Collage of images: Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court building, Trump with a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews

Trump’s Parting Gifts

Despite a failed reelection campaign, Donald Trump and his team registered several notable gains this election season. Trump slightly increased the share of Black and Hispanic Americans voting for him, alongside an impressive turnout from a small but well-organized subgroup: Orthodox Jews. According to polls and estimates, more than 80 percent of Orthodox Jews cast their vote for Trump, making them one of his most approving constituencies in the nation.

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Rabbis For McCain, Sort Of

Yesterday we wrote about Rabbis for Obama. Today, according to a Forward article, we should focus on Rabbis for McCain. Well, sort of. Says the Forward: A group of leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel is preparing to release a statement that urges the country’s American expatriates to exercise their voting rights in November by casting absentee ballots... Kalish said that the campaign, the first of its kind, is a nonpartisan effort to maximize the voting rate among American Israelis in order to strengthen the Jewish community’s bargaining power in Washington. The hope, he said, is that a high turnout will encourage the winning candidate — and other decision makers — to pay attention to the Jewish community’s priorities when formulating policy. So the first obvious difference between this movement and the one for Obama is that these...

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