the clock
What started as a routine but laborious day of amendment voting, in a process called vote-a-rama, spiraled into an all-night slog as Republican leaders bought time to shore up support.
The droning roll calls in the chamber belied the frenzied action to steady the bill. Grim-faced scenes played out on and off the Senate floor, amid exhaustion.
Thune worked around the clock, desperately reaching for last-minute agreements between those in his party worried the bill’s reductions to Medicaid will leave millions more people without care and his most conservative flank, which wanted even steeper cuts to hold down deficits ballooning with the tax cuts.
The GOP leaders had no room to spare. Thune could lose no more than three Republican senators, and two — Tillis, who warned that millions of people will lose access to Medicaid health care, and Paul, who opposes raising the debt limit by $5 trillion — had already indicated opposition.
Attention quickly turned to two other key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Collins, who also raised concerns about health care cuts, as well as a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions.
Murkowski in particular became the subject of GOP leaders’ attention, as they sat beside her for talks. Then all eyes were on Paul after he returned from a visit to Thune’s office.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans “are in shambles because they know the bill is so unpopular.”
An analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law. The CBO said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over the decade.
Pressure built from all sides. Billionaire Elon Musk said anyone who voted for the package should “hang their head in shame” and warned he would campaign against them. But Trump had also lashed out against the GOP holdouts, including Tillis, who abruptly announced his own decision over the weekend not to seek reelection.
Senators insist on changes
Few Republicans appeared fully satisfied as the final package emerged, in either the House or the Senate.
Collins fought to include $50 billion for a new rural hospital fund, among the GOP senators worried that the bill’s Medicaid provider cuts would be devastating and force them to close.
While her amendment for the fund was rejected, the provision was inserted into the final bill. Still she voted no.
The Maine senator said she’s happy the bolstered funding was added, but “my difficulties with the bill go far beyond that.”
And Murkowski called the decision-making process “agonizing.”
She secured provisions to temporarily spare Alaska and other states from some food stamp cuts, but her efforts to bolster Medicaid reimbursements fell short. She voted yes.
What’s in the big bill
All told, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, according to the latest CBO analysis, making permanent Trump’s 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.
The Senate package would roll back billions of dollars in green energy tax credits, which Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide. It would impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements on able-bodied people, including some parents and older Americans, making sign-up eligibility more stringent and changing federal reimbursements to states.
Additionally, the bill would provide a $350 billion infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.
“The big not so beautiful bill has passed,” Paul said.
Democrats fight all day and night
Unable to stop the march toward passage, the Democrats tried to drag out the process, including with a weekend reading of the full bill.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump’s first term are now “current policy” and the cost of extending them should not be counted toward deficits.
She said that kind of “magic math” won’t fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who became a household name amassing an enormous following and multimillion-dollar ministry only to be undone by his penchant for prostitutes, has died.
Swaggart died decades after his once vast audience dwindled and his name became a punchline on late night television. His death was announced Tuesday on his public Facebook page. A cause wasn’t immediately given, though at 90 he had been in poor health, having suffered cardiac arrest last month.
The Louisiana native was best known for being a captivating Pentecostal preacher with a massive following before being caught on camera with a prostitute in New Orleans in 1988, one of a string of successful TV preachers brought down in the 1980s and 1990s by sex scandals. He continued preaching for decades, but with a reduced audience.
Swaggart encapsulated his downfall in a tearful 1988 sermon, in which he wept and apologized but made no reference to his connection to a prostitute.
“I have sinned against you,” Swaggart told parishioners nationwide. “I beg you to forgive me.”
He announced his resignation from the Assemblies of God later that year, shortly after the church said it was defrocking him for rejecting punishment it had ordered for “moral failure.” The church had wanted him to undergo a two-year rehabilitation program, including not preaching for a full year.
Swaggart said at the time that he knew dismissal was inevitable but insisted he had no choice but to separate from the church to save his ministry and Bible college.
From poverty and oil fields to a household name
Swaggart grew up poor, the son of a preacher, in a music-rich family. He excelled at piano and gospel music, playing and singing with talented cousins who took different paths: rock-‘n’-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley.
In his hometown of Ferriday, Louisiana, Swaggart said he first heard the call of God at age 8. The voice gave him goose bumps and made his hair tingle, he said.
“Everything seemed different after that day in front of the Arcade Theater,” he said in a 1985 interview with the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Illinois. “I felt better inside. Almost like taking a bath.”
