In The News

The Trump administration will leave empty the office of the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, according to a former State Department official.

Today the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. This was accomplished by changing the rules of the Senate to permit a simple majority (51 votes) to decide.

JACPAC is deeply disappointed by this confirmation. We say "Elections Have Consequences." The impact of this confirmation will be felt for generations.

What Can You Do?

The abortion restrictions that conservative Republicans shoehorned into Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act last month were just the latest volley in their ongoing, grim war on reproductive choice. 

After a contentious start to Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination hearings, Senate Democrats are struggling with what the New York Times calls “two options: Get out of the way or get run over.”

But Democrats have a third option, one that should attract moderate or “centrist” Democrats as well as more liberal senators: Fight.

When John Roberts was nominated as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 2005, Senator Ted Kennedy asked him: “You do agree, don’t you, Judge Roberts, that the right to vote is a fundamental constitutional right?”

“It is preservative, I think, of all the other rights,” Roberts responded. “Without access to the ballot box, people are not in a position to protect any other rights that are important to them.”

The budget released today by President Donald Trump's administration makes clear that he assigns no value to the human cost of his policy choices.   

As his framing message suggests, "To keep Americans safe, we have made tough choices that have been put off for too long. " Choices, he says, made in the interest of fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility is a good idea but not when the result is morally bankrupt.

During a 1954 White House luncheon, Winston Churchill told the assembled notables that “to jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war.” Diplomacy, Churchill had come to believe, was capable of resolving conflict more reliably and at far lower cost than any kind of military action.

On Thursday, Iowa’s Republican Representative Steve King introduced a bill in Congress that would constitute a total abortion ban on a federal level, Rewire reports.

 Forty-four years ago, the Supreme Court made a surprise ruling in favor of a young attorney, declaring abortion legal nationwide. Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued Roe v. Wade, says now that her legacy — and the law itself— has never been more at risk.

WASHINGTON (JTA) – President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress is getting rave reviews for the subdued, “presidential” style of his delivery, and positive feedback from the Jewish community for opening remarks denouncing anti-Semitic acts as examples of “hate and evil.”

But there ensues the inevitable Trumpian conundrum: What did he actually mean?

Here are four takeaways from the speech and what it says about bias and the Jews:

1. What did he condemn exactly?

From the very first paragraph: