President-elect Joe Biden announced the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas, a Latino Jew who has emphasized the heightened threat facing American Jews, as his Homeland Security secretary on Monday. Mayorkas, 60, the deputy secretary of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, was born in Cuba to a Cuban-Jewish father and Romanian Jewish mother. His mother survived…
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib expressed concern Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Secretary of State might try to silence her criticism of Israeli government policy. Biden tapped longtime diplomat Tony Blinken for the role. “Just make sure he doesn’t try to silence me and suppress my First Amendment right to speak out against Netanyahu’s…
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling on Mayor De Blasio to investigate reports of a Hasidic wedding with thousands of guests held earlier this month on November 8. The wedding would have been held just weeks after another prominent Satmar wedding was publicly called off amid a backlash over convening guests during the pandemic, members of…
(JTA) — Jewish groups in Quebec are expressing dismay after the province announced a plan to allow small gatherings at Christmas but said gatherings during Hanukkah would remain prohibited. The plan would permit Quebecers to have gatherings of up to 10 people per day for four days in late December, in a concession to the…
The State Department will work to identify groups that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in order to stop funding them due to the alleged antisemitic nature of BDS, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. is committed to countering the Global BDS Campaign…
Judge Merrick Garland is being considered for attorney general by President-elect Joe Biden, according to an NPR report. Garland, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama but the Republican-led Senate refused to hold a vote on his nomination….
(JTA) — A broad coalition of Jewish studies scholars and directors of Jewish and Holocaust museums has signed a petition opposing the proposed appointment of Effi Eitam, a far-right Israeli politician, to chair Israel’s Holocaust museum. The petition, which has 750 signers, is the latest protest against Eitam. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies…
Mike Pompeo became the first U.S. secretary of state to visit both an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, a disputed area on Israel’s border with Syria that the Trump administration has recognized as part of Israel. At a news conference Thursday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pompeo…
President-elect Joe Biden is considering appointing Diane Yentel, a housing policy expert with two decades of experience in the field, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, according to the Real Deal. Yentel, leads the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), a progressive housing policy nonprofit established in 1974 in Washington, D.C. Yentel previously worked…
(JTA) — President Donald Trump has nominated Darren Beattie, a former White House speechwriter who attended a white supremacist conference, to a government commission that monitors Holocaust sites. Beattie, who identifies on Twitter as a “proud Jew,” attended a conference of the H.L. Mencken Club in 2016. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Trump White House is throwing an in-person Hanukkah party, one of a series of recent events the administration has held despite coronavirus concerns. The reception will be held Dec. 9 in the afternoon, a day before the holiday’s first candle lighting, according to an invitation obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency….
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