The evacuees from Chernihiv, many of whom had lived underground to avoid an aggressive Russian shelling and bombing campaign, are among the tens of thousands of people Azman said he has helped to move from dangerous areas in the past month. On Friday night, they shuffled through the synagogue, passing by a large silver menorah before settling in the prayer hall, where they rested and warmed up before being relocated to the train station or nearby hotels for the night.

Azman is financing these lifesaving treks for civilians mainly through donations to the synagogue, which he uses to procure buses and pay drivers to deliver them out of the country’s front-line areas, including the devastated southern city of Mariupol. On Saturday at the synagogue, many people who evacuated from Chernihiv, about 90 miles north of Kyiv, boarded buses that took them over the border to Moldova.

Azman estimated that the effort has cost an average of about $100,000 a day since the war began, with a single bus costing upward of $20,000 because of current shortages. In all, he said, the humanitarian effort has cost nearly $2 million. Ukraine’s Jewish community has long faced violent discrimination — including pogroms and the horrors of the Holocaust — that prompted many Jewish Ukrainians to emigrate out of the country.

Azman had a brief moment in the international spotlight during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment drama. Igor Fruman, an associate of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, knew Azman from the Brodsky Synagogue and raised money for Anatevka, the village in Ukraine linked to Azman that was established to house Jewish refugees fleeing the war in the country’s east. At one point in 2019, Giuliani traveled to Europe, met Azman and became an “honorary mayor” of the town.

Four Ukrainian children were transported to the United States for cancer treatment with the help of the US State Department and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday, and they will meet with first lady Jill Biden on Friday.

According to Price, the State Department helped to airlift the children and "some of their immediate family members from Poland to Memphis International Airport, where they were met and transported to St. Jude."

"There, the patients will be able to safely resume critical cancer therapy disrupted by the Kremlin's aggression. They will receive the specialized care they desperately need, and their family members will be afforded sustenance, security, and support from St. Jude," he said in a statement.

In a tweet, Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that "Children are among the most vulnerable in a crisis," saying the State Department was "humbled" to help airlift them.

In questioning Jackson about her understanding of precedent, Sen. Maize Hirono, D-Hawaii, gave us a perfect excuse to remember the biggest mic drop moment in Jackson’s career to date.

In April 2019, the House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify on his interviews with special counsel Robert Mueller. McGahn argued, as did the White House, that thanks to “absolute immunity” there was no way for Congress to force a member of the executive branch to testify.

Jackson, in her ruling, handed down a complete and total smackdown of this frankly absurd legal theory. It’s worth revisiting the most powerful portion of that opinion, not just for the ideals it defends but for the power of her writing:

Stated simply, the primary takeaway fromthe past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings. […] This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Moreover, as citizens of the United States, current and former senior level presidential aides have constitutional rights, including the right to free speech, and they retain these rights even after they have transitioned back into private life.

Bear in mind, this was in the middle of then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment scandal. While Trump may not have taken the lesson that Jackson issued to heart, it makes me look forward to any opinions she may write if confirmed to the Supreme Court.