Texas lawmakers are getting ready to debate a controversial bill aimed at limiting access of transgender people to public restrooms. At the center of the battle, which could mark a turning point in America’s discussion about transgender rights, stands Joe Straus, Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and perhaps the last moderate Republican in…
Tensions are high in Jerusalem after a Palestinian attack left two Israeli police officers dead on the Holy Esplanade, the site known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount. For many, the attack and subsequent security lockdown are cause for alarm since protests over the sacred site at the…
As a new leader prepares to take the helm of the scandal-scarred Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, the Forward has learned that the group’s finances are worse than it previously acknowledged. The Met Council on July 1 suspended contributions to its employees’ retirement plans, citing the “need to be fiscally prudent.” “The financial situation of…
An unlikely activist is hatching a plan to deprive white supremacists of their beloved Nazi flags — thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision. Until last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would approve most applications, but not those deemed to be disparaging. Now, the highest court in the land has struck down that…
Five years ago, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty was one of the largest, most powerful charities in New York City and the biggest Jewish anti-poverty agency in the nation. Today, it’s little but an afterthought. A humiliating scandal laid the Met Council low in 2013, sending executive director William Rapfogel and two former top…
When Thomasz Piatek’s publisher released his explosive book last month about Poland’s defense minister, the well-known investigative journalist was braced for a defamation suit. What he didn’t expect was a criminal complaint, lodged with the military bureau of Poland’s prosecutor-general’s office, charging him with “using force or threats against a public official” and “public insults…
Back in February, it looked like Milo Yiannopoulos’s career was toast. After winning fame on the strength of President Trump’s campaign, the right-wing provocateur suffered a succession of setbacks after it was revealed that he once defended pederasty: He lost a book deal, a coveted speaking slot and his post at Breitbart News in one…
On Monday night, the megachurch pastor the Rev. John Hagee addressed a crowd of thousands at the annual summit of Christians United for Israel, the organization he founded over a decade ago. Standing in front of a massive projected image of the Western Wall, the controversial evangelist spoke in uncompromising and biblical language about the…
On Monday, Vice President Mike Pence delivers the keynote speech at the annual summit of Christians United For Israel — signaling what some see as a new ideological shift for the White House. “His speech marks a fundamental change in the language that the White House has historically employed to articulate the United States’ relationship…
News that a powerful City Councilman will take over the troubled Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty broke before the city and state agencies tasked with monitoring the not-for-profit after its 2013 fraud scandal had approved the hire. Reports in Crain’s and the Wall Street Journal on Monday revealed that David Greenfield, who represents Boro Park…
PARIS (JTA) — It wasn’t the first time that a French president acknowledged his nation’s Holocaust-era guilt, but Emmanuel Macron’s speech Sunday was nonetheless groundbreaking in format, content and style. Delivered during a ceremony at the Vel d’Hiv Holocaust memorial monument exactly 75 years after French police officers rounded up 13,152 Jews there for deportation…
