By HANNA ARHIROVA and SAMYA KULLAB

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a major air attack early Thursday on Kyiv that included a rare strike on the city center, killing at least 21 people, wounding 48 and damaging European Union diplomatic offices, authorities said.

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The bombardment of drones and missiles was the first major Russian attack on Kyiv in weeks as U.S.-led peace efforts to end the three-year war struggled to gain traction. Britain said the attack sabotaged peace efforts, while top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas summoned Russia’s EU envoy to Brussels over the strikes that damaged EU offices.

Ukraine on Thursday requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the overnight bombardment, while two of Ukraine’s top envoys were set to meet Friday with the Trump administration regarding mediation.

The Kremlin said Russia remained interested in continuing peace talks despite Thursday’s air attack, which was one of the war’s biggest since it began in 2022.

Among the dead were four children between 2 and 17, said Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv’s city administration. He said more people could still be under the rubble, and search and rescue efforts continued on Thursday evening.

Rare attack on center of Kyiv

The attack was one of the few times Russian drones and missiles have penetrated the heart of Kyiv since the start of the full-scale invasion.

Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched 598 strike drones and decoys and 31 missiles of different types across the country early Thursday, most of them striking targets in Kyiv.

At least 33 locations across all 10 of the city’s districts were directly hit or damaged by debris, Tkachenko said. Thousands of windows shattered as nearly 100 buildings were damaged, including a shopping mall in the city center.

Oleksandr Khilko arrived at the scene after a missile hit the residential building where his sister lives in the capital’s Darnytsia district. He heard screams from people who were trapped under the rubble and pulled out three survivors, including a boy.

“It’s inhuman, striking civilians,” Khilko said, his clothes covered in dust and the tips of his fingers black with soot. “With every cell of my body I want this war to end as soon as possible. I wait, but every time the air raid alarm sounds, I am afraid.”

Sophia Akylina said her home in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district was damaged.

“It’s never happened before that they attacked so close,” the 21-year old said. “Negotiations haven’t yielded anything yet, unfortunately people are suffering.”

EU and UK summon Russian envoys after strikes hit their buildings

European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said two strikes landed 20 seconds apart about 50 meters (165 feet) from the EU Mission to Ukraine building in Kyiv. She said no staff were injured in the strike.

“No diplomatic mission should ever be a target. In response, we are summoning the Russian envoy in Brussels,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said Thursday in a post on X.

The British Council, which promotes cultural relations and educational opportunities, also said its Kyiv office had been “severely damaged” in the attack and was closed to visitors until further notice.

The organization posted a photo showing the building with its windows and entrance smashed open and surrounded by glass and debris. A guard was injured and is “shaken but stable,” council chief executive Scott McDonald posted on X.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “sabotaging” hopes of peace following the “senseless” strikes. The Russian ambassador to London was summoned to the foreign office.

Diplomatic efforts to reach peace have stalled

Thursday’s attack is the first major combined Russian mass drone and missile attack to strike Kyiv since U.S. President Donald Trump met with Putin in Alaska earlier this month to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

“Russia chooses ballistics instead of the negotiating table,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X following the attack. “We expect a response from everyone in the world who has called for peace but now more often stays silent rather than taking principled positions.”

While a diplomatic push to end the war appeared to gain momentum shortly after that meeting, few details have emerged about the next steps.

Western leaders have accused Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts and avoiding serious negotiations while Russian troops move deeper into Ukraine. This week, Ukrainian military leaders conceded Russian forces have broken into an eighth region of Ukraine seeking to capture more ground.

Zelenskyy hopes for harsher U.S. sanctions to cripple the Russian economy if Putin does not demonstrate seriousness about ending the war. He reiterated those demands following Thursday’s attack.

Trump bristled this week at Putin’s stalling on an American proposal for direct peace talks with Zelenskyy. Trump said Friday he expects to decide on next steps in two weeks if direct talks aren’t scheduled.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday said that it was “clear that a meeting between President Zelenskyy and President Putin will not take place.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized both Putin and Zelenskyy after the Thursday attack on Kyiv.

She said that Trump “was not happy about this news, but he was also not surprised” by Russia’s Thursday air assault on Ukrainian capital.

Leavitt noted that Ukraine has also launched effective assaults on Russia’s oil industry in recent weeks.

“Perhaps both sides of this war are not ready to end it themselves,” Leavitt said. “The president wants it to end, but the leaders of these two countries … must want it to end as well.”

Russia says it targeted ‘military-industrial complex’

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it carried out a strike against military air bases and companies “within Ukraine’s military-industrial complex” using long-range weapons, including Kinzhal missiles.

“All designated objects were hit,” the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine has ramped up domestic arms production to fight Russia’s invasion. Many weapons factories operate covertly, with some embedded in civilian areas with superior air defenses. Indiscriminate Russian attacks claiming to target Ukraine’s defense industry have killed many civilians.

The Russian Defense Ministry also said it shot down 102 Ukrainian drones overnight, mostly in the country’s southwest. A drone attack sparked a blaze at the Afipsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region, local officials said, while a second fire was reported at the Novokuibyshevsk refinery in the Samara region.

