Mamdani Sweep in NYC Adds to Strains Between Jews and Democratic Party

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What unsettled them was the scale of victory by a trio of left-wing candidates who were endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and had made criticism of Israel the emotional core of their campaigns.

One, Democratic Socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier, attended a pro-Palestine rally in Times Square a day after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Fellow Democrats denounced the rally as condoning Hamas’s massacre. Yet Avila Chevalier still managed to overtake incumbent Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th Congressional District, which includes Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.

Watching the results on a television at the Goldman party, Rachel Lavine, a member of the Village Independent Democrats political club, was astonished. “This is about hating Jews,” said Lavine. “I feel like we have a problem within the Jewish community of not understanding how serious this is. At this point, Israel is a beard for antisemitism.”

New York City boasts the largest Jewish community outside Israel and stands as a metropolis where generations of Jews have thrived while leaving an indelible cultural mark. Yet Tuesday’s results—after campaigns that dwelled on Israel and, in the view of some, deployed antisemitic tropes—have scrambled their relationship to the city while exposing fractures within their own community.

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While Tuesday night’s New York City results felt seismic—not least as an expression of Mamdani’s growing power—some analysts questioned their breadth. Pro-Israel moderates also prevailed, including Micah Lasher, who won a hotly contested race to succeed Jerry Nadler in Manhattan’s 12th District.

Rep. Brad Sherman, a Jewish Democrat from California who has long been a leading pro-Israel voice in Congress, said the results reflected the particular politics of a few New York districts—not the country.

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https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/mamdani-sweep-in-nyc-adds-to-strains-between-jews-and-democratic-party-986b15c7?st=zxtAYM&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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What the Reflecting Pool debacle says about Trump and his presidency - Tumulty WaPo

When the going gets rough in politics, mishap becomes metaphor. Rarely has that been truer than with President Donald Trump’s botched makeover of the National Mall’s Reflecting Pool, which has indeed become a reflection — of his priorities, his impulses and his assertion of authority and power in his second term. On an iconic site where some of the most stirring moments in the nation’s history have taken place, the American public is seeing images of Gatorade-green water filled with algae, floating peels of paint in a shade the president dubbed “American flag blue” — and even a dead duck.

The contrast from what Trump promised in April, when he announced his plan to repair and refurbish the pool, has been nightmarish. Its problems go back to its creation. The pool was constructed without underlying support in the 1920s on reclaimed marshland; the swamp has slowly been taking it back ever since. Citing his background as a master builder, Trump quoted rejected estimates that repairing the pool would take 3½ years and more than $300 million.

Instead, “our job will take one week and will cost about a million and a half dollars and people said, ‘Wow,’” the president told reporters. “And here’s the only difference. … The difference is, this is much better. This will last 30, 40, 50 years.” The price tag quickly escalated to its current $14 million, and the time frame became six weeks. Trump, as is his wont, bypassed normal, legally required processes and awarded no-bid contracts to vendors with whom he had previous ties. The administration claimed the urgency was justified because the work had to get done by America’s 250th birthday, though that deadline also appears to have gone by the wayside. All of which is an object lesson as to why the procedures that Trump has disdained exist in the first place.

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That legacy-building impulse has expressed itself as an urge to put his name, his image and his brand on whatever he can in Washington. When a reporter asked him last year about a triumphal arch he was building near Arlington National Cemetery and whom he was building it for, Trump had a ready answer: “Me. It’s going to be beautiful.” Privately, Trump has also mused about the possibility of topping the arch with a replica of his own fist, raised as he cried “Fight! Fight! Fight!” after a 2024 assassination attempt, according to an account in “Regime Change,” a newly published book about his second term by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

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Trump has also pressed for New York’s Penn Station and the Washington area’s Dulles International Airport to be named for him, at one point briefly threatening to hold up already appropriated funding for a commuter tunnel between New Jersey and New York City to get his way. Under a Florida law passed earlier this year, Palm Beach International Airport, roughly five miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, will officially be renamed the President Donald J. Trump International Airport in July.

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https://archive.ph/d3bmX

Vermont Becomes Latest State to Limit Private Equity's Influence on Healthcare

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Vermont is now the third state, after Oregon and California, to pass new restrictions on the corporate practice of medicine since the start of last year. In addition, states including Massachusetts and Indiana recently enacted laws to scrutinize private equity’s healthcare investments. Connecticut last month passed a law to ban a type of transaction critics say private-equity firms use to extract money from hospitals.

The action may soon shift to the federal level. The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest doctors’ group, last week voted to seek a nationwide prohibition on corporate interference with physicians’ patient care, and to oppose certain legal structures commonly used by private-equity firms to invest in healthcare practices.

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These actions reflect how public opinion may be moving against private equity’s activities in the medical sector. The bankruptcies of formerly private equity-backed hospital operators Steward Health Care System and Prospect Medical Holdings in 2024 and 2025, which led to hospital closures and cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, helped galvanize anti-private-equity sentiment.

