“World War II Dispatches to Madison: Letters Home From an Army Air Corps Soldier” chronicles Bob’s time in Europe as a radio mechanic from January 1943 to September 1945.
The post Author gathers World War II letters from one young Wisconsin soldier into new book appeared first on WPR.
Hundreds of immigrant rights advocates and others participate in rally and demonstration at the Federal Building in lower Manhattan on June 1, 2018 in New York. In coordinated marches across the country people gathered outside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field offices, U.S. attorney's offices, and the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Spencer Platt | Getty Images).
The week before Thanksgiving, I spoke with an immigration attorney in Madison, Grant Sovern, who helped found the Community Immigration Law Center (CILC) — part of a flurry of new services created in the wake of the 2018 ICE raids that terrorized Dane County during President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration. No one knows what the immigration crackdown Trump has promised for his second term will look like. But advocates are once again meeting to try to prepare.
Sovern told me about desperate calls from friends of his college-age daughter — students who are worried about losing their protected status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). While he has been offering them hope that the new administration won’t start by targeting Dreamers, who grew up in this country and just want to continue to study and work here, he added that the easiest targets for mass deportation are other people who’ve followed the rules. Asylum-seekers and those with temporary protected status and work visas — like the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that Trump and incoming Vice President J.D. Vance falsely accused of eating their neighbors’ pets — will be the easiest to find.
What an ominous holiday season. We need the warmth of gatherings with friends and family more than ever. But it’s a weird time to be celebrating the arrival of our nation’s first immigrants and the mythical meal where they bonded with Native Americans before swiping their land and wiping them out. Talking about colonialism, genocide and how our society is built on historic injustice is quickly dismissed as “woke” and out of fashion these days. But it’s unavoidable if you’re trying to understand the rise of right-wing authoritarianism here and around the globe.
The same week I spoke with Sovern about preparations in Dane County to counter Trump’s mass deportations, Israeli peace activist Rotem Levin came to Madison with his Palestinian peace movement colleague Osama Iliwat to speak out against the war in Gaza and to discuss their vision for “a path to shared safety, justice and liberation,” according to the promotional materials from Jewish Voice for Peace, Vets for Peace and a handful of local religious groups that brought them to the Presbyterian church near my house.
I met Levin at the home of a neighbor who hosted the pair (Iliwat was resting, feeling unwell after their trip). Levin said their goal was to get people to stop being “sleepy” about the occupation and the hopelessness of the seemingly endless war on Palestinians by his country, supported by the U.S.
“We’re not like you – you genocided all the Native Americans and now they have to accept you,” Levin said with startling Israeli frankness. “We’re in the Middle East. There are Muslims all around us. The only way to guarantee safety and security is by building trust.”
Of the recent U.S. election, he said, “I want to encourage you. We have been living with dictatorship for 20 years. You will be OK.”
People who have been living comfortably with the thought that they are part of a democracy, protected by the rule of law, are not the ones who need to be afraid, he added. In the U.S., “people without papers” are the most vulnerable, like the Palestinians in Israel, he said. His parents, among other Israelis, have been shocked by his country’s rapid slide into fascism under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu and his right-wing cabinet. For his mother, who suddenly doesn’t recognize her country, and for his father, who was beaten at a protest march, the shift to militarism and the crushing of free speech was unthinkable until recently. For his Palestinian friends, however, repression is a familiar fact of life. His message is that security depends on justice for everyone.
Levin was not keen to talk about the daunting project of finding a political solution to the conflict. He didn’t want to get bogged down in arguments about the details, he said. Focusing on the small things, building personal, humanizing connections between Israelis and Palestinians, is critically important, even if there is no big-picture solution on the horizon yet.
The same approach applies here, on the cusp on the next Trump administration.
Community leaders and immigration attorneys have been meeting in Madison to try to figure out what to do. Local funding has dried up since the first Trump term. CILC lacks adequate resources and doesn’t have enough volunteer lawyers to respond to the crisis advocates see coming. And they don’t even know what shape that crisis will take. The prospect that the Trump administration will likely do away with its own practice, in the first administration, of not conducting raids in churches and schools “sends shivers down everybody’s spine,” Sovern said.
