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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy expressed confidence that air traffic controllers will soon receive substantial back pay once the government reopens, as he spoke to reporters Tuesday at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee. “Our controllers could be paid within 48 hours of the government opening,” he said, emphasizing that payments would arrive quickly. “I think it’s a 70% payment. But they’ll get a big lump sum of what they’re due, which is helpful. They don’t have to wait another two weeks to be paid.”
Duffy discussed the toll the federal shutdown has taken on the aviation sector and its workforce, criticizing Senate Democrats for blocking the continuing resolution that had been approved by the House. After 41 days of gridlock, enough senators finally crossed party lines to advance the measure, clearing the path for government operations to resume.
While optimistic about restoring regular flight schedules, Duffy cautioned that some residual delays could continue as systems and staffing levels return to normal. “If we have the controllers showing up … I think we’re going to be back to regular flight schedules,” he said. “Again, I can’t control the weather, you know that. I can’t control if there’s issues on aircraft, that’s mechanical. But with regard to controlling the airspace, we’ll be up and running.”
He acknowledged that many air traffic controllers have faced financial hardship throughout the prolonged shutdown. “Also on this day is the day that the controllers don’t get their second paycheck. And as I talked to controllers, it was interesting,” he said, noting that veteran employees were slightly more prepared. “They were telling me, you know, ‘A lot of us can maybe navigate one pay period.’ It’s not pleasant, but they have a little pot of money for a rainy day fund,” Duffy said, “but a lot of the new controllers didn’t.”
The timing of the government’s reopening, he added, is especially critical for those struggling to meet expenses. “They said virtually all of them can’t navigate missing two pay periods, which is a whole month of pay they’ve missed. So that’s a problem,” he said. “And that’s why this reopening of the government is so critical to happen right now.”
Despite the turbulence, Duffy commended airlines for cooperating with the reduced flight schedules that became necessary during the shutdown. He urged travelers whose flights were canceled to contact the Department of Transportation if they have not yet received refunds, assuring that the agency is monitoring such cases closely.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has recalled lawmakers to Washington, urging them to prepare for a swift vote on the new appropriations bill that will fund the government and bring the standoff to an end.
{Matzav.com}
By Jonathan S. Tobin
Some of Tucker Carlson’s defenders and apologists have argued that the backlash against the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster isn’t really about antisemitism.
Given the cozy interviews he’s granted to neo-Nazi “groyper” Nick Fuentes and Holocaust-denier “historian” Daryl Cooper—and his willingness to invite anyone on his show that will promote blood libels against or otherwise smear Israel—that’s not an argument anyone should take seriously. There’s no doubt that Carlson, like so many on the left, are determined to move the Overton Window of acceptable discourse so as to make it acceptable to engage in a wide variety of antisemitic tropes aimed at stigmatizing Jews and anything to do with the Jewish state.
But it’s also true that there is an ongoing debate about foreign policy in which Carlson’s efforts to aid the cause of delegitimizing the Jewish state and its supporters is playing a significant role. As Carlson has made clear, the ultimate target of his attacks isn’t really Jews or even the state of Israel. He’s just as, if not more, interested in taking down Americans who support it, thereby altering American foreign policy in the Middle East.
An antisemitic trope
If he is to be stopped, it won’t be because conservative supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speak up in defense of Israel and its friends. Rather, it will be because Vice President JD Vance, who is not only Carlson’s avowed friend and ally, as well as a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, does so.
The phrase Carlson uses is “Israel First,” which is an attempt to disparage anyone who backs the U.S.-Israel alliance as not merely unpatriotic but also somehow at odds with President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy. The expression is essentially an antisemitic trope about dual loyalty, and is linked to other ones about Jews buying influence. That’s why, rather than maintaining silence about Carlson’s most recent platforming and coddling of a neo-Nazi, the vice president needs to show that he is prepared to challenge allies to his right. If he fails to do so, it will not only hurt the country; it will also harm Vance’s own chances of following Trump into the Oval Office.The “Israel First” smear delineates the distinction between the contemporary right-wing version of Jew-hatred from the even more potent one on the left.
Both are rooted in toxic myths.
Leftists are wrong to think of the Jewish state as either “white” or a manifestation of imperialism, since the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. But left-wingers, like New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, hate Israel because they see it through the lens of their mindset in which the world is divided between two groups: people of color who are always victims no matter what they do, and “white” oppressors who are always in the wrong.
Progressive myths
Progressives have successfully indoctrinated a generation of young Americans to believe in critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism. As a result, their mischaracterization of the genocidal Palestinian-Arab cause of destroying Israel as justified resistance to racism has become something close to orthodoxy for most liberals.