He preached and worked part time in oil fields until he was 23. He then moved entirely into his ministry: preaching, playing piano and singing gospel songs with the barrelhouse fervor of cousin Lewis at Assemblies of God revivals and camp meetings.
Swaggart started a radio show, a magazine, and then moved into television, with outspoken views.
He called Roman Catholicism “a false religion. It is not the Christian way,” and claimed that Jews suffered for thousands of years “because of their rejection of Christ.”
“If you don’t like what I say, talk to my boss,” he once shouted as he strode in front of his congregation at his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, where his sermons moved listeners to speak in tongues and stand up as if possessed by the Holy Spirit.
Swaggart’s messages stirred thousands of congregants and millions of TV viewers, making him a household name by the late 1980s. Contributors built Jimmy Swaggart Ministries into a business that made an estimated $142 million in 1986.
His Baton Rouge complex still includes a worship center and broadcasting and recording facilities.
The scandals that led to Swaggart’s ruin
Swaggart’s downfall came in the late 1980s as other prominent preachers faced similar scandals. Swaggart said publicly that his earnings were hurt in 1987 by the sex scandal surrounding rival televangelist Jim Bakker and a former church secretary at Bakker’s PTL ministry organization.
The following year, Swaggart was photographed at a hotel with Debra Murphree, an admitted prostitute who told reporters that the two did not have sex but that the preacher had paid her to pose nude.
She later repeated the claim — and posed nude — for Penthouse magazine.
The surveillance photos that crippled Swaggart’s career apparently stemmed from his rivalry with preacher Marvin Gorman, who Swaggart had accused of sexual misdeeds. Gorman hired the photographer who captured Swaggart and Murphree on film. Swaggart later paid Gorman $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over the sexual allegations against Gorman.
More trouble came in 1991, when police in California detained Swaggart with another prostitute. The evangelist was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and driving an unregistered Jaguar. His companion, Rosemary Garcia, said Swaggart became nervous when he saw the police car and weaved when he tried to stuff pornographic magazines under a car seat.
Swaggart was later mocked by the late TV comic Phil Hartman, who impersonated him on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
Out of the public eye but still in the pulpit
The evangelist largely stayed out of the news in later years but remained in the pulpit at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, often joined by his son, Donnie, a fellow preacher. His radio station broadcast church services and gospel music to 21 states, and Swaggart’s ministry boasted a worldwide audience on the internet.
“My dad was a warrior. My dad was preacher. He didn’t want to be anything else except a preacher of the gospel,” Donnie Swaggart said in a video message shared on social media Tuesday following his father’s death. “That’s what he was put on this earth to do.”
The preacher caused another brief stir in 2004 with remarks about being “looked at” amorously by a gay man.
“And I’m going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I’m going to kill him and tell God he died,” Jimmy Swaggart said, to laughter from the congregation. He later apologized.
Swaggart made few public appearances outside his church, save for singing “Amazing Grace” at the 2005 funeral of Louisiana Secretary of State Fox McKeithen, a prominent name in state politics for decades.
In 2022, he shared memories at the memorial service for Lewis, his cousin and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer. The pair had released “The Boys From Ferriday,” a gospel album, earlier that year.
Donnie Swaggart said he promised his father that “I will continue the work” — distributing Bibles, sharing the gospel and “proclaiming the message of Christ.”
Swaggart is survived by his wife, Frances, son Donnie, daughter-in-law Debbie, grandson Gabriel, daughter Jill, granddaughter Jennifer, son-in-law Clif, son Matt, daughter-in-law Joanna and nine great-grandchildren.
NEW YORK (AP) — The jury in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial said Tuesday that it has reached a verdict on four of five counts against the hip-hop mogul. But the partial decision remained under wraps as they kept deliberating on the top charge, racketeering conspiracy.
Prosecutors, Combs’ defense team and Judge Arun Subramanian reasoned that after just two days of deliberations, it was too soon to give up on reaching a verdict on all counts. So rather than taking a partial verdict, Subramanian told the jury to continue weighing the remaining charge. Deliberations will continue Wednesday.
The developments came late Tuesday afternoon, when the jury sent a note saying it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the racketeering conspiracy charge because there were jurors with “unpersuadable views” on both sides.
