A man from Grand Rapids who happens to share the same name as Vice President JD Vance has been sentenced to two years in federal prison after admitting he issued violent threats toward the vice president, President Trump, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr.
Prosecutors said that James Donald “JD” Vance Jr., 67, used the alias “Diaperjdv” while posting a series of alarming messages on the BlueSky platform. The US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Michigan said he acknowledged in court that his posts targeted national leaders with explicit threats.
Investigators highlighted a message he posted on April 1, one that prompted immediate federal attention. “If tRump, Vance, or Musk ever come to my city again, they will leave it in a body bag,” he allegedly wrote. The same post included his fatalistic comment: “I will either be shot by a secret service sniper or spend the rest of my life in prison. I’ve only got about 10 years of life left anyway so I don’t … care either way.”
Authorities said his threats were not limited to those figures. On March 7, he posted about Donald Trump Jr. in response to an article titled “Donald Trump Jr. Considering a Run for President in 2028.” In that message, Vance declared, “I will murder that stupid f—ker before he gets secret service protection,” according to federal agents.
The Michigan resident ultimately pleaded guilty to two felony charges: threatening to kill or harm the president and vice president, and transmitting interstate threats. Officials said those admissions left no doubt about the seriousness of the case.
United States Attorney Timothy VerHey condemned Vance’s conduct, noting that online threats of this nature strike at the core of democratic safety. VerHey said such behavior creates “fear and damages our democratic ideals.” In his statement, he added, “When Vance said he planned to kill our President and the Vice President simply because he disagreed with them, he crossed a line we all understand and so had to be punished.”
Authorities clarified that the defendant has no connection to the actual vice president. The VP was born as James Donald Bowman before legally changing his name to James David Vance.
The Secret Service’s Grand Rapids office has been dealing with a surge of similar cases. Officials noted this was the second such federal prosecution in recent weeks.
Just last month, prosecutors secured an 18-month prison sentence for Richard James Spring of Comstock Park. Court documents show Spring threatened online to sexually assault a woman in front of President Trump and then kill him. Investigators said he also posted menacing messages on TikTok, including, “You’re going to watch your god DIE.”
Secret Service officials said the agency treats these threats with maximum seriousness. William Shink, Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Field Office, issued a pointed warning: “Threats against our nation’s leaders and their families will not be tolerated.” He continued, “Individuals who threaten the President, Vice President or any U.S. Secret Service protectee will be investigated and held accountable for their actions.”
{Matzav.com}
President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman take questions from reporters as they work to negotiate terms for the Abraham Accords, F-35 fighter jets and more.
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{Matzav.com}
Speaking at an event in Toronto, Rav Yaakov Bender, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway, NY, delivered a sharp warning about the growing culture of alcohol consumption in frum communities, singling out Friday afternoon toameha gatherings as a dangerous and destructive trend.
Rav Bender opened his remarks with a stark assessment. “The drinking is a shrecklich problem. It’s a terrible, terrible problem. I blame the parents for that. I really do. Very heavily.”
He then shared a tragic example to underscore the consequences. “There was a boy that, I’ll explain to you, a boy was in a car accident, Rachmana litzlan, and he killed somebody, in one of our prominent communities, and he’s looking at jail time of a very, very, very long time. You know where he got it from?”
According to Rav Bender, the boy’s first exposure to drinking came through a toameha group. “He went to a Toameha, I think, in a very chashuva city. Toameha should be stopped.”
Rav Bender then described the gatherings bluntly. “Those who don’t know, Toameha means you get together, seven, eight men get together, and they drink, they buy very fancy— not the women, they’re wonderful. Erev Shabbos, when a wife should be going home to his wife, helping her out, unless the wife doesn’t want you home, you know— helping her out and doing what you got to do, they go to a party, AND they call it Toameha.”
With biting irony, he added: “It’s a mitzva d’oraisa. And they eat kugel and they fress cakes and zachen, and they drink to their hearts content.”
Rav Bender said the fallout reaches the home. “I have mothers who have told me, again, not many, but [some] have told me that the husband comes drunk to the Friday night, to the Friday night Shabbos table. And Toameha is a mitzva? You got to ban it.”
He urged communities to take action. “If you find out that there’s a Toameha in your neighborhood, go and protest against the family. Put up signs. The kids are going to kill a kid afterwards.”
Parents, he said, often complain about their children drinking, without acknowledging the source. “They come to me complaining about, my kid is drinking. I said, Daddy, do you drink? And Daddy says — that means you’re drinking.”