Mass raids like the 2018 ICE operations that shut down local restaurants could be scaled up, and could cause huge economic harm, especially for Wisconsin dairy farms where an estimated 70% of the workforce is comprised of undocumented immigrants.
But raiding isolated farms in rural areas of the state wouldn’t make the kind of news splash Trump is probably seeking. To achieve that effect, Democratic cities like Madison could be in the crosshairs. Instead of dropping busloads of migrants off in liberal northern cities, the publicity stunt gleefully executed by Republican Govs. Greg Abbot of Texas and Ron Desantis of Florida, the Trump administration could send in buses to round people up, crashing local economies by emptying out restaurants and other businesses that depend on an immigrant workforce.
According to The Hill, Texas has offered the incoming Trump administration 1,400 acres to build a mass deportation detention camp.
In Madison, immigrant rights groups and local officials have begun trying to calm people down.
After the 2018 ICE raids, advocates hosted an information session to offer legal advice and “the only thing anyone wanted to ask was, ‘Who will pick up my kids from school if I’m deported?’” Sovern recalled.
There is a lot to worry about, including the bill that recently passed the U.S. House allowing the federal government to designate U.S. nonprofits “terrorist supporting” organizations and strip them of their tax-exempt status.
But it’s also important to remember that, under current law, “they can’t do all the bad things they want to do all at once,” Sovern said.
He pointed to an evaluation of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, the nation’s first public defender system for immigrants facing deportation. (CILC, in Madison, was the second such effort.) The project provided lawyers to all low-income immigrants facing deportation proceedings in New York City. Before the project, only 4% of those challenging deportation were successful. Once they were provided with attorneys, the rate of success rose to 48%.
And despite polls showing increasing public support for mass deportations, even in the current amped-up anti-immigrant climate, most Americans (about 64%) say undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country if they meet certain conditions including applying for citizenship, working, paying taxes and not committing crimes.
People are more sympathetic if they hear the stories of real people who are affected by deportation threats, not just the lies about violent criminals who are eating pets.
It’s also important to spread the word that there are good people trying to hold up a light in the darkness. As Sovern puts it, “What we can do are little bits of tons of hard work.”
Even if it’s impossible to solve the big problem all at once, brave people are doing their best to lead us to a better future.
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Opposing political signs in neighbors' yards in Maple Bluff, Wisconsin | Photo by Ruth Conniff
“Truth Decay” is rotting our politics and public discourse, according to political scientist Ray Block. Block delivered the keynote address at the WisPolitics “polling summit” at the Madison Club this week, where a panel of pollsters discussed trends in the 2024 election. (Top takeaway: No one knows who is going to win.)
“We’re in a worrying place,” Block warned, with disinformation and misinformation eroding confidence in election integrity and public institutions. “Lies kill democracy,” he said. If people can’t debate in good faith, public trust, community cohesion and ultimately all of our democratic institutions will collapse.
Block is the inaugural Michael D. Rich Distinguished Chair for Countering Truth Decay at the Rand Corporation, where researchers first began focusing on the degradation of truth in our current political and social media environment because it posed a threat to the value of scientific and academic expertise. After all, if facts don’t matter, research and hard-won expertise lose their currency.
But the antidote to the bitter polarization and the sheer wackiness of our new political reality, Block and his colleagues have decided, lies not with experts or even with identifying objective truth. Instead, he said, it’s a matter of rebuilding individual relationships among neighbors.
As he spoke, I thought about my suburban neighborhood, where Trump and Harris signs bristle at each other across sidewalks and driveways. How will we ever get along again?
“You can’t ‘correct’ your way out of these problems,” Block said of some voters’ beliefs that, for example, massive amounts of voter fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election, or that President Barack Obama wasn’t really born in the United States. It’s no use treating these pernicious narratives as “a wrong answer on a test question,” he added. Instead, we have to understand how such false ideas are attached to a sense of shared social identity and community — and then do something to rebuild community among people with different points of view.