After hearing about the note, Combs appeared morose as his lawyers explained to him what was happening. At one point, lead defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo stepped away from the huddle, returned with a piece of paper and handed it to Combs, who read it solemnly. The hip-hop mogul ‘s mother and several of his children returned to the courtroom.
Combs stood with his hands in pockets as jurors came into the courtroom for the judge’s guidance.
“It is your duty as jurors to consult with one another and to deliberate with a view to reaching an agreement,” Subramanian told them, recapping an instruction he’d read before deliberations began.
Jurors are weighing charges that Combs used his fame, wealth and violence to force two girlfriends into drug-fueled sex marathons with male sex workers known as “freak-offs” or “hotel nights.”
He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers contend prosecutors are trying to criminalize Combs’ swinger lifestyle and that, if anything, his conduct amounted to domestic violence, not federal felonies.
Combs, 55, could face 15 years in prison to life behind bars if he is convicted of all charges.
Racketeering conspiracy — count 1 on the jury’s verdict sheet — is the most complicated of the charges because it requires the jury to decide not only whether he ran a “racketeering enterprise,” but also whether he was involved in committing some or all of various types of offenses, such as kidnapping and arson.
The charge falls under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It is best known for being used in organized crime and drug cartel cases.
Earlier Tuesday, the jury asked to review critical testimony from one of the prosecution’s most important witnesses: the hip-hop mogul’s former longtime girlfriend Cassie, the R&B singer born Casandra Ventura.
The panel of eight men and four women asked for Cassie’s account of Combs beating, kicking and dragging her at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 — an assault captured on now-infamous security camera footage.
They also asked to see Cassie’s testimony about an incident in which she said Combs accused her of taking drugs from him and kicked her off of their yacht at the Cannes Film Festival in France in 2013. On their way back to the U.S., she said, he threatened to release explicit videos of her having sex.
In addition, the jury asked for Cassie and stripper Daniel Phillip’s testimony about her jumping into his lap at a New York City hotel after. Phillip testified that he suspected Combs had been slapping and slamming her around an adjacent room.
“Her whole entire body was shaking, like she was terrified,” said Phillip, who was at the hotel for a sexual encounter with Cassie sometime between 2012 and 2014.
Phillip testified that he told her she was in real danger. Cassie, he said, “basically tried to convince me that it was OK: ‘It’s OK. I’m fine, I’ll be OK.'”
Tuesday’s court session began with the lawyers and judge considering the jury’s request late Monday for clarification about what qualifies as drug distribution, an aspect of the racketeering conspiracy charge.
Subramanian ultimately reminded jurors of instructions he’d already given on that part of the case.
On Monday, the panel deliberated over five hours. Barely an hour into the closed-door discussion, the foreperson sent a note complaining that there was one juror “who we are concerned cannot follow your Honor’s instructions.”
The judge responded to that first note by reminding jurors of their duties to deliberate and their obligation to follow his instructions on the law.
At the trial, Combs chose not to testify as his lawyers built their arguments for acquittal mostly through lengthy cross examinations of dozens of prosecution witnesses, including former Combs employees who testified reluctantly and only after being granted immunity.
NEW YORK (AP) — Jury deliberations got underway on Monday in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal sex trafficking trial and hit a snag almost as soon as they started. But, by the end of the day, jurors indicated they were making progress weighing complex charges that could put the hip-hop mogul in prison for life.
The first day of deliberations saw a flurry of notes from the jury and Combs and his supporters bowing their heads in prayer in the courtroom — but no verdict.
The jury of eight men and four women are sifting through seven weeks of sometimes graphic and emotional testimony about the rap, fashion and reality TV impresario ‘s propensity for violence and his sexual predilections, including drug-fueled sex marathons dubbed ” freak-offs ” or “hotel nights.”
About an hour in, the foreperson reported that a juror might be having trouble following the 61 pages worth of instructions the judge had just read to them.
“We are concerned (the juror) cannot follow your honor’s instructions,” the foreperson said in a note to Judge Arun Subramanian just after 12:30 p.m.
After the judge originally proposed asking the jury foreperson the nature of concerns about the fellow juror, defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo suggested caution and that it was better to say less than more.
“We can always ratchet it up. We can’t ratchet it down,” Agnifilo said.
Subramanian sent his response to the jury around 2 p.m., reminding the panel to deliberate and to follow his instructions on the law.
The jury sent another note about three hours later asking for clarification on the part of the instructions addressing drug distribution — an allegation included in Combs’ racketeering conspiracy charge.