Ukrainian drones have repeatedly struck refineries and other oil infrastructure in recent weeks in an attempt to weaken Russia’s war economy, causing gas stations in some Russian regions to run dry and prices to spike.

Ukraine’s national railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, reported damage to its infrastructure in the Vinnytsia and Kyiv regions, causing delays and requiring trains to use alternative routes.

Associated Press journalists Yehor Konovalov, Vasilisa Stepanenko, Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sam McNeil in Brussels, Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, Daniel Niemann in Cologne, Germany and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

By ANDREW DeMILLO, Associated Press

Former Major League Baseball star Mark Teixeira announced Thursday that he’s running for the Republican nomination for a House seat in Texas.

The former slugger for the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees said he’s running for the 21st District seat currently held by Republican Rep. Chip Roy. Roy has said he’s not seeking reelection and is running for Texas attorney general.

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“As a proud Texan and lifelong conservative who loves our country, I’m ready to fight for the principles that make Texas strong and America exceptional,” Teixeira said in a statement posted on X. “It takes teamwork to win, and I’m ready to help defend President Trump’s America First agenda, Texas families and individual liberty.”

Teixeira began his career with the Rangers, and was the 5th overall pick in the 2001 MLB draft. His 14-season career included three All-Star Game appearances, five Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers and a World Series title with the Yankees in 2009. Teixeira and his family moved back to Texas in 2021 after he retired from baseball.

In his announcement, Teixeira pledged to work with Trump to secure the border and end “radical woke indoctrination.”

The district’s GOP primary already has another contender — Daniel Betts, who ran unsuccessfully for Travis County district attorney last year, has filed paperwork to run.

The 21st Congressional District covers a deeply conservative area west of both Austin and San Antonio. Teixeira announced his bid days after Republicans in the state Legislature approved a redistricting map meant to favor the GOP in the 2026 election.

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — When the White House fired Susan Monarez as director of the premier U.S. public health agency, it was clear to two of the scientific leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the political meddling would not end and it was time to quit.

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“We knew … if she leaves, we don’t have scientific leadership anymore, ” one of the officials, Dr. Debra Houry, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“We were going to see if she was able to weather the storm. And when she was not, we were done,” said Houry, one of at least four CDC leaders who resigned this week. She was the agency’s deputy director and chief medical officer.

The White House confirmed late Wednesday that Monarez was fired because she was not “aligned with” President Donald Trump’s agenda and had refused to resign. She had been sworn in less than a month ago.

Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., declined during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” to directly comment on the CDC shake-up. But he said he continues to have concerns about CDC officials hewing to the administration’s health policies.

“So we need to look at the priorities of the agency, if there’s really a deeply, deeply embedded, I would say, malaise at the agency,” Kennedy said. “And we need strong leadership that will go in there and that will be able to execute on President Trump’s broad ambitions.”

A lawyer for Monarez said the termination was not legal — and that she would not step down — because she was informed of her dismissal by staff in the presidential personnel office and that only Trump himself could fire her. Monarez has not commented.

Dr. Richard Besser, a former CDC acting director, said that when he spoke with Monarez on Wednesday, she vowed not to do anything that was illegal or that flew in the face of science. She had refused directives from the Department of Health and Human Services to fire her management team.

She also would not automatically sign off on any recommendations from a vaccines advisory committee handpicked by Kennedy, according to Besser, now president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helps support The Associated Press Health and Science Department.

Houry and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Monarez had tried to make sure scientific safeguards were in place.

Some concerned the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a group of outside experts who make recommendations to the CDC director on how to use vaccines. The recommendations are then adopted by doctors, school systems, health insurers and others.

Kennedy is a longtime leader in the anti-vaccine movement, and in June, he abruptly dismissed the entire panel, accusing members of being too closely aligned with manufacturers. He replaced them with a group that included several vaccine skeptics and then he shut the door to several doctors organizations that had long helped form vaccine recommendations.

Recently, Monarez tried to replace the official who coordinated the panel’s meetings with someone who had more policy experience. Monarez also pushed to have slides and evidence reviews posted weeks before the committee’s meetings and have the sessions open to public comment, Houry said.

HHS officials nixed that and called her to a meeting in Washington on Monday, Houry said.

When it became clear that Monarez was out, other top CDC officials decided they had to leave, too, Houry and Daskalakis said.

“I came to the point personally where I think our science will be compromised, and that’s my line in the sand,” Daskalakis said.

Monarez’s lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement that when she refused “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

“The March on Washington was more than inspiration; it was an act of defiance, a refusal to accept exclusion as fate. Yet here we are, generations later, asking why that promise is still just out of reach.”

The Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. on August. 28, 1963 (The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

More than 60 years have passed since that humid summer day when the Lincoln Memorial became a stage for American resolve—hundreds of thousands asserting their right to quality jobs, freedom, equality, dignity, and opportunity. The March on Washington was more than inspiration; it was an act of defiance, a refusal to accept exclusion as fate. Yet here we are, generations later, asking why that promise is still just out of reach.

