Esther Drillick is Recognized by the AICPA and NASBA with Prestigious Elijah Watt Sells Award The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) announced this year’s winners of the Elijah Watt Sells Award and Touro alum Esther Drillick (Lander College of Arts & Sciences 2024) was among the 11 outstanding performers who received this honor. The Elijah Watts Sells Award is granted to CPA candidates who obtain a cumulative average score above 95.50 across four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination. The 11 extraordinary individuals who met the criteria for the award were selected from 74,000 test takers who sat for the CPA Exam in 2024. “The Elijah Watt Sells Award represents one of the highest honors in the CPA profession, and this year’s recipients are not only technically exceptional, they are also poised to shape the future of the profession. As the accounting landscape evolves, their leadership, integrity, and drive for excellence will play a vital role in upholding public trust and guiding businesses through complexity and change,” said Susan Coffey, CPA, CGMA, CEO of public accounting at the AICPA. A Love of Logic Propels An Accounting Career Esther Drillick earned her Bachelor of Science in accounting at Touro University’s Lander College of Arts & Sciences and is currently employed as a fiscal officer with YVY ECC in Brooklyn. Drillick, a graduate of Bais Yaakov D’Rav Meir and Mesores Rochel Seminary in Israel, chose accounting because she loves logic and math. She chose Touro because she wanted a school with “a great academic reputation and a Jewish environment.” Drillick’s father is a hedge fund manager, one grandfather is a CPA and the other held a PhD in mathematics and so coming from a numbers-driven family, it was no surprise that she took to the field right away. She appreciated the rigorous accounting program at Touro that ultimately prepared her for the CPA exam. She was amazed as she began studying for the CPA– a process that took her a full year—that there was very little new material on the test. “It was mostly a review of what I had learned at Touro,” says Drillick. She took three months to study for each part of the exam and when she saw how well she did on the first part, she thought about trying for the award but at first, didn’t think she wanted the pressure. After taking the second part of the exam and scoring quite well, she thought “maybe I should go for it! I decided then to challenge myself to achieve this goal. At that point, I just had this feeling I could do it,” shares Drillick. “I had a lot of support as my whole family was rooting for me.” One of the professors who used simulated CPA exams in his homework and classwork and truly prepared students for the high-stakes test was an Elijah Watts Sells Award winner himself. Professor Shulem Rosenbaum, now a partner at Roth & Co, was one of Touro’s previous winners of this prestigious national award over a decade ago. According to Drillick, “Professor Rosenbaum and all of my accounting professors really cared about the success of their students. Not just in terms of learning the material, but also in terms of networking and finding […]
Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday on 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. “The big not so beautiful bill has passed,” Paul said after the vote. The difficulty it took for Republicans, who have the majority hold 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 had warned senators not to deviate too far from what his chamber had already approved. But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more problems as they race to finish by Trump’s Fourth of July deadline. The outcome is a pivotal moment for president and his party, which have been consumed by the 940-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” as it’s formally titled, and invested their political capital in delivering on the GOP’s 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.” What started as a routine but laborious day of amendment voting, in a process called vote-a-rama, spiraled into a round-the-clock slog as Republican leaders were buying 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. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota was desperately reaching for last-minute agreements between those in his party worried the bill’s reductions to Medicaid will leave millions without care, and his most conservative flank, which wants even steeper cuts to hold down deficits ballooning with the tax cuts. The GOP leaders have no room to spare, with narrow majorities. 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 the GOP leadership’s attention, as they sat beside her for talks. She was huddled intensely for more than an hour in the back of the chamber with others, scribbling notes on papers. Then all eyes were on Paul after he returned from a visit to Thune’s office with a stunning offer that could win his vote. He had suggested substantially lowering the bill’s increase in the debt ceiling, according to two people familiar with the private meeting and granted anonymity to discuss […]