As deliberations were happening, Combs prayed with his family and friends in the courtroom. Wearing his customary sweater and khakis, he stood facing his contingent in the audience and bowed his head with them. As they finished, they applauded, along with Combs.
Combs also showed off two books he’s reading: “The Power of Positive Thinking,” by Norman Vincent Peale and “The Happiness Advantage,” by Shawn Achor.
As he sent the jury to deliberate, Subramanian told the five alternate jurors to remain on standby at home in case they’re needed at a later point.
Jurors were provided with a laptop loaded with all of the exhibits shown in court, including text messages, photographs and videos of the sexual encounters at the heart of the case.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking — relating to two of his ex-girlfriends — and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution for allegedly arranging to fly his girlfriends and sex workers across state lines.
In closing arguments last week, federal prosecutors and Combs’ defense team took their last shots at convincing jurors to convict or acquit the Grammy Award-winning founder of Bad Boy Records.
“The defendant used power, violence and fear to get what he wanted,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christy Slavik said. “He thought that his fame, wealth and power put him above the law.”
She said that he used his “close inner circle and a small army of personal staff, who made it their mission to meet the defendant’s every desire, promote his power and protect his reputation at all costs.”
Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo countered, “This isn’t about crime. It’s about money.” He noted that one of Combs’ accusers in the criminal case also sued him in civil court.
“He is not a racketeer. He is not a conspirator to commit racketeering. He is none of these things. He is innocent. He sits there innocent. Return him to his family, who have been waiting for him,” the lawyer told jurors.
In all, 34 witnesses testified, headlined by Combs’ former girlfriends Cassie — the R&B singer born Casandra Ventura — and ” Jane,” who testified under a pseudonym. Both women said he often was violent toward them. Cassie said he forced her into hundreds of sexual encounters with paid male sex workers while Jane recounted numerous “hotel nights.”
Jurors also saw now-infamous security camera video of Combs beating, kicking and dragging Cassie at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016 and clips from videos of sexual encounters.
Combs chose not to testify, and his lawyers didn’t call any witnesses in their defense case. His attorneys elected instead to challenge the accusers’ credibility during lengthy cross-examination questioning.
The defense has acknowledged that Combs veered into violence, but his lawyers maintain that the sex acts were consensual. They contend that prosecutors are intruding in Combs’ personal life and that he’s done nothing to warrant the charges against him.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman announced Monday that there will be increased efforts to search the waters for sharks after a woman was believed to be bitten by a small sand tiger shark last week at Jones Beach. The additional measures will include using drones, helicopters and boats to scan the waters off Long Island to look for sharks or other hazards, such as riptides, to keep swimmers safe.
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York man on Monday was sentenced to serve 25 years to life in prison for the fatal stabbing of a veteran emergency worker while she was on a break, according to prosecutors
Peter Zisopoulos, 37, was convicted in May of second-degree murder for killing Lt. Alison Russo-Elling, then 61, as she walked from her fire department station to a nearby store for food in 2022. She was remembered by mourners as a dedicated public servant who responded to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
There’s no indication that Zisopoulos knew Russo-Elling. His public defender lawyer has said that Zisopoulos “has a past psychiatric history going back to 2018.” The lawyer did not immediately respond to a message left with his office on Monday.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz called the killing “brutal and senseless.”
Russo-Elling was months away from retirement when she died. She was promoted posthumously from EMS lieutenant to the rank of captain.
“Today, we are appreciative that her killer has been sentenced to the maximum punishment: 25 years to life. This sentencing speaks to the brutality of the crime, and though it won’t bring her back, I pray it will finally give her family the closure they deserve,” said Fire Commissioner Robert S. Tucker.
Monday’s sentencing came after the unrelated fatal shooting of two on-duty firefighters in Idaho over the weekend.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — After Matthew Schaefer pulled the blue-and-orange sweater over his head at the NHL draft, his eyes already glistening with tears, he glanced down at his left shoulder and saw a pink ribbon.
The symbol of breast cancer awareness was the New York Islanders’ tribute to his mother, Jennifer, who died of the disease just 16 months ago.
The No. 1 pick kissed the ribbon and modestly pointed to the sky, paying a poignant tribute to the woman who raised this boy into the man he’ll soon become — and who will accompany him on every step of his bright hockey future.
The Islanders selected the gifted 17-year-old defenseman first overall Friday night, kicking off an NHL draft with a beautiful moment felt across the breadth of the sport.