Rav Bender broadened the critique to communal norms. “We have a society, why do we have Kiddush clubs? Kiddush clubs is bad because in the middle of davening. Why should we serve anything at a Kiddush on Shabbos? Why? You want to give beer by a Shalom Zachar? …We have made a society where drinking is chashuv.”
He expressed astonishment at the luxury liquor culture that has become common. “I don’t believe it. I haven’t gone into a liquor store maybe 30, 40 years. I haven’t ever went in also. There’s bottles today that sell for five to ten thousand dollars, and people are buying it.”
He described the status culture surrounding these bottles as hollow. “The gadlus by a Toameha club is the guy who knows he could tell the difference between a $10,000 bottle and a $5,000 bottle. I don’t believe him for a second. He thinks he can tell the difference. And we glorify these things.”
Rav Bender then made a bold proposal. “There should be no kiddushim in shuls, I’m sorry. You’re very quiet. I liked it better when we talked about the kids. So I’m telling you the kids are seeing this.”
He insisted the drinking problem among teenagers is learned behavior. “I’m telling you right now, the kids by us in yeshiva who drink, let’s say on a Friday night sometimes, there are a few, right? On a Friday night or during the Shabbos and they put them together, they’re getting it from home. They’re seeing it by their parents.”
The problem then spreads socially. “Then other kids do it, other kids see it, they also become, yeah, it spreads from kid to kid. I blame the parents.”
Rav Bender emphasized that his criticism was not directed at the host community. “I’m not talking about this shul right now. I think you don’t know, you don’t know me, you do know what you have over here. You have a posek acharon. You have someone I hope should become the posek acharon in this town for all yeshivas. He should be that. Don’t let him get away with it. He should be doing it.”
He then added, “We glorify drinking. I blame it on the parents, I’m sorry.”
Rav Bender described the calls he receives. “Am I wrong? The kids who drink, I have parents who call me, my kid is drinking.”
Often, he said, the problem begins at home. “The mother calls me and her husband gets shikker every week. I can’t tell it to the wife, you know why? I’m causing shalom bayis problems. I’m sure the wife is already screaming at the husband already. That’s why he’s drinking, because she’s screaming at him.”
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{Matzav.com}
The Agudah National Action Summit: Turning Ideas into Action
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Otzma Yehudit set off intense debate on Tuesday after sharing the outline of its proposed death penalty legislation for terrorists in the National Security Committee’s WhatsApp group. The circulated draft lays out the party’s vision in stark, uncompromising terms.
The document explains that the penalty would be applied solely in cases where a Jew is murdered because they are Jewish. It mandates that a simple majority be sufficient to impose the sentence, that no appeal be permitted, and that lethal injection be the method of execution. The responsibility for carrying out the penalty would fall to the Prison Service, and the execution would have to occur within 90 days.
Interestingly, the plan has not only gained traction among coalition partners but has also found backing from Yisrael Beiteinu, broadening its political reach.
According to the draft, the measure is framed as a deterrent “that looks to the future based on past (negative) experience,” insisting that such a law must be practical and fully enforceable, not merely a declarative statement.
As written, anyone who murders a Jew for being Jewish — whether by orchestrating, attempting, or committing the act — would automatically be sentenced to death. The legislation would remove judicial discretion entirely, prohibit appeals regarding the nature of the punishment, and bar plea agreements or pardons, consistent with existing legal limitations. To eliminate procedural delays, the proposal requires that executions take place within 90 days of a verdict becoming final. Lethal injection would be codified as the official method, with statutory adjustments to accommodate it.
Nonetheless, legal analysts warn that the bill, if advanced in its current structure, would likely encounter serious constitutional and procedural hurdles in the High Court, raising doubts about its ultimate viability.
{Matzav.com}
No GOP senator stepped in to derail a procedural move that would have forced an immediate vote on compelling the release of Jeffrey Epstein–related files.
Within hours of the House’s overwhelming approval of the resolution, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., followed through on his promise to push it forward, bringing the matter to the Senate floor.
Schumer insisted there was no reason for the chamber to stall, declaring that the Senate “should pass this bill as soon as possible, as written and without a hint of delay.”
He warned Republicans not to meddle with the language, saying, “Republicans must not try to change this bill or bury it in committee, or slow walk it in any way. Any amendment to this bill would force it back to the House and risk further delay. Who knows what would happen over there?”
Once the House formally sends the measure across the Capitol, it will head directly to President Donald Trump for his signature.
The resolution, authored by Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., mandates that the Department of Justice publish every unclassified file, memo, communication, and investigatory document connected to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell within 30 days of enactment, making them “publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format.”