An Israeli hostage died after suffering a heart attack under torture while being interrogated by Hamas, his brother told lawmakers Monday, describing details shared with the family by intelligence officials a day earlier. Dani Elgarat, speaking during a heated meeting of the Knesset House Committee, said his brother, 68-year-old Itzik Elgarat, was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’s October 7 attack. Elgarat said Hamas suspected Itzik was a pilot because he had an eagle tattoo on his arm. “They took him for interrogation and he never came back,” Dani Elgarat told the committee. According to the family, Itzik Elgarat was shot through the door of his safe room and wounded before being captured. He was initially held with Edan Alexander, a U.S.-Israeli IDF soldier who was later freed in a goodwill gesture to President Donald Trump. Alexander reportedly asked where Itzik was after he was taken away, and guards replied, “He has gone.” “Itzik died, was murdered, he suffered a heart attack during interrogation under torture,” Dani Elgarat told the committee, without elaborating further. Hamas returned Itzik’s body to Israel in February as part of a ceasefire deal that included the release of both living and deceased hostages. He was buried near his home in Nir Oz. At the funeral, Dani Elgarat accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of having “dug his grave” due to government policies toward Hamas. During Monday’s Knesset hearing, security guards removed Dani Elgarat after he loudly accused Netanyahu of having funded Hamas, referencing the transfer of Qatari cash to Gaza before the October 7 attack as part of an arrangement to maintain a fragile ceasefire. Tensions were already running high at the committee meeting. Hadash-Ta’al MK Ofer Cassif was twice ejected after clashing with bereaved father Itzik Bonzel, who lost his son in Gaza, during a debate over a move to impeach Hadash-Ta’al chairman Ayman Odeh for remarks equating Israeli hostages with Palestinian security prisoners. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Agudath Israel of America celebrates the Senate’s inclusion of a permanent and unlimited scholarship tax credit. Earlier today, the United States Senate voted to include a permanent scholarship tax credit in the budget reconciliation bill. The groundbreaking federal school choice proposal survived two attempts to eliminate it and had to be revised in order to comply with the ruling of the Senate parliamentarian. “On Friday, news reports proclaimed that the school choice provision in the reconciliation bill was dead,” said Rabbi A.D. Motzen, Agudath Israel of America’s National Director of Government Affairs. “Thanks to Senator Ted Cruz and Senate champions, the report of its demise was greatly exaggerated. The Senate saved school choice for American families.” The bill provides a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to donors who contribute to a nonprofit scholarship granting organization (SGO). The SGOs then take the pooled funds and distribute scholarships to eligible students for qualified educational expenses. The beneficiaries can include most families as the income threshold is above $300,000 in many areas (see chart). The revised version allows every taxpayer to receive a credit of up to $1700 and removed the annual cap on donations among other changes. Agudah expects that this will help generate hundreds of millions of dollars in K-12 scholarships for those wishing to attend Jewish schools. The revised bill must now pass the House before being sent to the President for his signature
TRUMP: “I’ve gotten to know the Border Patrol and ICE very well — unlike Kamala. She was the border czar but she never saw the border … She would’ve been some president. Probably would’ve been slightly better than Biden, though.”
The Justice Department announced criminal charges Monday in a scheme by North Korea to fund its weapons program through the salaries of remote information technology workers employed unwittingly by U.S. companies. The charges arose from what law enforcement officials described as a nationwide operation that also resulted in the seizure of financial accounts, websites and laptops that were used to carry out the fraud. Separate cases in Georgia and Massachusetts represent the latest Justice Department effort to confront a persistent threat that officials say generates enormous revenue for the North Korean government and in some cases affords workers access to sensitive and proprietary data from the American corporations that hire them. The scheme involved thousands of workers who, armed with stolen or fake identities, were dispatched by the North Korean government to find work as remote IT employees at American companies, including Fortune 500 corporations. The companies were duped into believing that the workers they hired were based in the U.S. when many were actually stationed in North Korea or China, and the wages the victimized companies paid were transferred into accounts controlled by co-conspirators affiliated with North Korea, prosecutors say. “These schemes target and steal from U.S. companies and are designed to evade sanctions and fund the North Korean regime’s illicit programs, including its weapons programs,” Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement. In one case exposed on Monday in federal court in Massachusetts, the Justice Department said it had arrested one U.S. national and charged more than a half dozen Chinese and Taiwanese citizens for their alleged roles in an elaborate fraud that prosecutors say produced several millions of dollars in revenue and affected scores of companies. The conspiracy, court papers say, involved the registration of financial accounts to receive the proceeds and the creation of shell companies and fake websites to make it look like the remote workers were associated with legitimate businesses. Enablers inside the United States facilitated the workers’ remote computer access, tricking companies into believing the workers were logging in from U.S. locations. The Justice Department did not identify the companies that were duped, but said that some of the fraudulent workers were able to gain access to and steal information related to sensitive military technology. The case filed in Georgia charges four North Korean IT workers with stealing virtual currency worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from their employers. The defendants remain at large. The Justice Department has filed similar prosecutions in recent years, as well as created an initiative aimed at disrupting the threat. (AP)
REPORTER: “How firm are you going to be with Netanyahu about ending the war in Gaza?” POTUS: “Very firm… He wants to end it too… I think we’ll have a deal next week.”