“I appreciate you taking a chance on me,” Schaefer said in a video conference call with the Islanders’ front office. “I promise I won’t disappoint, but especially I just want to say to my mom and all my family and friends, thanks for everything.”
High-scoring forward Michael Misa went second overall to the San Jose Sharks, and the Chicago Blackhawks took Swedish forward Anton Frondell third at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
The Islanders maneuvered their way into three picks in the top 17, but they surprised nobody by using their first No. 1 selection since 2009 on Schaefer. The 6-foot-2 blueliner from Hamilton, Ontario, with exceptional puck-moving ability and strong defensive skills spent the past two seasons with the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters, growing into an irresistible choice for the top pick.
Schaefer persevered through tragedy to reach this moment. Along with the loss of his mother, he also endured the recent deaths of the Otters’ owner, Jim Waters, and the mother of his billet family.
The Islanders added the ribbon patch to the ceremonial jersey specifically for Schaefer, along with his mother’s initials on the sweater collar.
“Seeing the ribbon on my jersey, and I saw a picture, it has J.S. on my back here,” Schaefer said. “You can see just how high-class the organization is. It really means a lot. I wish my mom could be here today. Obviously, she’s with me here in spirit. … Cancer sucks, and it’s not fun. She didn’t feel the best, but she was always the happiest in the family. She would do anything for us.”
Schaefer scored 22 points while playing in only 17 games last season before breaking his collarbone in December. His acumen on both ends of the ice still propelled him to the top of nearly all draft boards.
Schaefer is just the fifth defenseman picked No. 1 overall in the NHL draft since 2000, and the first since Owen Power went to Buffalo in 2021. Schaefer also is the second Erie product to go No. 1, joining Connor McDavid in 2015.
“First and foremost, we drafted him because he’s an unbelievable hockey player,” Isles general manager Mathieu Darche said. “Obviously, the human being is exceptional. (For) a 17-year-old to have that resilience, maturity with everything that he’s gone through is beyond impressive, honestly. I haven’t met many 17-year-old kids that act like him. But at the end of the day, we’re drafting him because he’s a hell of a hockey player.”
Schaefer got two new teammates when the Islanders used the 16th pick on Swedish forward Victor Eklund and nabbed defenseman Kashawn Aitcheson with the 17th selection.
Both Pennsylvania teams also were busy in Los Angeles. The Philadelphia Flyers grabbed forward Porter Martone sixth overall before trading up for the 12th selection to get forward Jack Nesbitt, while the Pittsburgh Penguins maneuvered up and down the draft to control three picks in the top 24, swinging two trades while drafting forwards Benjamin Kindel, Bill Zonnon and William Horcoff.
Misa tore up the OHL last season as the captain of the Saginaw Spirit, scoring 62 goals and 134 points in just 65 games. While wearing a teal jersey for the first time, he repeated his desire to play in the NHL next season if he can crack the roster of a struggling Sharks organization that chose Will Smith fourth overall in 2023 and got center Macklin Celebrini with the first overall pick a year ago.
“He’s an ultra-competitive kid who’s been playing up a level, up a birth year his whole life,” Sharks general manager Mike Grier said about Misa. “He wants to be the best. He wants to play against the best, so I’m sure this is what he wants to do, but you know we’re not going to hand him anything. He’s got to come into training camp and try and take a job.”
Frondell excelled as a 17-year-old forward last season with Djurgården in Sweden’s second division, showing off a two-way game that allowed him to push Misa on some draft boards. At 6-2, he could provide a large complement to Connor Bedard.
Frondell is the eighth Swedish player to be a top-three selection, joining elite company including Victor Hedman, Mats Sundin and the Sedin twins.
Center Caleb Desnoyers went fourth to the Utah Mammoth, who moved up 10 spots in the draft lottery.
The Nashville Predators chose physical forward Brady Martin with the fifth pick before trading up for the 21st selection to get Kitchener defenseman Cameron Reid. Martin skipped the draft, staying home on his family farm in Ontario.
Fans of the host Los Angeles Kings inside the theater got fired up for their club to make the 24th selection — which the Kings promptly traded to Pittsburgh for the 31st and 59th selections, prompting groans from the crowd. Los Angeles eventually chose defenseman Henry Brzustewicz from the Memorial Cup champion London Knights in general manager Ken Holland’s first selection for his new team.