Unlike the left, the overwhelming majority of American conservatives do not hate Israel. Nor are they antisemitic.
But a growing and increasingly loud minority on the right who are hostile to Israel view it as being part of a conspiracy to undermine American sovereignty. They regurgitate Carlson’s canards about Israel’s supporters—both Jews and evangelical Christians— wrongly manipulating the United States into conflicts in which it has no stake. Some of them also believe this is a threat to Christianity and white supremacy. Their support comes from a group of predominantly male youngsters who are influenced by the likes of Carlson, podcaster Candace Owens and the vile Fuentes.
Which faction poses the greater threat to what is left of what was once optimistically termed as a bipartisan pro-Israel consensus? And how do we reach and persuade either variety of Israel-haters—whether on the left or the right—that they’re wrong?
It’s easy to see the left as a greater problem simply because it now dominates the Democratic Party.
The intersectional left-wing base of the Democrats is in thrall to the ideologues who falsely analogize the Palestinian war on the Jewish state as a rerun of the American civil-rights movement. Faith in that distorted understanding is so deep that nothing Israel’s opponents do—including the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023 and a century of rejection of every attempt at compromise, including offers of Palestinian statehood—can make them realize that they are backing a genocidal cause rooted in hatred of Jews. Nor do they seem to care that the side they’re on is reactionary Islamist one that opposes all of their other progressive beliefs about society, including LGBTQ and women’s rights.
Such people not only dominate party activism. They also virtually monopolize the ranks of liberal journalism, thus amplifying their ability to control the discussion in the mainstream media about the Middle East.
Pro-Israel Democrats, such as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), are an increasingly small minority out of step with the rest of their party. So are moderates, like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who, while deeply critical of the Jewish state, are still supportive of the alliance. But, despite the hopes of Shapiro and other non-leftists who will hop into the race in the next two years, it’s increasingly likely that the next Democratic president, whether in 2028 or some point in the future, will not merely be a half-hearted ally, as was the case with Joe Biden, or unfriendly in the manner of Barack Obama, but an open and unabashed foe of Israel in a way that is unprecedented.
Danger on the right
As dire as that prospect is for Israel-supporters, there is a strong argument that the threat from right-wing Israel-haters is just as dangerous heading into the next presidential election cycle.
Given that Trump is the most pro-Israel president since the founding of the modern Jewish state, and that the base of the GOP is largely evangelical and devoted to the welfare of Israel, that doesn’t make sense. Unlike the case with the Democrats, the Republican GOP congressional caucuses in the House and Senate are both strongly supportive of Israel.
But it would be a mistake to underestimate the potential of those who cheer on Carlson and his even more extreme Israel-haters and antisemites to influence discourse on the right.
Indeed, as Vance’s response to a question from a student at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi indicated, signs of real trouble are on the horizon. The student asked why the United States supports Israel and gives it “hundreds of billions of dollars.” He also questioned both the value of the alliance and repeated slanders about “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza (falsely attributed to the late Charlie Kirk), and claimed that not only did Israelis practice a different religion but “openly support the prosecution of ours.”
Vance could have shot down the lies about “ethnic cleansing” and Israeli persecution of Christians, not to mention the exaggeration of the extent of the military aid it gets. But he didn’t. Instead, he did his best imitation of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s kowtowing to the libels of leftist Israel-haters during last year’s campaign. He expressed sympathy with the student and asserted that the Trump administration wasn’t getting bossed around by Jerusalem.
A ‘post-Israel America?’
It’s that kind of answer from a politician who is fully capable and willing to challenge critics and questioners when they are in the wrong that encouraged the paleocon American Conservative magazine to ponder whether Vance will be the one to “lead a post-Israel America.”
That may be wishful thinking. After all, Vance made a compelling case last year that the Jewish state was a model ally for an “America First” administration, since it is willing to do its own fighting and has shared interests with the United States. But right now, he seems more interested in maintaining his close friendship with Carlson and appealing to the audience who watches him and other far-right podcasts than in telling the truth about the antisemitic libels directed at Israel.
The populist national conservative wing of the GOP seems to be increasingly worried about its young voters being under the influence of antisemites.
That was on display in the last few weeks as the Heritage Foundation think tank failed to fully dissociate itself from Carlson. Others on the right, such as Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh, who are more interested in bashing those who care about Israel and antisemitism than in criticizing even the craziest of Jew-haters like Owens, seem to agree that a neo-Nazi of Fuentes’s ilk speaks for the concerns of many, if not most, young conservative males. Support for engagement with Fuentes and his followers, rather than condemnation of them, is a disturbing abandonment of principles.