In addition, a growing body of research suggests private-equity investment can lead to higher medical costs and worse care. For instance, last year researchers at Harvard Medical School, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Chicago found that patient deaths increase at hospitals that are taken over by private equity.

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https://archive.ph/XsQVw

Here's the real Democratic autopsy - Doug Sosnik

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A good political rule of thumb is that a handful of moments determine the outcome of an election, and they seldom happen in a campaign’s final days or weeks. That held true in 2024. There were three decisions President Joe Biden made that ultimately determined his party’s fate.

The first was his choice to run for a second term. Campaigning in Michigan in March 2020, the then-77-year-old said he viewed himself as a transitional figure, a “bridge” to a new “generation.” That tapped into the American zeitgeist. The country was exhausted from Trump’s first term and viewed the former vice president as an acceptable short-term fix. Nothing more. Voters weren’t looking for a return to “normal” or a defender of the status quo. They were, and remain, desperate for a generational change in leadership.

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That led to the second factor that proved decisive in 2024. After taking office, Biden, under pressure from reform groups, immediately relaxed or rescinded a series of Trump administration immigration enforcement policies. This led to an unprecedented increase in illegal immigration that reversed more than a decade of decline. Pew estimates that the unauthorized immigration population in the United States reached approximately 14 million in 2023, up from 10.2 million in 2019. By the time the White House adopted emergency border restrictions in 2024, the damage had been done.

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The third factor that led to the Democrats’ 2024 defeat was the party’s misreading of the 2022 midterms. In the run-up to those elections, the public had grown increasingly concerned about Biden’s age. There was a broad expectation that Democrats were going to lose, and badly, putting more pressure on the president not to run for a second term.

But in June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, supplying an animating issue for the Democrats that fall. The party was further aided by a favorable Senate map and poor Republican candidate recruitment in federal and state races. The Democrats went on to outperform historical trends for the party in power, and the White House touted the success as a sign of support for Biden’s presidency. It used the results as a cudgel against anyone daring to primary him in 2024.

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https://archive.ph/cKgqY

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Doug Sosnik, a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000, is a counselor to the Brunswick Group.

New Rule: No Jews, No News Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

You may hate Bill Maher but as a Democrat, a liberal, you should watch it and then pass judgement.

The Truth About Hamas

Reading “Silenced No More,” the new report by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, we were transported back to Oct. 27, 2023, and a screening of the raw footage of Hamas’s atrocities. The mouths of journalists were agape, but time dulls horrific reality.

The new report is a catalogue, for memory’s sake, of Hamas depravity. Testimony from site after site attests to rape and assault. Screams and pleas. Gunshots to the face and genitals. Mutilation. Burning. Bodies naked, legs spread. Grotesque scenes staged. All forming an evidentiary record, the result of more than 10,000 photos and video segments and more than 430 interviews, testimonies and meetings with survivors, witnesses and experts.

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A male says he was gang-raped at the Nova site, providing medical records and a detailed account: “They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll.” The Hamas invaders had been given operational materials including Arabic-to-Hebrew phrase lists such as “take off your pants/take your clothes off,” “lie down” and “spread your legs.” The planned sexual degradation speaks to years of Palestinian propaganda that treats Jews as sub-human.

Sexual abuse continued for hostages, who are on video being groped and humiliated during abductions. In one video, a female hostage begs for her life while the narrator says, “This is one of the Jewish dogs.”

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We regret having to relate such details, but it is crucial to remember when the understandable human impulse is to forget such horrors. All the more so because the sexual violence by Hamas has been aggressively denied by an antisemitic global left that wants us to forget. Everywhere denial serves the same purpose: to distort Israel’s defensive war as if it were wanton violence. Such deniers prefer anything to reminding the world why Israel has no choice but to fight for its life.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/hamas-sexual-violence-report-civil-commission-october-7-israel-2e68d781?st=SMjMWv&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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The report Silence No Moe

https://cc4e0711-9401-400e-ae14-65ae0400675b.filesusr.com/ugd/aab121_882e9391df384e169d29f16c0faefeac.pdf

Quoting a character in a book: be yourself, everyone else is taken.

Five Financial Blind Spots That Burden Grieving Spouses

Losing a spouse is a profound emotional blow, and it often triggers a second crisis: a financial fog of legal hurdles and hidden tax traps. From being locked out of assets to facing a “widow’s penalty” that can raise tax rates, the transition from a partnership to solo financial management is fraught with potential costs. The Wall Street Journal asked financial planners and other experts for their advice on ways to help ensure a grieving spouse is prepared for the road ahead.

Surprise debt
Survivors are often surprised to discover that the late spouse had individual credit-card debt. In many states, if a card is only in one spouse’s name, the survivor is generally not legally obligated to pay it. But rules vary: In “community property” states spouses might be liable for debts incurred during the marriage, even if they didn’t sign for them.