The antidote to polarization and fact-aversion, Block and his Rand colleagues have decided, is to rebuild civil society through individual acts of community engagement. He talked about the urgency of preserving local news, and he urged people to get involved in local community-building efforts. Rand is doing this by hosting community dialogues near its headquarters in Santa Monica, California. The events bring together people with opposing views to discuss and debate the issues that worry them. The idea, Block said, is to “get people used to the idea that you’ve got to live together even if you don’t agree.”
It sounds simple, but it’s not an easy thing to do.
Close to home, I saw a good model of what Block is talking about during high holiday services at Shaarei Shamayim, Madison’s Reconstructionist Jewish congregation, where my family and I belong.
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman led a conversation on the war in Gaza on Yom Kippur, the traditional Jewish day of mourning. She invited people to share their grief, both for the people killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the hostages who remain in Gaza, and for the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been killed and displaced in the ensuing war. “You are going to hear things you don’t agree with,” Rabbi Laurie said, to a group of congregants with conflicting views on Israel, Palestine and the war, “and that’s OK.
In her Rosh Hashanah sermon, Rabbi Laurie described her own uncomfortable conversations with family members with whom she disagrees, and her participation in a community forum on Gaza that devolved into shouting. In her humble, self-deprecating way, she described an unsatisfying conversation about the war with fellow rabbis. One of them pooh-poohed her suggestion that children learn about the complexities of the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, including the history of repression and injustice Palestinians have experienced. He asserted that “kids need to know what side they’re on.” In his Sunday school classes, he said, he skips complexity and has children draw Israeli flags.
“It’s not soccer,” Rabbi Laurie grumbled.
In the community forum, she found herself on the opposite side, arguing heatedly with an activist who insisted that the rapes and murders of Oct. 7 were justified — comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of Polish Jews during the Holocaust.
“The attack on October 7th and ensuing war has created, or maybe unleashed, deep polarization — in families, among friends, in congregations, and in the larger community,” Rabbi Laurie said. “It widened the discourse to the point where I have heard people I know and love say things that are untrue, conspiratorial, hateful, and bereft of the basic values I had thought we all shared.”
Despite the discomfort, she continues to pursue these awkward conversations, and encouraged her congregation to do likewise, “not to find solutions, but to become more connected with one another. To think deeply about the meaning of kinship and of justice. To become more committed to our deepest ideals.”
It’s a credit to Rabbi Laurie’s willingness to endure these difficult encounters, to persist despite not knowing where it will lead, that the Shaarei Shamayim community does, in fact, make room for a diversity of opinions. If people can talk to each other and hold onto their relationships through deep disagreement, there’s hope for peace and justice. It’s a good model for all of us going forward.
As Block said, no matter who wins the election, “we are not going to make it if we don’t figure out how to work together.”
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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds an American flag as he addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 21, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.
WASHINGTON — The next U.S. president must steer the nation through crises across the globe, including worsening violence in the Middle East, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to retreat from Ukraine and U.S-China trade relations.
The Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, largely built her career as a prosecutor, but once in Washington she sat on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a position that comes with access to highly classified national security files.
As vice president she’s represented the U.S. at high-profile international meetings, including the Munich Security Conference and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.
The Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, who followed his wealthy father’s path into real estate and ascended to the status of celebrity businessman, has already held the elected position of Commander-in-Chief for four years — though high-ranking officials who served under him say he should not occupy that seat again.
Trump and Harris’ track records can provide clues on how, if elected, they would handle complex and challenging national and economic security policies.
But overall on the campaign trail, foreign policy “has played a back seat role to domestic politics in the 2024 election,” James M. Lindsay, a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy for the Council on Foreign Relations, told States Newsroom in an interview.
That’s not unusual, Lindsay said, as presidential year politics generally tend to have a domestic focus.