As conservative thinker Rod Dreher noted in his Substack, he’s now convinced that “between 30 and 40 percent” of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes.” If the actual number is anywhere close to that number, it isn’t merely shocking. It’s something that ought to be setting off alarms among those who have confidently assumed that the right was immune to antisemitism, especially when compared to the political left.
It’s hard to imagine anyone with a strong following on the left, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) or others in the Congressional left-wing “Squad,” pushing back against the intersectional myths about Israel’s being a “white” oppressor or asserting that Jews aren’t the indigenous people of Israel. But it ought not to be fanciful to imagine Vance, who has an early but impressive lead in the race to succeed Trump in 2028, disabusing young conservatives of the myths that Carlson or Fuentes have been feeding them.
As someone who has opposed an unlimited U.S. commitment to the war in Ukraine and the need to prioritize the coming threat from China, he has the standing to take the opportunity to reiterate the arguments for the alliance with Israel at a time when many on the right look to him for leadership to defend the conservative movement from antisemites.
He could point out that, contrary to Carlson’s assertions, the United States benefits enormously from security cooperation, joint weapons and technology development and intelligence-sharing with Israel.
He could make it clear that almost all of the billions in military aid that Israel receives is spent in the United States, and that assisting American arms manufacturers is just as crucial for the U.S. as it is for the Jewish state.
He could also argue that far from persecuting Christians—a lie that Carlson floated in an interview on his program with the Israel-hating sister of former Clinton administration staffer and ABC News host George Stephanopoulos—the Jewish state is the only country in the Middle East where Christians can live and worship freely. That’s something unimaginable in virtually every Muslim and Arab country, including Qatar, which Carlson falsely lauds as a true American ally.
AIPAC vs. Qatar
He might also note that the smears against the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby that are frequently repeated by users of the term “Israel Firsters” are similarly mendacious. Contrary to its detractors and some of its supporters who have also exaggerated its influence, AIPAC is not only not the dominant force in Washington; its efforts are dwarfed by those of other special interest groups, ranking 191st in direct lobbying, 18th in direct contributions to candidates and 21st in outside spending.
By contrast, Qatar is operating a vast influence operation in the United States that encompasses not just direct contributions, but also the Islamist propaganda broadcast on its Al Jazeera network. It also involves buying the loyalty of American businessmen such as Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and journalists like Carlson. It invests heavily to subvert American higher education, to which it is the largest foreign donor.
This invidious campaign aims not only to promote the emirate’s financial and political interests, such as supporting its terrorist clients like Hamas. It also seeks to spread Islamist beliefs among U.S. Muslims and secular college students that are antithetical to the values of Western civilization that conservatives believe in and wish to defend against the effort by woke progressives to tear down.
Anyone who worries about defending biblical values or putting American interests first ought to be sounding the alarm about Qatar. And this means all those who tap into the deep religious, ethical and political support for Israel as AIPAC does, especially conservative Christians.
But the vice president seems to be making a political calculation that he can’t afford to alienate Carlson’s and Fuentes’s fans if he is to secure the support of the right in future races.
That’s unfortunate and not just because at a time of an unprecedented surge in American antisemitism, the country needs moral leadership. It’s potentially dangerous because the longer Carlson and those on the right who share his obsessive hatred of Israel are allowed to expand their foothold in mainstream conservative discourse, the stronger they will grow.
That will not only fuel the kind of Jew-hatred on the right that we now take for granted on the intersectional left. But it will lend legitimacy to the anti-Israel Democrats who have so much in common with Carlson and fumble a GOP opportunity to seize the political center from a party that treats extremists like AOC and Mamdani as rock stars and their future leaders.
Repudiating the far-right won’t deprive Vance of the votes he needs to obtain the 2028 GOP presidential nomination. But it could cost him the general election if he makes the same mistake as Harris did in 2024: allowing himself to be captured by extremist allies.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.
{Matzav.com}
In a candid conversation with Anand Giridharadas, Columbia University professor and Ugandan-born scholar Mahmood Mamdani reflected on his son Zohran Mamdani’s unexpected ascent to the mayoralty of New York City. He said the public’s unease isn’t truly about his son himself, but about what Zohran represents — the sweeping social and generational shifts taking place around the world.
“I have mixed responses to it. On the one hand I am like anyone would be, a proud father. I don’t want to claim that I saw this coming. I didn’t see it coming. I was really surprised. He said he was contemplating running for the position of mayor of New York City, but then he is not somebody who is given to convention, and he is not somebody who is afraid of the odds, no matter what they are against him,” Mamdani said, describing his reaction to the campaign that ultimately captured the city’s attention.