The Penguins created the majority of the surprises in the first round, first by choosing Calgary Hitmen center Kindel with the 11th pick — much higher than many prognosticators expected.
Pittsburgh then traded the 12th pick, which originally belonged to the New York Rangers, to Philadelphia for the 22nd and 31st picks. The Flyers wanted the 6-foot-4 Nesbitt, a fast-rising center from the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires last season.
The Penguins also gave a second-round pick to the Kings and swapped first-rounders so they could move up for Horcoff — the son of NHL veteran Shawn Horcoff — with the 24th pick.
The Anaheim Ducks took a chance on forward Roger McQueen with the 10th selection. The 6-foot-5 McQueen is widely thought to have enough talent to become an elite center, but the Saskatchewan native has been slowed by a back injury that scared off some teams.
Two goalies were chosen in the first round for the first time since 2021 and only the third time in 13 years. Columbus grabbed Russia’s Pyotr Andreyanov with the 20th pick, making him the highest-picked European goalie in fourth years, while San Jose added goalie Joshua Ravensbergen with the 30th selection.
The Boston Bruins used the seventh overall pick on Boston College center James Hagens, the consensus top prospect for this draft a year ago.
Hagens, a Long Island native coveted by many Islanders fans, slid down the board just enough to reach the Bruins, whose pick was announced by a video of Adam Sandler in character as Happy Gilmore, complete with his signature Bruins jersey.
“I’m so excited to be back in Boston, and to have Adam Sandler make the pick, that was special,” said Hagens, who cites “Happy Gilmore” as his favorite movie. “I love to win, and I’m really glad that I’m in Boston.”
The Islanders won the lottery to pick first in a draft that is packed with talent — while missing a few staples of recent drafts.
There was no prohibitive lock of a No. 1 pick in this field, unlike the past two drafts, although Schaefer clearly came out on top.
The draft also lacked the centralized structure that has long been a staple of this annual exercise. The 32 teams’ various executives are mostly at home, not strewn across the draft floor. The majority of the picks were taken to a video room just behind the stage to exchange televised pleasantries with their new front offices through video conferencing.
While reviews of the new format seemed largely negative from television viewers and fans, many hockey executives praised the format afterward.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo will reportedly stay in the race for New York City mayor, running as an Independent candidate after conceding to Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary. Cuomo has until Friday to make his decision.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk on Saturday doubled down on his distaste for President Donald Trump’s sprawling tax and spending cuts bill, arguing the legislation that Republican senators are scrambling to pass would kill jobs and bog down burgeoning industries.
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday ahead of a procedural Senate vote to open debate on the nearly 1,000-page bill. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, whose birthday is also Saturday, later posted that the bill would be “political suicide for the Republican Party.”
The criticisms reopen a recent fiery conflict between the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency and the administration he recently left. They also represent yet another headache for Republican Senate leaders who have spent the weekend working overtime to get the legislation through their chamber so it can pass by Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.
Musk has previously made his opinions about Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” clear. Days after he left the federal government last month with a laudatory celebration in the Oval Office, he blasted the bill as “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination.”
“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he wrote on X earlier this month. In another post, the wealthy GOP donor who had recently forecasted that he’d step back from political donations threatened to fire lawmakers who “betrayed the American people.”
When Trump clapped back to say he was disappointed with Musk, back-and-forth fighting erupted and quickly escalated. Musk suggested without evidence that Trump, who spent the first part of the year as one of his closest allies, was mentioned in files related to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
Musk ultimately tried to make nice with the administration, saying he regretted some of his posts that “went too far.” Trump responded in kind in an interview with The New York Post, saying, “Things like that happen. I don’t blame him for anything.”
It’s unclear how Musk’s latest broadsides will influence the fragile peace he and the president had enjoyed in recent weeks. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk has spent recent weeks focused on his businesses, and his political influence has waned since he left the administration. Still, the wealthy businessman poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign in 2024, demonstrating the impact his money can have if he’s passionate enough about an issue or candidate to restart his political spending.
Though he was silent on Musk, Trump laid on pressure and lashed out strongly at Republican holdouts in the Senate as lawmakers spent hours taking a procedural vote during a rare Saturday evening session. He accused Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina of seeking publicity with his no vote and threatened to campaign against the senator’s reelection.
The legislation narrowly cleared its test vote in the Senate late Saturday evening, allowing senators to begin debate.