“This has been more a campaign about personalities than about specific policy prescriptions. It’s safe to say that the two candidates have very different world views,” Lindsay said.
Harris centers relationship building, and promised in her Democratic National Convention acceptance speech to “stand strong” with NATO allies.
In Trump’s convention speech he lamented that the U.S. has “long been taken advantage of” by “so-called allies.”
Observers say the former president leads with a transactional outlook: In other words, nations must pay for access to U.S. markets and security.
“Trump thinks that U.S. support to allies is a bad deal for America, whereas Harris realizes that the United States benefits immensely from them,” Matthew Waxman, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and chair of Columbia Law School’s National Security Law Program, told States Newsroom.
But predicting how a presidential candidate would act on the global stage, if elected, is tricky. Conflicts continue to evolve, and those in top defense and diplomatic jobs are likely to turn over.
“It’s partly because a President Harris or President Trump could face a very different situation in the Middle East or in Ukraine come Inauguration Day, but it’s also because in Washington personnel are policy, people are policy,” Lindsay said.
Here are some of the serious international situations either administration will face:
The deadly Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, launched from the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip, reignited smoldering regional tensions and highlighted the inextricable U.S. role. Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 in the brutal and unexpected incursion, and took 250 hostages, many of whom still remain in captivity.
President Joe Biden immediately surged weapons and security aid to the key U.S. defense partner, and in April Congress approved his request for $8.7 billion more in foreign military financing and missile defense.
Israel’s year-long campaign to completely eliminate Iranian-allied Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip has resulted in a staggering death toll, now over 41,000, according to Gaza health officials.
Hamas’ assault also set in motion attacks from other Iranian-backed militias, opening up a war front between Israel and Hezbollah fighters to the north in Lebanon. And for months, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis have terrorized commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
Biden has faced fierce criticism for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war tactics.
Harris, as early as March, publicly criticized Israel over the humanitarian “catastrophe” in Gaza and called for an immediate six-week cease-fire.
Harris, who became the Democratic presidential nominee in mid-summer after Biden dropped his bid, has repeatedly said she defends Israel’s right to defend itself but that “how it does so matters.”
Protesters could be heard in the distance Monday as Harris planted a memorial tree at the vice president’s residence to mark the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack. Pro-Palestinian activists protesting the death toll in Gaza have marched and rallied throughout the U.S. during the past year.
Harris told reporters that the administration is “not giving up” on negotiating a cease-fire deal and release of hostages, an effort that has so far floundered.
“It’s one of the most important ways we will be able to end this war and bring any type of stability to the region. It’s one of the highest priorities of this administration,” she said.
She has not indicated any slowdown or conditions on assistance to Israel if elected — though she continues to advocate for a two-state solution.
“Trump may give Jerusalem less public chastising and criticism, but I’m not sure the policy differences would be that great either,” Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and foreign policy research director at the Brookings Institution, told States Newsroom. O’Hanlon recently published an article arguing the Trump and Harris defense strategies would at least “partially” converge.
Trump maintains that Oct. 7 “would never have happened” had he been in office, and he accuses the Biden administration of inviting the attack because of its “weak” relationship with Iran.
“What is needed more than ever is a return of unwavering American leadership and unquestioned American strength. We were strong, we were powerful … That’s what I intend to deliver as the 47th president of the United States,” he said Monday while in Miami marking one year since the ambush on Israel.
The attack also wrecked any forward progress on the Abraham Accords — Trump’s signature Middle East achievement that created full diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. While those established channels remain steady, the Biden administration’s efforts to strike a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia are now at a standstill.
Trump is increasingly selling himself on the campaign trail as the candidate of stability who can quash Iran’s aggression — which is pretty much a “standard approach to campaigning,” Lindsay said.
“He is not the first challenger to argue that the incumbent president has been weak.”
But Lindsay said, “the important question isn’t whether he was tougher, it’s whether his policies were more effective.”
For example, the Iranian-backed so-called “axis of resistance” militias currently upending the Middle East were also operating during Trump’s presidency.
