It wasn’t exactly Dickensian, but it was in some ways the best of weeks and the worst of weeks. It began with Israel swearing in a new government committed to repairing relations with American Jewry and the Democratic Party, only to be countered by the former US president attacking those same Jews, whose loyalty he has previously questioned, of not loving Israel “enough.”
Catholics faced their own conflicts during the week as well. The US Conference of Bishops voted overwhelmingly to deny communion to the nation’s second Catholic president, Joe Biden, because he supports federal law recognizing a legal right to abortion, as do most of his fellow Catholics (who also gave a majority of their votes to Biden). The same group of aging celibates(?) were conspicuously silent about the previous president, a sexual predator and confessed adulterer who opposed abortion.
About the same time, a study came out showing a strong correlation between opposition to abortion and support for the death penalty, a relationship particularly strong among white protestant Evangelicals and Republican politicians. Apparently, the “right to life” starts at conception and ends at birth, as former Rep. Barney Frank observed.
Donald Trump, still smarting over those ungrateful Jews giving Biden 75% of their votes despite all he said he did for Israel, has a history of antisemitic tropes, as do other Republican figures like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Mary Miller, Paul Gosar and Louie Gohmert. They all declare they love Israel, but they seem to have a problem with Jews.
In his first call to an American Jewish organization as Israel’s new foreign minister, Yair Lapid told Democratic Majority for Israel that repairing relations with the party left badly damaged by Benjamin Netanyahu will be a high priority.
Not if the Republicans have any say. They indicated they are planning to continue using Israel as a partisan wedge issue by pushing resolutions, amendments and laws through Congress designed to prevent any bipartisan consensus and promote division by insisting the Democrats don’t love Israel as much as they do. Look for Trump to pitch in to help portray his successor as anti-Israel.
It will be worth watching – but, sadly, easy to predict – the role former prime minister Netanyahu will play.
It was also the week Biden made his first presidential trip abroad to meet European and NATO allies and talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Globally, America’s friends and allies as well as their publics praised Biden’s leadership, but Republicans told Economist/YouGov pollsters that they prefer the Russian dictator to the democratically elected leaders of Canada, France and the United States.
Biden’s Geneva meeting was a stark contrast to the humiliation in Helsinki three years ago when Trump declared he had more confidence in the word of the Russian strongman than in all the American intelligence agencies.
GOP House leader McCarthy was unfazed by Helsinki – in 2016 he reportedly told fellow GOP leaders he thought Trump was on Putin’s payroll – taking the Russian’s word that he hadn’t meddled in US elections. But change presidents and the congressman changes his views. This time he was outraged that Biden ignored “Russia-linked cyberattacks” and demanded Russia be “held accountable” for its sins.
For his part, Trump boasted about the great success of his diplomacy and put out a press release telling Biden (to whom he hasn’t spoken since before leaving Washington to avoid attending the inauguration) to give Putin his “warmest regards.” As if.
Biden’s election “has led to a dramatic shift in America’s international image,” Pew Research Center reported last week. America’s post-Trump standing among foreign leaders is “significantly higher” in terms of policy and personal qualities, it noted.
The week also brought good news for supporters of the Affordable Care Act, which has steadily gained in popularity nationwide with everyone except Republican politicians.
AFTER A DOZEN years and more than 70 failed votes trying to kill Obamacare, opponents lost for the third time in the Supreme Court. Even four of the six conservative justices, including two named by Trump, voted to block the latest Republican effort to repeal. They’re no longer talking about “repeal and replace,” just repeal, having persistently failed to produce a single viable alternative.
But it ain’t over. There will always be some Republican official or group promising it has the magic formula – and the lawyers willing to take their money.
If you’re not hearing as much from Trump, it’s because after losing his Facebook and Twitter accounts, he last week abandoned his “beacon of freedom” blog after only 29 days due to lack of interest.
And it may be a longer wait for his memoir. He says he is “writing like crazy” on “the book of all books,” however, Politico reports the top five publishers were approached but “most said they wouldn’t touch a Trump project.” It seems none think a Trump manuscript could survive the fact-checkers.
Speaking of memoirs, Trump used his Justice Department to try to stop the disparaging tell-all by his former national security advisor, John Bolton, and seize all his profits, but the case was dropped last week by Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland. The real problem wasn’t that Bolton’s memoir wasn’t factual but that it had too many facts for the thin-skinned former president.
Two new presidents at the opposite ends of the American friendship scale were elected last week.
Isaac Herzog, 60, was just elected Israel’s 11th president. He is the son of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, and grandson of the first chief rabbi of Ireland and first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel. He speaks American and lived in New York while his father was UN ambassador, and later went to Cornell University and New York University.
Iran elected its top judge, Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line new president known as the “Executioner of Tehran” for having sent thousands of dissidents and opponents of the regime to the gallows without due process, according to The Washington Post. He had the blessing of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and is considered a likely successor.
In other news, Victoria’s Secret traded “perfect” for zaftig. Fourteen hard-right Republicans in the House voted against making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is peeved that Biden withdrew Pentagon funds Trump took for his border wall, so Abbott is using crowdfunding appeals. Next: A bake sale?
The wealthy St Louis attorney-couple that waved guns at racial justice protesters walking by their house pleaded guilty to a reduced charge, surrendered the weapons they brandished and paid tiny fines. The husband announced he is running for the US Senate.
Fox News bloviator Tucker Carlson suggested that the January 6 insurrection was actually a false-flag operation organized by the FBI. If so, why are Republicans so strenuously opposed – terrified – to an independent investigation?
Republicans have no better ally in their efforts to prevent enactment of any of Joe Biden’s priorities than West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.
So, when he proposed an election rights compromise, GOP leaders faced a dilemma: how to say no without offending their best friend across the aisle? They got it when voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams endorsed it. Republicans quickly dubbed the Manchin proposal the “Stacy Abrams substitute” because nothing terrifies Republicans and their White People’s Party more than smart, strong black women (just look at the smear job they’ve been waging against VP Harris).
It was that kind of week.