Biden to Address Antisemitism at Holocaust Remembrance
May 7: Biden antisemitism speech … Social Security and Medicare … RNC lawyer out … Sanders running again …
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At the Capitol today, Pres. Joe Biden will deliver the keynote address for the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance observance, using the occasion to sound the alarm against increased antisemitism around the country.
The White House reportedly says that Biden will “speak to the horrors of October 7,” the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, killing 1,200 civilians and taking hundreds more hostage, some of whom remain in captivity. Biden is expected to recall the Holocaust, and the wholesale, industrial slaughter of six million Jews with a pledge to “recommit to heeding the lessons of this dark chapter: Never again.”
It’s not clear why Biden has chosen to single out antisemitism for this address, when Islamophobia and acts of hate targeting people of Arab or Palestinian descent have also been on the rise since Oct. 7. Biden in past remarks has condemned such acts alongside antisemitism.
Depending on his speech today, Biden risks turning the Holocaust from a shocking, singular, ghastly argument against wholesale state violence into part of a rationale for it: A horror so obscene and unthinkable that it justifies extreme measures to prevent its recurrence.
And there’s also the danger that Biden will use the reality of rising antisemitism as a cudgel to delegitimize legitimate protest against the Israeli government, its killing of almost 35,000 people in Gaza, and Zionism broadly. (And, as I’ve previously discussed with Mikey Weinstein, there’s the danger of diluting the meaning of true antisemitism.)
In a speech last week, Biden said peaceful forms of disobedience must not be tolerated if they threaten “order,” defending the universities and police deploying violence against a time-honored form of college protest: Occupying administration buildings.
Republicans have not been alone encouraging punitive measures against colleges that are seen permitting expansive visions of free speech. Historically, campuses have been the moral canaries in our national coal mine, leading indicators of when the nation is fucking up royally. Stifling, let alone ending, that tradition threatens not just intellectual and academic freedom, but our national capacity to recognize our own future wrongs.
Biden is expected to deliver no condemnation of Islamophobia or anti-Arab bigotry in a major speech on the National Days of Palestinian Forgetance, which is every day.
But tomorrow, the Biden administration is expected to notify Congress whether it, too, is willing to risk being called antisemitic by criticizing Israel. Specifically, the State Department will share with Congress its legally required report assessing whether Israel has violated U.S. or international law by demolishing much of Gaza, killing thousands of civilians — including relief workers, doctors, journalists, and people who didn’t have jobs because they were babies — and then throttling the inflow of food, water, and medical supplies to the survivors.
“God help us if this report somehow says that … the delivery of humanitarian assistance has been compliant with international standards,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). “God help us if that’s your finding because anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear knows that that’s just not true.”
If what Van Hollen says about what’s true is true, and the report does find that Israel has violated the law, it will make the Biden administration officially the world’s most prominent, powerful critic of Israel, and the president himself, as his Republican critics will surely say, an antisemite.
And the State Department report on Israel’s law-abidingness or lack thereof is also coming at an awkward time given a recent threat by Republican senators.
In an April 24 letter, first revealed publicly yesterday, the 11 Senate Republicans warned prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials are to be considered above the law, just as if they were any other national leader named D4FRFP1 Donald Trump who is also above the law.
(It’s worth noting that some of the signatories are defenders of Israel because they believe that if Israel isn’t around with a sufficient number of Jews, Jesus can’t return to convert them and/or send the non-converting Jews to Hell forever.)
Their letter actually threatens ICC personnel. “Target Israel and we will target you … [and] sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States.”
The letter concludes, “You have been warned.”
Well, actually, the letter concludes: “You have been warned. Sincerely…” which I think was a nice touch but kind of takes some of the oomph out of the warning. But at least they’re sincere!
MEANWHILE Israel appears to be honoring Biden’s red line against invading the border city of Rafah. However, the Israeli military strategy for complying appears to be by refraining from mounting a full-blown ground offensive and instead inching in gradually using tactics such as troops casually walking in backwards while whistling nonchalantly.
And Hamas this morning accepted the terms of a cease-fire proposed by diplomats from Qatar and Egypt. One tiny hitch: Israel has not. Netanyahu said cease-fire talks will continue while his military continues to not cease firing in Rafah.