“(They) pre-dated his coming into office but it’s not that a Trump administration ended that network of anti-Western, anti-Israeli groups,” Lindsay said. “And during the Trump administration it was the case that Iran both underwrote attacks on American troops and actually launched attacks on American troops.”
Trump drew attention last week to an early January 2020 barrage on U.S. troops in Iraq when he again described the traumatic brain injuries they suffered as “headaches.”
U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, already a target, have come under increasing fire from Iran-backed militants, with more than 100 attacks on U.S. service members since Israel began its post-Oct. 7 offensive. A drone strike in January killed three U.S. soldiers and injured 30 at an outpost in Jordan on the Syrian border. The U.S. retaliated by launching more than 100 precision rockets at 85 of Iran military sites in Iraq and Syria.
The U.S. assisted Israel twice in 2024 in intercepting rockets fired directly from Iran — once in April following Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, and again in September after Israel’s assassination of Iranian-backed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Lebanon.
“We’re in the last months of the Biden presidency, and Biden’s own, I think, personal influence here is quite diminished. And you know, I can’t predict what Trump policy really would be. I assume he would be less likely to be trying to restrain the Israelis, but so is the Biden administration. And maybe that is a Biden-Harris policy,” Elliott Abrams, CFR’s senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, told reporters on Oct. 2, the day after Iran launched its second direct attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with both Harris and Trump in recent weeks to shore up continued U.S. support for his country’s ongoing war against Russia’s occupation.
Harris’ meeting with the Ukrainian leader was her seventh, and she pledged continued aid for the eastern European nation on the principle that Putin would continue marching into Europe if allies relent on Ukraine.
Harris supports continued U.S. assistance, which has totaled roughly $175 billion since 2022. At the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland in June, Harris pledged nearly $2 billion, some new and some redirected, to bolster the country’s energy sector and add to humanitarian efforts.
The vice president has represented the U.S. three times at the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany, where she praised the NATO alliance and said the U.S. commitment to its principles is “ironclad.”
When facing Harris on the presidential debate stage in September, Trump refused to answer whether he wants Ukraine to be victorious over Russia.
Trump’s rhetoric and past behavior “spells bad news for Ukraine,” Waxman said.
“He is likely to reduce American support for Ukraine and push Ukraine to make concessions to Russia. Overall, Trump’s transactional approach to leader-to-leader diplomacy is likely to benefit Putin,” Waxman continued. “Whereas Harris wants to invest in alliances like NATO, Trump is skeptical of them.”
That type of leader-to-leader communication was notoriously highlighted in 2019 when U.S. House lawmakers impeached Trump for directly threatening to withhold Ukraine aid if Zelenskyy did not announce an investigation into Biden — Trump’s presidential campaign rival at the time. The Senate acquitted Trump.
Like his campaign line on the Israel attack, Trump also repeatedly claims that had he been in office, instead of Biden, Russia would have never launched its February 2022 attack on Ukraine.
“The war in Ukraine did not begin in February of ‘22, it began back in 2014,” Lindsay said, referring to Putin’s forced annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
Trump’s own administration expanded Obama-era sanctions meant to punish Russia’s actions in Crimea.
“Experts can argue about how to dole out criticism across administrations, but clearly the issue of Russian support for a notionally independent insurrection in eastern Ukraine was not solved during the Trump presidency,” Lindsay continued.
Foreign trade is a “political hot potato,” and neither Harris nor Trump are offering much clarity for U.S. trading partners around the world, Mary E. Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told States Newsroom in an interview.
Lovely described the Biden-Harris approach as multipronged, in that they’ve instituted policies to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. while also aiming to maintain good trade relationships with partner nations.
The tightrope walk becomes even trickier as U.S. policy also disincentivizes materials and components from China — one of the world’s largest trading nations — in the final products imported from trading partners. Think: components in solar panels and electric vehicles.
The Biden administration’s major legislative accomplishments — the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act — provided major subsidies for “reshoring,” or returning to the U.S., clean energy and semiconductor production. But the policies were not without risks to U.S. trading partners.
“We had a lot of things (in the legislation), including things that upset the allies — you know, subsidies for American businesses, that they saw potentially as pulling investment out of their economies,” Lovely said.
“These are things that the European Union, Japan, Korea were concerned about,” Lovely continued. “So we’ve seen it there — this tension between foreign policy and this idea of economic security.”
While Lovely said she worries about how some of the Biden-Harris trade policies might affect competition and the nation’s ability to sign timely trade agreements, she said Trump’s plans are overall “destabilizing.”
“The increased use of tariffs is misguided at best,” Lovely said.
Trump’s promise to not only increase tariffs on Chinese imports to 60%, but also to slap flat 10% to 20% tariffs on all imports across the board is akin to “starting a trade war with the entire world.”
“We’re not going to see those kinds of tariffs without retaliation,” Lovely said.
If enacted, the tariffs would be particularly challenging for Indo-Pacific countries that rely on U.S. partnership in the face of China’s regional dominance.
“I mean, you can imagine how this will go down in, say, Japan and Korea, two countries which rely on the U.S. for a security umbrella, which is why Trump thinks that he can do stuff to them. But they also have to protect their own economies,” Lovely said. “So it’s going to put them in a really terrible position because it’s very important for them to maintain their alliance with the U.S., economic as well as military.”
But one thing is for sure, Lovely said: “Everybody wants to know what’s going to happen. Everybody in every embassy here in Washington.”
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On Monday, U.S. leaders marked the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel. In this photo, photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas during the attacks are seen on Oct. 18, 2023 in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. leaders marked one year Monday since Hamas militants launched a shocking attack on Israel, murdering more than 1,000 civilians, taking hundreds prisoner and igniting an all-but-declared regional war and a deadly Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that the U.S. has failed to halt despite months of cease-fire negotiations.
Demonstrations against Israel’s continued retaliatory bombing of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory cropped up again ahead of the anniversary, including one man attempting to set himself on fire outside the White House Sunday during an otherwise peaceful protest.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned that synagogues, mosques and vigil gatherings could be targeted by violent extremists.
President Joe Biden lit a yahrzeit candle Monday at the White House alongside first lady Jill Biden and Rabbi Aaron Alexander of the Washington-based Adas Israel Congregation, who recited a Jewish prayer to honor those who died.
Biden also spoke by phone to Israeli President Isaac Herzog to express his condolences and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security, according to a White House readout of the call.
“On this day last year, the sun rose on what was supposed to be a joyous Jewish holiday. By sunset, October 7 had become the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Today marks one year of mourning for the more than 1,200 innocent people of all ages, including 46 Americans, massacred in southern Israel by the terrorist group Hamas,” Biden said in a statement early Monday, also acknowledging Hamas’ “horrific acts of sexual violence.”
Twelve Americans were among the hostages forcefully taken and still held by the militants, though many have died in captivity.
The past 12 months have been punctuated by protests against a U.S. surge in weapons to Israel since the attack. Health officials in Gaza say over 41,000 have been killed in the strikes that critics describe as indiscriminate to civilians, but Israel maintains are targeted at Hamas, an ally of Iran.
Prior to dropping his bid for reelection, Biden’s campaign events were regularly interrupted by demonstrators who accused the president of supporting “genocide” of Palestinians.
The chanting of protesters and sirens could be heard as Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and second gentleman Doug Emhoff honored the Oct. 7 victims Monday by planting a pomegranate tree, an important symbol in the Jewish faith, at the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, according to reporters who were present.
Harris said during brief remarks that “we must uphold the commitment to repair the world” and “work to relieve the immense suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who have experienced so much pain and loss over the year.”
“For years to come, this pomegranate tree will stand here, spreading its roots and growing stronger to remind future vice presidents of the United States, their families and all who pass through these grounds, not only of the horror of October 7, but the strength and the endurance of the Jewish people. It will remind us all not to abandon the goal of peace, dignity and security for all, and it will remind us all to always have faith,” Harris said.
Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of any U.S. president or vice president, said he is “still filled with pain and despair.”
In response to a shouted question about a cease-fire, Harris replied: “We’re not giving up. We’re doing everything we can possibly do to get the cease-fire hostage deal done. It’s one of the most important ways we will be able to end this war and bring any type of stability to the region. It’s one of the highest priorities of this administration.”
Earlier in the day Harris issued a statement saying she will “never forget the horror” that occurred on this day last year.
“Women raped on the side of the road. 250 people kidnapped. … What Hamas did that day was pure evil — it was brutal and sickening,” she said.
Harris has repeatedly said her commitment to Israel’s security is “unwavering.”
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York spent the morning at his synagogue in Brooklyn continuing to call for the release of hostages.
“When I went to Israel days after October 7th to express American solidarity with the Israeli people and Israel’s right to self-defense, we gathered with the families of American victims of Hamas’s attack. I will never forget the meeting. I still remember when one of the family members told me every minute is an hour, every day is a year not knowing the fate of their loved ones held in Hamas’s captivity,” Schumer said in a statement.
“We must not and we cannot waver in our efforts to bring the hostages home. It is long past time.”
Schumer, who on the Senate floor in March heavily criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza, honored the death of American Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was murdered after nearly 11 months in captivity. Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage as Hamas militants terrorized and killed hundreds at a desert music festival as part of their surprise attack.
The Senate majority leader also listed the names of several of his New York constituents who remain in captivity, including three whose bodies Hamas hasn’t returned.
The Republican National Committee hosted a “remembrance press call” ahead of former President Donald Trump’s attendance at an Oct. 7 memorial event in Miami, Florida, Monday night.
The call largely focused on blaming Biden and Harris for the gruesome Hamas attack and for the rise of antisemitism.
“None of this happened under President Trump when he was in office, because America was respected in the eyes of this world, and President Trump created peace through his strength, strong foreign policy,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said.
The call featured former Democratic Florida Congressman Peter Deutsch announcing his endorsement of Trump for president.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said time “has not dulled the pain inflicted on the people of Israel one year ago today, nor eased the grief left in its wake.
“October 7th confronted the world with the irredeemable evil of Iran-backed terror, and drew emboldened strains of the world’s oldest hatred out of the shadows,” the Kentucky Republican continued in a statement issued Monday.
McConnell’s comments did not mention Biden, Harris or Trump.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson released a video featuring footage from the Hamas attack and clips of him shaking hands with Netanyahu when the Israeli leader visited the Capitol to address a joint session of Congress.
“The terror and antisemitism we’ve witnessed have demanded full resolve from America’s leaders, which is why Congress passed legislation in the spring to provide Israel with necessary military aid and support,” Johnson, of Louisiana, said in a statement.
“Today, at this critical time, following a second direct attack by Iran and ongoing terror from Hezbollah, Americans must insist that the Biden-Harris Administration stand unequivocally with Israel and against the terrorist regime in Iran, as we continue to pray for peace and security in Israel,” Johnson continued.
Johnson’s video also featured footage of protesters carrying Palestinian flags on college campuses, and of him speaking at Columbia University.
In the months following the Oct. 7 attack, House Republicans fixated on anti-war university encampments and demonstrations — some, but not all, of which featured blatant antisemitism and violence. The party continues to laud GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik’s heated questioning in December about antisemitism to University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill and Harvard’s Claudine Gay, which contributed to both the university presidents’ resignations.
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Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks before prominent Jewish donors at an event titled “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America” in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 19. Calling himself the greatest president for Jews in history, Trump said that if he does not win in November, Israel will be “eradicated” within two years. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump said Thursday night that if he loses the election in November to Vice President Kamala Harris, Jewish voters “would really have a lot to do with that.”
As the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel nears and the war in Gaza continues, the GOP presidential nominee spoke at back-to-back events in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, where he promised Jewish Americans that with their vote, he would be their protector, defender and “the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”
He and Harris, the Democratic candidate, are vying for the Oval Office in a close race that is just 46 days away and in which early in-person voting has already kicked off in multiple states.