The Houthis have released a new video depicting their fighters riding motorcycles, with one standing on the back, firing at targets adorned with Israeli and U.S. flags.
REPORTER: Are you concerned that Republicans are gonna be swayed by Musk and his money? TRUMP: I think what’s gonna happen is DOGE is gonna look at Musk, and if DOGE looks at Musk, we’re gonna save a fortune. I don’t think he should be playing that game with me.
President Trump on the One Big Beautiful Bill: “It’s going to be the greatest bill ever passed … It’s going to keep the border secure. We have it secure now, but we need to build more wall.”
Trump at Florida’s new at Alligator Alcatraz: “The job they’ve done is fantastic. This is what you need. Gov. Ron DeSantis worked beautifully with Homeland Security Secretary Noem and all of the people at Homeland Security.”
Israel’s chief rabbinate has requested a halt to construction on a development site as they send inspectors to investigate claims that bodies are buried at the site.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signaled he is willing to consider deporting Elon Musk, escalating an extraordinary public clash with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO over federal spending and government subsidies. Speaking to reporters before departing for Florida, Trump was asked directly whether he would move to deport Musk, a South African native. “We’ll have to take a look,” Trump replied. “We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon! Wouldn’t that be terrible?” The remarks mark a new peak in the renewed hostilities between Trump and Musk after months of relative calm. The confrontation reignited after Musk sharply criticized the Trump-backed “Big, Beautiful” budget bill on Monday, warning it would add a historic $5 trillion to the national debt and calling for the formation of a new political party to challenge what he labeled the “Porky Pig Party.” “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill… that we live in a one-party country,” Musk wrote on X, adding, “Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.” Trump fired back Monday night on Truth Social, blasting Musk for his reliance on federal support and threatening to investigate or cut off future subsidies. “Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote. “No more rocket launches, satellites, or electric car production, and our country would save a fortune.” On Tuesday, Trump doubled down, suggesting again that Musk could face further consequences if he continues his public opposition. “He’s upset that he’s losing his EV mandate, and he’s very upset about things,” Trump said. “But you know, he could lose a lot more than that, I can tell you right now. Hey, Elon can lose a lot more than that!” On Monday, Musk vowed to unseat lawmakers who support Trump’s sweeping budget bill, which he has criticized because it would increase the country’s deficit by $3.3tn. “Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he wrote on his social media platform, X. A few hours later he added that if the “insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day”. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Four decapitated bodies were found hanging from a bridge in the capital of western Mexico’s Sinaloa state on Monday, part of a surge of cartel violence that killed 20 people in less than a day, authorities said. A bloody war for control between two factions of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel has turned the city of Culiacan into an epicenter of cartel violence since the conflict exploded last year between the two groups: Los Chapitos and La Mayiza. Dead bodies appear scattered across Culiacán on a daily basis, homes are riddled with bullets, businesses shutter and schools regularly close down during waves of violence. Masked young men on motorcycles watch over the main avenues of the city. On Monday, Sinaloa state prosecutors said that four bodies were found dangling from the freeway bridge leading out of the city, their heads in a nearby plastic bag. On the same highway Monday, officials said they found 16 more male victims with gunshot wounds, packed into a white van, one of whom was decapitated. Authorities said the bodies were left with a note, apparently from one of the cartel factions, though the note’s contents were not immediately disclosed. Feliciano Castro, Sinaloa government spokesperson, condemned the violent killings on Monday and said authorities needed to examine their strategy for tackling organized crime with the “magnitude” of the violence seen. “Military and police forces are working together to reestablish total peace in Sinaloa,” Castro said. Most in the western Mexico state, however, say authorities have lost control of the violence levels. A bloody power struggle erupted in September last year between two rival factions, pushing the city to a standstill. The war for territorial control was triggered by the dramatic kidnapping of the leader of one of the groups by a son of notorious capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán who then delivered him to U.S. authorities via a private plane. Since then, intense fighting between the heavily armed factions has become the new normal for civilians in Culiacan, a city which for years avoided the worst of Mexico’s violence in large part because the Sinaloa Cartel maintained such complete control. In southeast Mexico on Monday, a priest was shot leaving his home in Villahermosa, Tabasco. The Tabasco Diocese said in a statement that Rev. Héctor Alejandro Pérez had been on his way to visit someone who was ill when he was shot. The diocese said Pérez lost a lot of blood and had internal injuries putting him in “very serious” condition. (AP)