Social Security, Medicare Get a Reprieve
Thanks to a roaring economy, the meager amount of tax revenue collected by the government has actually increased more than expected, filling the coffers of two key government benefit programs enough to extend their projected life expectancies.
The boards of trustees of the federal Social Security and Medicare programs announced that they’ve now got enough cash for Social Security to pay full benefits through 2035, a year later than previous forecasts. Medicare will be able to pay its hospital bills through 2036, five years later than the previous estimate.
All of which proves to the right wing that both programs are running out of money and therefore must be destroyed so that they don’t run out of money, by dint of not existing anymore.
Even though the new estimates show improved financial health for both programs, conservatives did the math opposite-like. The new estimates “drive home the fact that the clock is ticking down on automatic cuts to Social Security and Medicare,” said Peter G. Peterson Foundation CEO Michael Peterson, who supports austerity measures even while his own organization enjoys a clear excess of “Peter”s.
Pres. Joe Biden has called for extending and expanding Social Security and Medicare the most obvious way possible: Taking more money from rich people who don’t deserve and/or need it.
That’s a popular position, unlike the Republican zeal for raising eligibility ages right up to the moment your capitalism-defined life flashes blurrily before your eyes that you couldn’t afford to have treated for cataracts. Biden’s political problem is that D4FRFP Donald Trump also rejects the standard Republican position and has said he doesn’t want to cut entitlements.
Top GOP Lawyer Lasted Two Almost-Whole Months
The top lawyer for the Republican National Committee (RNC) has resigned, the Washington Post reports. Charlie Spies was hired all the way back in March, after D4FRFP Donald Trump succeeded in putting the RNC under the control of loyalists who have not yet agreed to testify against him.
No official reason was given for the departure of Spies, reportedly a “long-respected” party attorney, aside from the obvious problems inherent in being long-respected.
Trump personally signed off on the hiring, but as a notoriously shitty manager and leader failed to vet Spies for possible indications of empiricism. Soon enough, Trump loyalists ratted to Trump that Spies knew — and, worse, said — that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen.
Spies took the job thinking he had the support of Trump’s team, which tells you how good Spies is at knowing things that are less obvious than the 2020 election. His hiring, the Post writes, “was viewed as a sign Trump’s RNC could attract significant party talent.” His departure, therefore, should now be viewed as a sign that the Post’s sign-viewers suck at viewing signs.
Spies comes from the RNC’s old school, which doesn’t deny voters the right to have their candidates take office, it just denies voters the right to vote. Spies specifically has experience opposing Democratic changes to 2020 voting rules which were (a) legal and (b), as the Post neglects to note, implemented so that people could vote during a pandemic that had a higher fatality rate for people who vote. Spies has also worked to force cutting ineligible voters from voting rolls, which often cuts eligible voters from voting rolls.
Campaign Watch
BERN NOTICE Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced yesterday that he’s running for re-election. Politico reports that Sanders will run once more as an Independent, turning down the Democratic Party nomination if he wins the primary, which he’s expected to do, but continuing to caucus with Democrats in the Senate.
Sanders is the overwhelming favorite to win both the primary and the general election despite due to being a democratic socialist.
GOP The newest Republican Party tactic to scandalize responsive government is so loony-tunes, you should expect to hear it parroted by “centrist” Democrats in the 2026 elections. It’s actually an argument that’s cropped up before: That enacting policy to benefit voters financially qualifies as vote-buying.
Vote-buying actually is a corrupt electioneering practice: It’s when you literally hand someone cash in return for their promise to vote for you. That, however, is not what Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) was describing on Sunday, when he alleged that Democrats are doing it.
Referring to federal forgiveness of predatory student-loan debt, Burgum said, “Those are like, ‘hey, folks, please vote for us because we’re relieving your debt.’ So at what point does it cross over, programs like student debt, to just vote-buying?”
Which, of course, you could ask of any government program that benefits anyone. The government, as anyone who works in it ought to know, was designed to be a competition to benefit the people. Premised on the increasingly hypothetical ability of voters to recognize what benefits them, representational democracy is openly, intentionally transactional: Voters reward politicians who reward them.
