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 […]
Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist known for his anti-Israel rhetoric, has emerged as the winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, the Associated Press reported. His campaign’s momentum and widespread appeal pushed him to a decisive victory.
The announcement came Tuesday afternoon, following the release of the ranked-choice voting results by the city’s Board of Elections. The updated count confirmed Mamdani’s clear lead in the race.
With the final tally showing Mamdani securing 56 percent of the vote, he outpaced former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who ended up with 44 percent. The election board is scheduled to formally certify the results in the middle of July.
Currently serving as an assemblyman representing Queens, Mamdani, 33, will now prepare for the November general election. His opponents will include Eric Adams, the current mayor who bypassed the Democratic primary and is running as an independent; Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate and founder of the Guardian Angels; and Jim Walden, an independent candidate and attorney.
Although Cuomo is also listed on the ballot as an independent, he has yet to announce whether he will remain in the race through the fall. All three independent candidates are registered Democrats, but Mamdani is expected to have the upper hand given the city’s overwhelming Democratic majority.
Mamdani’s success stemmed from his ability to galvanize a fresh wave of voters, boosted by a vibrant campaign fueled by his dynamic personality, skillful use of social media, and a remarkably large and dedicated volunteer force—something rarely seen in recent city elections.
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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
Zohran Mamdani is the Muslim socialist who doesn’t believe billionaires should exist, who just won a stunning victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City – and already some of his policies are raising eyebrows.
Joining to debate all this is former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani – who has some choice words to say about Mamdani – plus The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur, NewsNation’s Geraldo Rivera and former DNC fundraiser Lindy Li.
WATCH:
{Matzav.com}
In a shocking incident on Sunday night, singer Pini Einhorn said that he had his iPhone stolen while performing at a chareidi wedding at Keter HaRimon Hall in Bnei Brak.
The wedding was that of the son of Rav Yosef Niddam, rosh mosdos of Mishkenos Yosef, and brother of Baruch Niddam, head of ZAKA Tel Aviv’s International Division, as well as singer and baal tefillah Rav Shmuel Niddam.
Einhorn took to social media to share his frustration and disbelief: “It’s been 24 hours that I’ve been cut off from the world,” he said in a video message. “Yesterday at the event, my iPhone just vanished—disappeared like the earth swallowed it up.”
Footage from the wedding shows Einhorn energetically singing while riding a ZAKA motorcycle into the hall, an unusual and lively entrance to what turned into an unfortunate evening for the singer.
Currently using a temporary phone, Einhorn explained the difficulty of working without his device. “Right now I’m using a replacement phone,” he said. “It’s basically like singing with a toy microphone. I really hope the old one finds its way back. It holds materials that are worth gold. My whole life is in there.”
Einhorn reflected on the experience with perspective: “Over the past day, I’ve realized just how addicted I am to my phone. But everything is from Hashem.”
{Matzav.com Israel}
President Donald Trump took aim at Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic contender for New York City Mayor, slamming him as a hardline leftist and warning that electing him would be disastrous for the city.
“I think he’s terrible. He’s a communist. The last thing we need is a communist,” Trump told reporters gathered outside the White House. “I think I’m going to have a lot of fun watching him because he has to come right through this building to get his money.”
Trump didn’t hold back in his criticism, going further by saying, “Frankly, I heard he’s a total nutjob. I think the people of New York are crazy, if they go this route, I think they’re crazy.”
The President also took issue with Mamdani’s policy proposals, particularly those related to government control of commerce. “We will have a communist, for the first time, a pure, true communist. He wants to operate the grocery stores. What about the people who are there? I think it’s crazy,” the President stated.
{Matzav.com}
BREAKING: President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill passes in the Senate 51-50 after VP JD Vance breaks the tie.
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.”
BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani wins the NYC Democratic primary with 56% of the vote.
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.”
Yair Netanyahu, son of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, opened up in a new interview about the intense pressure and fear that led him to leave Israel and spend an extended period in Miami. Speaking on the TOV channel’s Standpoint program, hosted by Gabe Groisman, Netanyahu described the turning point that made him realize he needed to step away.
Yair, who returned to Israel ahead of his younger brother Avner’s planned wedding—a wedding that was later postponed due to the launch of Operation KeLavi—said he had no intention of coming back otherwise. “What broke me,” he recounted, “was the night of the Gallant incident. I was home alone, and I was sure the protesters were going to break in.”
He described the chaos and fear of that night: “They were on the fences with torches, trying to climb into the house. That’s a clear fascist symbol, especially as they were shouting that they were going to kill me. And I saw that the police weren’t doing anything, that there were instructions from the top to let the protesters have a free hand. That’s when I understood I was in real danger and couldn’t stay here.”
Asked why he chose to live in Miami, Netanyahu said, “I felt hunted, me and my family. I truly felt that my life was in danger.” Yet even in Miami, he claims, he wasn’t left alone. “They launched a surveillance operation on me with private investigators that cost millions of dollars. They didn’t give me any peace.”
Discussing the broader political atmosphere, Yair launched into a sharp critique of Israel’s governance. “The current system here isn’t a real democracy. The citizens’ votes at the ballot box barely matter,” he said. “It’s important to understand that the deep state in Israel is just a branch of the American deep state. It doesn’t operate independently. What we experienced here was a color revolution—the same kind the U.S. carries out in many third-world countries to topple governments it doesn’t like.”
He also spoke about his father’s decades-long battle against the Iranian nuclear threat. “The Iranian nuclear program has been my father’s life mission for 30 years. He’s been fighting the entire world on this, including eight years against Obama’s nuclear deal, which was designed to keep the ayatollahs happy.”
{Matzav.com Israel}
President Trump arrives at Alligator Alcatraz detention facility in the Florida Everglades.
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.
NOW – Trump will have a “very quick celebration” with Netanyahu next Monday.
President Trump shuts down fake news claims that the One Big, Beautiful Bill cuts Medicaid and Medicare.
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.”
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