To honor 1963, let’s start by naming the truth: economic insecurity and racial injustice in America are not accidental. They are structures built to last, designed and maintained by rules, decisions, and policies at every level. That structure, with its deep foundations and clever rebrandings, is still standing.

How does this system operate, and what does it produce? An analysis by the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies outlines a litany of disparities.

The federal minimum wage in 2025 stands at $7.25, unchanged since 2009 and far less than the inflation-adjusted minimum wage demanded by marchers six decades ago, which would have been $21 in 2025 dollars. 

Employment structure tells its own tale. Despite high workforce participation, too many Black workers are concentrated in lower-paying service jobs, while white workers are vastly overrepresented in management and professional ranks. The system doesn’t need to say “no”—it simply arranges the options so an equal “yes” is out of reach.

The wealth gap has also worsened since 1963. As of the last quarter of 2024, the average white household held about four times the wealth of Black households, and five times the wealth of Latino households. This is not a natural difference—it is the end result of decades of public and private policies shaping who gets access to wealth-building tools, homeownership, and capital. Year after year, the divide widens, making it ever harder for those born with fewer resources to catch up, no matter how hard they work.

And consider childhood opportunity. Black children are 3.5 times more likely than white children to be in “chronically underfunded” schools, and twice as likely to be in districts failing to meet adequate funding altogether. The practical effect is that these children are asked to chase opportunity while starting a proverbial race several paces behind. 

If this weren’t enough, recent federal actions have sharpened the edge. The “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law just last month, took a wrecking ball to key supports relied upon by millions of families. SNAP was cut by $186 billion—about 20 percent—with Black and Latino households twice as likely as white families to be food insecure. Medicaid cuts, eligibility restrictions, and changes to the Child Tax Credit hit hardest where the need is greatest.

Those changes to the Child Tax Credit, for example, will render 2 million U.S. citizen children in mixed immigration status families ineligible for the payment. The ripple effects of these choices are profound, shaping not only what families bring home but what they dream is possible for their children.

And not to mention, these cuts will lead to job reductions in the public sector, a field that has historically provided Black Americans with a pathway to better, more equitable job opportunities and allowed them to build a modicum of wealth. Black employees make up nearly 20 percent of the overall federal workforce, with even higher rates in some of the agencies that are being particularly targeted for cuts.

For example, the workforce of the Department of Education, which is subject to an executive order to facilitate its closure, is over one third (36 percent) Black. The bill that there is nothing beautiful about will also scale back enforcement at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), exposing Black and Brown workers to further racism and hostility—and lessens protections and accountability—in the private sector. 

Additionally, provisions of the bill will shift billions of dollars worth of costs to state and local governments, forcing them to either cut services to their residents or reduce their workforce. Again, this reduction in state and local government jobs will disproportionately target Black households. For instance, 22 percent of Black women in the labor force held government positions in 2022, a higher rate than any other racial or gender group, with a significant portion of these being at the state and local level.

These persistent gaps are not just the detritus of a forgotten past; they are manufactured by way of structural economic deprivation, a social construct created to normalize and enable systemic limitations on the ability of lower income people and communities to access financial, health, education and social resources that build and sustain wealth, thereby all but ensuring a socio-economic strata with individuals, families and communities living perennially in or near poverty. This is why, for example, policy decisions about minimum wage, job protections, or benefits consistently shape that work is dignified with fair pay and stability for some and denied to others.

We have a long way to fully dismantle the generational economic insecurity created by the systems and structures of law and policy. However, we cannot begin that process while still not addressing the root of the problem; we cannot solve that which we do not measure. 

The True Cost of Economic Security (TCES) measure, an economic tool created by the Urban Institute and commissioned by the National True Cost of Living Coalition, is a data-driven assessment of what families really need not just to survive, but to thrive. It counts the actual costs of housing, healthcare, food, childcare, and more, tailored to today’s realities.

This measure too demonstrates the racial inequity that persists today.It shows that 67 percent of Black households are economically insecure, compared to 42 percent for white households. It also provides a new and more accurate benchmark for us to strive toward, and with economic security as our standard, policy can finally match our values.

Imagine wages and structures built on that truth. Programs calibrated to actual living costs and the reality of what families are experiencing. Funding for schools and communities that begin with equity instead of scarcity. A standard of economic security shifts the minimum to mean dignity, agency, and opportunity, not just scraping by.

Change starts by insisting federal, state, and local governments, and even private institutions, use the TCES standard to guide policy. No more hiding behind arbitrary benchmarks. Only a clear line between getting by and truly thriving.

The structure of exclusion was built with intention. Let’s bring that same resolve to building its replacement, a new architecture of opportunity, belonging, and justice. The dream of 1963 was never modest. Neither can be the movement that finally brings it home.

Jennifer Jones Austin is the CEO of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA), an anti-poverty, policy and advocacy organization.

The post Opinion: A Dream for Economic Justice, Deferred by Design appeared first on City Limits.