Locked out of accounts
Assets owned solely by the deceased must go through probate—the court process of validating a will—before they can be transferred to a surviving spouse. In some counties, this can take more than a year, leaving the spouse locked out of necessary funds.

To avoid these delays, Kestenbaum recommends:
Revocable trusts: Assets in these don’t go through probate.
Joint ownership: Property or accounts held jointly transfer automatically to the survivor.

Invisible credit records
Widows are sometimes surprised to find they have little or no personal credit history, said Carla Adams, a financial planner in Lake Orion, Mich. If one spouse handled all credit cards and loans, the survivor might appear essentially invisible to credit bureaus—even with significant household assets. To avoid this, both partners should maintain active credit in their names, Adams said.

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https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/five-financial-blind-spots-that-burden-grieving-spouses-57e52a85?st=gin9TP&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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The Beauty Queens of MAGA World

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In January, Abbie Stockard, the reigning Miss America, turned up at Donald Trump’s inauguration wearing a MAHA gown. When it came time to select a cabinet, Trump tapped South Dakota’s 1990 Snow Queen, Kristi Noem, as secretary of homeland security. Anna Kelly, a former Miss State Fair of Virginia, was appointed deputy press secretary. Last month, when the president needed someone to push through criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director, another beauty queen came to the fore: Lindsey Halligan. The one-time Miss Colorado semifinalist did the job after Trump pushed out the top federal prosecutor for eastern Virginia and elevated her.

Halligan’s turn in the spotlight has paled beside the glow of another pageant veteran. Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was Miss Arizona USA in 2012. At her husband’s funeral last month, she demonstrated preternatural poise addressing a stadium-sized crowd, extolling a traditional view of marriage in which he was the family’s spiritual leader while she maintained the home.

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To their proponents, pageants are a training ground for young women to succeed in a world beyond the swimsuit competition. They learn discipline and poise and how to think on their feet. The life of a Miss America—crossing the country to appear at events, speaking in public, developing a platform and smiling for endless pictures—isn’t so different from that of a campaigning politician.

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Margot Mifflin, author of the 2020 book “Looking For Miss America,” believes pageants and MAGA are “consonant” in their inclination to maintain the status quo. “MAGA culture is rewarding a certain kind of woman that beauty pageants reward,” Mifflin said. Both “revere conventional, traditional representations of women.”

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Trump, another Atlantic City hotelier, would become the pageant world’s king when he bought the organization that owns the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe competitions. If Miss America is prim and studious, competing for university scholarships, think of Miss USA as the racier sister. Or as Mifflin put it, “It’s a little more of a skin show.” More than once, contestants complained about Trump going backstage when they were undressed—something he did not deny in a 2005 interview with Howard Stern. “I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready, and everything else, and, you know, no men anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant, and therefore I’m inspecting it,” he told Stern. “You know they’re standing there with no clothes…And you see these incredible looking women.”

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https://www.wsj.com/politics/the-beauty-queens-of-maga-world-23bf590b?st=TC5CCA&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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Cynthia Ozick: A New York Jewish Life of Letters

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Although she attends an Orthodox synagogue, Ms. Ozick prefers to describe herself as “just generically Jewish.” If there’s a theme that dominates her oeuvre, it’s Jewishness, particularly Jewish life in America, which has of late infected her with sorrow. Jewishness, she says, is “co-extensive, or coterminous, with American life. You couldn’t pull Jews and America apart. Until now.” She means the period since Oct. 7, 2023.

Seated at her dining table, Ms. Ozick trembles as she speaks of “the mystery of that day in October.” On the very morrow, “it was as if, in this country and everywhere in the world, permission was suddenly given.” She means permission for antisemitism. Her consternation is “profound,” she says: “How could an event like that, a terrible massacre so minutely recorded by the perps, open these permissive floodgates?”

The question torments her. “It’s a greater puzzle than antisemitism itself. The whole world was standing there, suppressing antisemitism, and when Oct. 7 happened, it said, ‘Oh, look. It happened. So we can do it, too.’ ” Her last published commentary, which appeared on these pages, addressed these events. Titled “Antisemitism and the Politics of the Chant,” it asked whether we’ve “come to the end of a Golden Age” in America, especially for its Jewish citizens. She fears we have. The massacre gave a green light for “Jew-hate,” she says. “But for some exceptions, there was no sympathy. It was as if this country changed overnight.

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After Oct. 7, she confronted a question about the country to which her Jewish parents fled from Russia, and where they found great happiness in their lives as Americans. “Is it now the beginning, little by little, of the disintegration of what we’ve come to call the Judeo-Christian in America. Is the legacy of the Founding Fathers coming to an end?” (After that question, she apologizes for using a “cliché.”)

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/cynthia-ozick-a-new-york-jewish-life-of-letters-52aff38e?st=sZPMcc&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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