“The current polling has me with Jewish citizens, Jewish people — people that are supposed to love Israel — after having done all that, having been the best president, the greatest president by far … a poll just came out, I’m at 40%,” Trump said at an event with Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson on combating antisemitism in America.
“That means you got 60% voting for somebody that hates Israel, and I say it — it’s gonna happen,” he said. “It’s only because of the Democrat hold, or curse, on you.”
During the presidential debate earlier this month, Harris echoed her commitment to giving Israel the right to defend itself and said “we must chart a course for a two-state solution, and in that solution, there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel and an equal measure for the Palestinians.”
She called for an immediate end to the war, saying “the way it will end is we need a cease-fire deal, and we need the hostages out.”
Trump also addressed the Israeli-American Council National Summit, where he said Israel would face “total annihilation” if Harris is elected. At the earlier event, he said any Jewish person who votes for Harris or any Democrat, “should have their head examined.”
Trump also committed to combating antisemitism at universities across the country, saying that if reelected, during his first week in office his administration would inform every college president that if they don’t “end antisemitic propaganda,” they will lose their accreditation and all federal support.
Trump made no mention Thursday of North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee. The Trump ally vowed to stay in the race following a scathing CNN investigation published Thursday.
Part of the bombshell CNN report included Robinson referring to himself as a “black NAZI” and writing that “slavery is not bad” in messages posted on pornographic forums in 2010.
The North Carolina Republican, who has a history of making controversial remarks, has become an issue in the presidential race in the crucial swing state.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday regarding the CNN investigation.
Meanwhile, the Harris campaign launched a TV ad in North Carolina on Friday that seeks to tie the former president to Robinson. Part of the 30-second ad includes Trump saying Robinson has been an “unbelievable lieutenant governor” and that he’s “gotten to know him” and “(Robinson) is outstanding.”
Per the Harris campaign, the ad also seeks to highlight Robinson’s “extreme anti-abortion views.”
The ad announcement came ahead of Harris’ Friday remarks in Georgia, where she repeated her commitment to reproductive freedom in response to a recent ProPublica investigation linking the state’s restrictive abortion law to the deaths of two Georgia women — Amber Thurman and Candi Miller.
Harris also highlighted the repercussions of “Trump abortion bans” following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, which ended the constitutional right to abortion after nearly half a century. Trump appointed three of the five U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe.
“Now we know that at least two women — and those are only the stories we know — here in the state of Georgia, died because of a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said.
The mother and sisters of Thurman attended a livestreamed event Thursday night in Michigan, where Harris joined Oprah Winfrey.
Harris also made headlines at Thursday’s event when, reiterating she is a gun owner, said that if somebody were to break into her house, “they’re getting shot.” Laughing, the vice president said she “probably should not have said that” and her staff will “deal with that later.”
The Democratic presidential nominee said Thursday she’s in favor of the Second Amendment, but also supported assault weapons bans, universal background checks and red flag laws, calling them “just common sense.”
Harris also spoke at a campaign rally Friday night in Madison, Wisconsin.
Trump plans to attend the Alabama-Georgia football game in Tuscaloosa on Sept. 28, the University of Alabama confirmed to States Newsroom.
Security for the former president has been under intense scrutiny, especially after what’s being investigated as the second assassination attempt against Trump in recent weeks.
The university said “the safety of our campus is and will remain our top priority, and UAPD will work closely with the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement partners to coordinate security.”
The Secret Service acknowledged Friday that it failed to protect the former president during a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which was the site of the first assassination attempt.
As the presidential race remains a tight contest, so do races that will determine control of each chamber of Congress.
The Senate map favors Republicans, with several seats now held by Democrats in play. Democrats would likely need to sweep the elections in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and win the presidential race — to keep control of the chamber.
Elections forecasters consider the House more of a toss-up, with nearly 40 races likely to determine which party controls the chamber.
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