Long Islander's envoy post in limbo

Daily Point

Ambassador post for LI's Landa delayed

It is no shock that the post of U.S. ambassador to Hungary remains vacant nearly 10 months after President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Long Island nursing home businessman Benjamin Landa for the post. After all, there are reported to be 107 out of 195 top diplomatic jobs still open in various embassies round the globe. For most of these vacancies the president has yet to even name an appointee. Meantime, confirmations for those nominated are backed up in the Senate.

Reasons for these delays vary. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) last week was given evidence that the administration was releasing funds it owed for the nation's global initiative to combat HIV/AIDS. That ended a delay in which he balked at voting for Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano, both Trump insiders, as ambassadors to Jamaica and Slovakia, respectively.

Landa and other diplomatic nominees must first go before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A vote on Landa, 69, of Lawrence, has yet to be scheduled. Also, last week the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs delayed a vote on Jeffrey Ledbetter, the nominee for inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had questions about the FBI background check for Ledbetter.

Landa is the CEO of SentosaCare LLC, a former owner and operator of Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation in Woodbury that was sued in 2022 on charges of financial fraud and resident neglect. As he awaits confirmation hearings, Landa's business activities and investments have yet to come up for open discussion at the Capitol. Meanwhile, he reportedly has been divesting parts of his nursing home portfolio to avoid potential conflicts.

Since Trump submitted Landa's name, the politics in Hungary have been changing. Back in April, Viktor Orbán, the iconic 16-year prime minister close to the Trump circle, lost an election landslide to Péter Magyar.

Magyar has indicated his nation will remain a strong ally of the United States and of Israel, where Landa has ties and personal friendships. But Magyar appears bent on backing off his predecessor's veto of European Union sanctions against militant Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Pencil Point

The hate vote

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Quick Points

Yeah, but can he untie LI politics?

• Stony Brook University Professor John Pardon won the prestigious Fields Medal (remember "Good Will Hunting"?) for studying the obscure and complicated nature of knots. Maybe Pardon can calculate how to untangle the Gordian knot that is Long Island's partisan politics.
• The New York Giants kick off training camp July 28 in ... West Virginia. Ongoing construction at their East Rutherford, New Jersey, facility coupled with the World Cup games caused the relocation. The Giants holding training camp in West Virginia makes as much sense as Cam Skattebo Rorschach test results.
• Nassau and Suffolk firefighters hosted a firefighting training camp for teens at the Nassau County Fire Service Academy last week. Dubbed "Camp Fahrenheit 516," the event taught "search and rescue, forcible entry, emergency evacuation procedures" and more. About 47 teens from 28 Island departments participated. It's a great event for the future of firefighting, but the name, an obvious allusion to Ray Bradbury's famous dystopian sci-fi novel, may need a reboot.
• Speaking of Orwellian references, OpenAI said last week that its ChatGPT "went rogue and hacked" its way out of a controlled test, according to the BBC. Uh-oh. Sounds like the chatbot showed "extreme intelligence, even problem-solving intelligence. They were testing the fences for weaknesses, systematically. They remember."

— Mark Nolan mark.nolan@newsday.com

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