U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday for the first time publicly apologized to Ukraine for a monthslong congressional holdup in American military assistance that let Russia make gains on the battlefield.

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The apology came as Biden met in Paris with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who appealed for bipartisan U.S. support going forward “like it was during World War II.”Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks on during his meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Paris, Friday, June 7, 2024.A day earlier, the two had attended ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, where Biden had drawn common cause between the allied forces that helped free Europe from Nazi Germany and today’s effort to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and Zelenskyy had been greeted with a rapt ovation.

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“I apologize for those weeks of not knowing what’s going to happen in terms of funding,” Biden said, referring to the six-month holdup by conservative Republicans in Congress to a $61 billion military aid package for Ukraine. Still, the Democratic president insisted that the American people were standing by Ukraine for the long haul. “We’re st.ill in. Completely. Thoroughly,” he said.

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The apology — and Zelenskyy’s plea for rock-solid support akin to the allied coalition in WWII — served as a reminder that for all of Biden’s talk of an unflagging U.S commitment to Ukraine, recalcitrance among congressional Republicans and an isolationist strain in American politics have exposed its fragility.

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 And, although unremarked upon, the specter of Donald Trump’s candidacy loomed over the discussion, as the Republican former president and the presumptive nominee has spoken positively of Russian President Vladimir Putin and sparked Ukrainian concerns that he would call for it to cede territory to end the conflict.

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Zelenskyy pressed for all Americans to support his country’s defense against Russia’s invasion, and he thanked lawmakers for eventually coming together to approve the weapons package, which has allowed Ukraine to stem Russian advances in recent weeks.

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“It’s very important that in this unity, United States of America, all American people stay with Ukraine like it was during World War II,” Zelenskyy said. “How the United States helped to save human lives, to save Europe. And we count on your continuing support in standing with us shoulder to shoulder.”

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If AI were ever prompted to generate an avatar of a game show host, surely the result would be Pat Sajak.

After four decades on the air, Mr. Sajak, 77, presides over his last episode of “Wheel of Fortune” on Friday. And his departure — Mr. Sajak has suggested in a series of televised exit interviews with Maggie Sajak, his daughter, that this will be a welcome retirement — offered a chance to reappraise what it is that made him such a durable fixture of the American cultural landscape.( )

Mr. Sajak, it is probably worth remembering, has been with viewers through seven presidents, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both the AIDS and the Covid pandemics, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the 2008 financial crash and, oh, the Kardashians. Not incidentally, he has outlasted the internet’s incursions into broadcast television’s long-held primacy.( )

Through it all he’s been with the American game show audience, unflappably prompting contestants to choose a consonant or buy a vowel. He calmed contestants as they guessed at Hangman-style word puzzles. He bantered inoffensively with the imperturbable Vanna White in her parade of sparkly gowns. He blandly exchanged quips with an ever-changing roster of celebrity guests as they spun a carnival-style wheel, willing it to clatter past “Lose a Turn” and “Bankruptcy” to land on big money.( )

And, for 41 seasons, this avuncular figure in a jacket and tie hovered into millions of households a night, a perma-tanned deity ruling over a placid empyrean.

Sunak attended the first part of the commemorative events in Normandy, France, on Thursday, but skipped the international ceremony at Omaha Beach, which was attended by other world leaders and veterans of the Allied operation in 1944.( )

“The last thing I want is for the commemorations to be overshadowed by politics,” Sunak wrote in a long apology on X. “After the conclusion of the British event in Normandy, I returned back to the UK. On reflection, it was a mistake not to stay in France longer – and I apologise.”

But the move had already caused anger and disbelief in Britain, and represented another major miscalculation in Sunak’s faltering election campaign.( )

Sunak left the event to record a campaign interview with broadcaster ITV, the network confirmed, in which he defended claims about the opposition Labour Party’s tax plans which fact-checkers and a senior civil servant have said were misleading or inaccurate.( )

More than 20 heads of state and government, and representatives from royal families across Europe, attended the international ceremony, which took place on a day of commemoration 80 years after the Allied beach landings in Nazi-occupied France laid the groundwork for the defeat of Germany in World War II.( )

Look, I get the outrage. I get that this is a significant mistake,” Sunak’s own veterans minister, Johnny Mercer, told UK newspaper The Sun on Friday, while also attacking what he labelled as “faux outrage” from Sunak’s critics.

The UK was represented at the international ceremony by David Cameron, Sunak’s foreign secretary and a former prime minister, who took photographs alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and US President Joe Biden.( )

Also in attendance was Labour leader Keir Starmer, who was filmed speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the event. Labour was quick to condemn Sunak’s decision to skip the events, and the gaffe dominated British news coverage of the election on Friday.

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It’s tempting to dismiss the European Parliament elections as the most important elections that don’t actually matter.

Hundreds of millions of voters across 27 nations will turn out this weekend to cast their ballots, but the European Parliament is the least powerful of the European Union institutions. It is often derided as a talking shop. Its 720 members have limited powers, and, while a few are ascendant stars, a few are retired politicians, or even criminals.( )

But, the European Union has never been more important in delivering tangible benefits to its citizens, or to the world in being a force for stability and prosperity, since its inception as an economic alliance nearly seven decades ago. The Parliament that emerges from these elections, weak though it may be, will serve as a brake or accelerator for the crucial policies that will help shape Europe’s immediate future.( )

In the five years since the last election, the bloc jointly bought Covid-19 vaccines and started a massive economic stimulus program to recover from the pandemic. It sanctioned Russia and paid to arm and reconstruct Ukraine. It ditched Russian energy imports and negotiated new sources of natural gas. It overhauled its migration system. It adopted ambitious climate policies.( )

But in that time, the E.U. has also been criticized for failing to heed demands for more accountability and transparency, and for pushing policies that favor urban elites over farmers and rural voters. The loss of sovereignty to an obscure center of power in Brussels, manned by technocrats, doesn’t sit well with many Europeans either.

Incensed by Covid-era policies, and the arrival of more migrants, and desperate to regain a sense of control and identity, many voters are expected to swing way to the right. The two further right parties running in these elections are poised to make significant gains.( )

That shift is also charged by some of the same culture-war issues pertaining to gender politics, especially in Eastern Europe, as in the United States and other parts of the developed world.