“With so much riding on Florida’s 29 electoral votes in the presidential election, and the crucial role the state’s 450,000 Jewish voters may play in the outcome, the national Biden campaign is being cautious to the point of being cagey about what their strategy will be.”
“In this age of pandemics and polarization, it may be hard to envision. But it’s not a mystery. Someone who prizes decency and embodies dignity. Someone who exercises empathy and exhibits patience and understanding. Someone who lives, breathes and acts on the basic beliefs which are unique to Jewish tradition and universal in application—to pursue justice, welcome the stranger, open your hand and your heart to the needy and love your neighbor.”
Since the pandemic began, DeSantis has aped Trump’s responses–and non-responses–to the crisis. He has refused to take significant state action to stem the now-record rising tide of COVID-19. This has included intransigent resistance to mandating the use of masks, closing the beaches and ordering a stay-at-home lockdown. Echoing Trump, he deferred to local authorities to take such action.
For Donald Trump, the road to reelection—his only viable path, experts say—runs through Florida, with its crucial 29 electoral votes. That’s why, between Labor Day and Election Day, the Republican campaign plans to spend $32 million of the $95 million TV campaign budget in Florida. As the GOP ad buy acknowledges, without the Sunshine State, Trump is a one-term president.
The outcome of the platform debate over Israel will give Biden a good sense of how the party views the issue and where he may want to stand in order to avoid conflict with the base.
What do President Donald Trump and the religious right see in each other?
What are the chances of this dramatic step actually taking place? Is this an inevitable result of the new government formed or yet another election-promise bound to be discarded as campaign rhetoric makes way to reality?
It all depends on four key players, their motivation, and their ability to influence the course of events.
But it’s hard to substantiate Pompeo’s claim that Americans are now safer or that the Middle East is more peaceful, and recent events in the region offer facts that argue otherwise. In the two years since the U.S. dropped out of the deal, tensions in the Persian Gulf had reached a boiling point, freedom of passage in the crucial Gulf waters has been jeopardized, fighting spread to Saudi Arabia and endangered critical oil infrastructure, and U.S. and Iran came to the brink of a full out war after the killing of Qasem Soleimani and the retaliatory Iranian attack on an American base in Iraq.
On Tuesday, members of the Conference of Presidents will vote on the approval of Dianne Lob as the next chairwoman of the organization, a two-year position that would make her the group’s top lay leader. Initially, she was supposed to take office immediately upon approval, but a last-minute change will make Lob chair-elect for the next year, after which she will assume the chairmanship—more on that later.
“Unusual times call for unusual measures, so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise when a key aide to the president of the United States convenes a conference call with leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis, only to urge them to follow government instructions.”—Nathan Guttman
The nation is shutting down, its economy is grinding to a halt, but politics, so it seems, is still showing signs of vitality, perhaps even of growth.
“Just as Trump was there for Netanyahu when he needed a nice diplomatic gesture on the eve of Israeli elections (and then on the eve of the next one, and the next one) and just as he was willing to go further than any other American president in fulfilling the wishes of an Israeli center-right government, now Trump needs Netanyahu to do him a solid.”—Nathan Guttman