Unlike the House — where the push for disclosure upended schedules and even triggered a temporary recess earlier this year under House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. — the Senate has been far less volatile as the issue has moved forward.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., noted that Republicans were already evaluating the bill through the hotline process, the internal mechanism for vetting legislation before it reaches the floor. If it passed that stage, he said, the expectation was to bring it forward before lawmakers adjourn for the Thanksgiving break.
“We’ll see what the Democrats have to say,” Thune remarked. “But it’s the kind of thing, probably, that could perhaps move by unanimous consent.”
In the end, the measure advanced without needing a roll-call vote.
The landscape shifted considerably once President Donald Trump — who had spent months blasting efforts to force open the Epstein archives — unexpectedly embraced the Massie-Khanna proposal over the weekend.
He condemned the push as a “Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party.”
He added on Truth Social, “Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive and, if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our Landslide Election Victory.”
Many Senate Republicans have long said they are open to making more information public but stress that victims must not be exposed in the process. House Speaker Johnson has urged lawmakers to add protections ensuring that identifying details remain shielded.
But Senate leadership signaled that such revisions are unlikely.
“I think when a bill comes out of the House 427 to one, and the president said he’d sign it, I’m not sure that amending it is in the cards,” Thune said.
Israeli airstrikes hit a Hamas training compound in the Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon on Tuesday evening, in what Lebanese outlets described as an unusually deep strike into the area. Minutes after the initial reports surfaced, the IDF confirmed that its aircraft had targeted terrorists operating at the site.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry announced that fifteen people were killed and many more wounded. Hamas, however, issued a denial, claiming in an official statement that “it was a soccer field where children were playing at the time of the strike.”
Lebanese media reported heavy Hamas security around the area inside the Ein al-Hilweh camp following the attack, as operatives worked to keep civilians away. One unverified report from Lebanon said more than twenty individuals were inside the targeted building and that the facility had been used for gatherings of senior Hamas figures.
According to additional Lebanese media coverage, the strike was aimed at a group that had just exited the Khaled Ibn al-Walid Mosque in the camp and was preparing to board vehicles parked nearby when the attack occurred.
In its formal statement, the IDF said the Air Force had struck terrorists operating “in a military compound used by the terror organization’s operatives for training and instruction to plan and execute terror routes against IDF forces and the State of Israel.” The spokesman added that precautionary steps were taken ahead of the strike “to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”
The IDF stressed that it is acting consistently against Hamas’s foothold in Lebanon and “will continue to act forcefully against terrorists of the Hamas terror organization wherever they operate.”
Military correspondents in Israel added further context. Yossi Yehoshua reported that dozens of Hamas members—mostly lower-level operatives—had gathered at the compound and were involved in preparations for future terror attacks. Intelligence assessments indicated that the site served as a coordination hub for local Hamas cells in Lebanon.
Journalist Itay Blumental noted that the IDF had been planning to strike the compound for some time, but only on Tuesday did the operational conditions align. Once surveillance confirmed the presence of numerous terrorists, a fighter jet carried out the strike. According to early assessments, those killed were relatively low-ranking operatives.
This was the fourth Israeli strike in Lebanon on Tuesday. Around 16:50, Lebanese media reported a drone strike in the village of Blida in the south. Earlier, at about 10:00, another UAV strike was reported on a vehicle in Bint Jbeil. In the morning hours, a drone reportedly targeted an excavator in Blida as well, marking a full day of ongoing military activity in southern Lebanon.
{Matzav.com}
In a landmark moment for Orthodox Jewish representation in American politics, Michelle Weiss clinched the mayoralty of University Heights, Ohio, setting a national first as an orthodox Jewish woman elected to lead a U.S. municipality.
Weiss, who has spent years cultivating a reputation as a pragmatic Republican voice in a predominantly Democratic suburb of Cleveland, centered her bid on cooperation over partisanship. Her message of unity, coupled with her long record of public service, helped her secure the community’s confidence.
With 15 years on the city council and six more as deputy mayor, Weiss entered the race as a familiar and steady presence in local government. Her election stands out not only for its political significance but for breaking new ground—no other orthodox Jewish woman is known to have held a comparable mayoral role in the United States.
At the outset of her campaign, she spoke of her deep bond with the city. “I love University Heights – my husband and I raised our children here and now watch our grandchildren grow,” she said. “I feel a debt of gratitude to the city and a commitment to make a difference.”
Her platform highlighted her reputation as someone ready to “reach across the aisle” to build consensus. Throughout the campaign, she emphasized strengthening infrastructure, promoting commercial growth, and safeguarding the needs of longtime residents. Weiss is scheduled to take office on January 1, 2026.
{Matzav.com}
