Trump on Israel: ‘They’re not winning the world of public relations’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump said that backing for Israel in Congress had declined during the country’s military campaign in Gaza, telling The Daily Caller that Washington’s pro-Israel lobby no longer has the hold on Capitol Hill it once did.
“Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Israel was the strongest. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby,” Trump said. “It’s amazing.”
He attributed the decline to a public perception problem driven by the war in Gaza, emphasizing as he has before that he would like to see Israel bring the war to a close.
“They’re going to have to get that war over with. But it is hurting Israel. There’s no question about it,” Trump told Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese in an appearance on Monday. “They may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them.”
Trump’s comments come as a record number of Senate Democrats have supported legislation to block U.S. arms sales to Israel, and dozens of Democrats in the House have signed onto a similar bill. Support for Israel among Republicans remains high but is also on the decline, polls show.
Judge overturns Trump administration’s Harvard funding freeze tied to antisemitism allegations
(JTA) — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration had illegally frozen more than $2.6 billion in federal funding to Harvard University over claims of antisemitism.
In her 84-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs wrote that the Trump administration had used allegations of antisemitism at top U.S. universities as a “smokescreen” for advancing its political agenda.
“A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs wrote.
The decision comes a month after the Trump administration found that the school had violated the civil rights of its Jewish students in its response to alleged antisemitism.
Burroughs had previously questioned the ties between the federal government’s campaign against antisemitism and funding cuts, which have led to multi-million dollar settlements with other top universities including Columbia University and Brown University.
While the ruling is likely to be appealed by the federal government, Harvard and the Trump administration have also been negotiating a potential agreement that would reinstate its federal funding and end investigations into its conduct.
House ed panel to hold hearing on ‘drivers’ of Jew-hatred in K-12 schools
(JNS) — The House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education, which is part of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, plans to hold a Sept. 10 hearing on antisemitism in K-12 schools.
The hearing will “focus more broadly on trends and drivers” of Jew-hatred in primary and secondary schools, according to a committee spokesman.
Teachers’ unions are promoting “antisemitism in professional development materials, seminars and curricula,” and colleges of education are “offering classes that encourage classroom activism on Palestine or deconstructing white supremacy,” the spokesman told JNS.
He added that “outside groups,” like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “partner with local schools to lead classroom discussions.” CAIR’s leaders “celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre,” according to the spokesman. (CAIR also blamed Israel for being attacked that day.)
“Broadly speaking, these trends are driving antisemitism in K-12 education and create a hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty,” the spokesman told JNS.
The subcommittee hasn’t yet released a list of witnesses scheduled to testify.
Jim Walden drops out of NYC mayoral race, urging others to unite against Mamdani’s ‘antisemitic obsessions’
(JTA) — Attorney Jim Walden announced Tuesday that he is suspending his bid for mayor of New York City — and imploring other candidates to do the same to stop frontrunner Zohran Mamdani from winning November’s general election.
“For those still trailing in the polls by month’s end, I implore each to consider how history will judge them if they allow vanity or stubborn ambition to usher in Mr. Mamdani,” he said in a statement. “His past words reveal his extreme bigotry toward police, his authentic commitment to communism, his antisemitic obsessions, and his sympathies for terrorists.”
Walden, an independent, had been polling a distant fifth, at about 1%. With him out of the picture, the election is officially a four-man race among Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary in June; second-place finisher Andrew Cuomo; incumbent Eric Adams, who is running as an independent; and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
Walden made antisemitism one of the key issues of his campaign. He laid out a policy on fighting antisemitism that included urging the City Council to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, reviewing curricula at schools for bias related to Israel, and demanding that protest organizers state whether a foreign group is paying for the event.
White House reportedly discusses plans to clear NYC mayoral field for Cuomo
(JNS) — The White House has discussed the possibility of helping to clear the New York City mayoral race field to increase the chances of keeping frontrunner Zohran Mamdani out of office, The New York Times reported.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisers have weighed offering administration positions to Eric Adams, the New York City mayor, who is a Democrat now running as an independent, and for Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels.
The reported aim would be to generate a one-on-one general election matchup between Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, a former governor of New York, in November. Some polling suggests that Cuomo has the best chance against Mamdani, a Socialist who has criticized the Jewish state and said that he would have the Israeli prime minister jailed if he came to New York City, in a two-man race.
Adams’s campaign denied that the White House approached the mayor with such a plan. As for the mayor, he said on Wednesday that any question about whether he would take on a Trump administration role is “hypothetical.”
Sliwa stated that he has not been contacted by the White House. In any case, he said he was “not interested” in a job with the administration.