Burgum may be trying to discredit this basic American premise, or he may literally be so dumb that he thinks politicians aren’t supposed to respond to public pressure by adopting calculated positions, they’re supposed to act on whatever impulse their authentic essences desire. The heart wants the tax cuts for the rich that the heart wants.
Meanwhile, however, while the GOP whipped out the smelling salts in response to Democratic vote-buying at the retail level, Republican candidates are bypassing voters entirely to buy entire elections wholesale…
INDIANA A wealth of wealthy Republicans in today’s Indiana primaries are competing by using their own wealth to buy ads, Roll Call reports, rather than doing the hard work of getting voters to like them enough to give them money.
There’s Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), running for re-election in the fifth district. But Spartz got off to a bad spart. First she said last year that she would retire. Then in February she said would not retire. Then in March she forgot to deny ever saying that she would retire.
Spartz is loaning at least $700,000 of her own money to herself to fend off her challengers. But those challengers have more money of their own to use against her, thanks to Spartz lowering their taxes. One is Chuck Goodrich, whose last name is at least half accurate. Goodrich has put $4.6 million — of the money he somehow made despite crushing taxes and burdensome regulations — into his campaign because he’s that driven to fight for Indiana’s poor.
Then there’s Indiana’s primary for the third district congressional seat. Tim Smith was able to loan his campaign $1.1 million that he made helping doctors and medical institutions accused of malpractice to avoid paying out on claims against them by the victims. Former Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) left the seat for a failed Senate run and is trying to reclaim it by lending his campaign $500,000 that he made as a, um, congressman? And rival Wendy Davis loaned her campaign $257,000 that she made as a, um, judge?
And in the open sixth district, Jefferson Shreve is running with help from $5.6 million that he self-funded as a self-storage executive. Virtually all of his funding is coming from the profits he makes selling off storage-units worth of crap left behind when people die in mysterious self-storage accidents. Shreve’s previous political experience includes spending more than $13 million of “his” money to not become mayor of Indianapolis. This time he’s up against state Rep. Mike Speedy, who’s loaned himself $1.5 million, presumably at low interest rates, and church leader Jamison Carrier, who wrote a check to himself for $750,000.
Bottom line: There’s a lot of rich people willing to spend a lot of their wealth to serve the poor!
NEW JERSEY DEMOCRATS You may remember that the notorious New Jersey Democratic Party Machine™ lost a crucial court battle earlier this year, forcing them to small-d democratize the ballots for next month’s primary, which includes the races for president and Congress — including the seat now held by the allegedly corrupt Sen. Bob Menendez (D-IL) — as well as local offices further down the ballot.
The ruling said that ballots this year could not be constructed using “The Line,” the notorious, race-tilting, thumb-on-scale-putting design that slapped the party’s favorites or endorsed candidates right at the top of the ballot. Instead, the ruling said, this year’s primary ballot positions would have to be randomized. Well, now they’re out, Gothamist reports, and the top ballot positions randomly went to every single candidate endorsed by the notorious New Jersey Democratic Party Machine™.
According to Gothamist, the odds of party favorites getting all the top slots in four top races are just 4.2%, so congratulations to the lucky winners!
TCB
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JOURNALISMING I just got some new documents in response to a public-records request. You won’t see the results for a number of weeks, but am I excited, my dear, sweet Newsfucker? Dear, sweet Newsfucker, I am. I’ve got some other stories in the pipeline first, but the revelations I just got are coming right behind. You can be a part of this and support my work by joining the growing ranks of Newsfuckers who’ve taken the plunge and become a paid subscriber. Thank you!
Go get ‘em, kids…!
D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.
Israel will gladly agree to a ceasefire to obtain the return of the hostages, as long as they don’t have to stop attacking Gaza.
Another brilliant report!
Going to ignore that hypocrite, Biden. He's on the Zionists' side. Zionism is antisemitism. Israel has been an occupying force for 75 years. And he thinks Israel having a US tax money funded, universal healthcare system is peachy keen, yet he's against it here. Maybe if someone tells him that Israel is breaking the Hyde Amendment, which Joe supports, he'll stop funding them🧐 Nah🤣