Reflecting on the weight of the office, he admitted to feeling both admiration and apprehension for his son’s new role. “So that’s one feeling. The other feeling I have is this job is going to bring a mountain of responsibilities on his back. Like just about everybody has noted and commented, he’s a young man, 34 years old. He has a lot of chutzpah, he’s open to experimenting. He understands fully well that he doesn’t have the kind of experience that can be equal to a job like this, therefore he will have to develop a team, which will pool together and make up as a team what they may not have as individuals.”
Mamdani ended on a personal and emotional note, likening the experience to watching a high-stakes race from the sidelines. “But it’s still intimidating for somebody like me, close enough and yet not in it. So having to watch it from a distance, it’s like a fast car race and you are on the side, and your son is in the driving wheel and you just keep praying and hoping that all will be okay,” he said.
{Matzav.com}
After tense days of political wrangling, the coalition standoff finally ended with an agreement reached during a late-night meeting involving Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich’s representatives, Finance Committee Chairman Moshe Gafni, Coalition Chairman Ofir Katz, and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs. The parties struck a deal that will allow the long-debated bill granting tax breaks to IDF reservists to move forward.
Under the compromise, the legislation will advance to its second and third readings in the Knesset next week. A new provision will be added, ensuring that reservists earning lower incomes will receive an additional monthly payment of roughly 3,000 shekels, beginning in 2026.
The agreement also paves the way for the Religious Zionism Party to return to coalition voting, signaling a thaw in the recent freeze that had paralyzed key government initiatives.
According to the details of the bill, eligible reservists will receive income tax credits of up to 1,000 shekels per month. The measure is intended as both tangible support and a gesture of national appreciation toward working reservists—men and women who shoulder the dual responsibility of serving the country and supporting their families.
{Matzav.com}
At a deeply moving L’chaim celebration marking the publication of his 60th sefer, Mishmeres HaBayis on the halachos of challah, the renowned posek, Rav Moshe Mordechai Karp, was overcome with emotion and broke into tears as he began singing “Mah ashiv laHashem,” a moment that swept up all those present in heartfelt song and gratitude.
The event brought together rabbonim and dayanim of the Beis Horaah B’Yisrael, who gathered in honor of Rav Karp’s latest work. The sefer, a detailed and comprehensive halachic volume of more than 350 pages, offers clear guidance, lucid explanations, and illuminating psakim on topics relevant to the Jewish home. It also includes insightful notes on the Teshuvos Zeraim of the Rashba.
In his remarks, Rav Karp spoke emotionally of his formative years in the presence of the Steipler Gaon, author of Kehillos Yaakov zt”l. He shared that many of the halachos recorded in the new sefer were refined through discussions with the Steipler, who extended to him exceptional warmth and affection. Despite Rav Karp’s youth at the time, the Kehillos Yaakov greatly praised his diligence and talent, foreseeing in him a future vessel of blessing destined to illuminate batei Yisroel through Torah.
Rav Karp recounted how the Kehillos Yaakov would caution him that “sometimes stringencies can turn into leniencies,” reminding him that excessive chumros in one area could inadvertently lead to laxity in another. Those words, he said, continue to guide him in his approach to psak halacha until this day.
During the L’chaim, Rav Karp recited the berachah of Shehecheyanu, a practice he observes each time he completes and publishes a new sefer. In keeping with his view outlined in his work Yom Beyom (Hilchos Berachos, Volume 4), he donned a new garment beforehand, explaining that one who rejoices in wearing something new should bless Shehecheyanu upon it.
{Matzav.com}
As part of his visit to the United States, the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Toras Zev, Rav Boruch Soloveitchik, delivered a penetrating shiur klali at Yeshivas Heichal HaTorah in Monsey, headed by Rav Mordechai Dick. The shiur focused on the sugya of shaveh kesef k’kesef.
The bochurim eagerly absorbed every word of Rav Soloveitchik’s deep pilpul, visibly inspired by the clarity and depth of his approach. After the shiur, many of them crowded around the rosh yeshiva, engaging him in lively discussion for nearly an hour, passionately delving further into the inyan.
Rav Soloveitchik’s trip to the U.S. was arranged both in support of his yeshiva and in honor of the wedding of a daughter of his close friend, R’ Yitzchok Rakowsky of Lakewood, one of the leaders of Keren Olam HaTorah.
During his stay in Monsey, the rosh yeshiva was hosted by philanthropist R’ Ari Busbi.
Over Shabbos, he attended the aufruf of the son of Rav Mordechai Dick who last night married a daughter of Rav Aryeh Malkiel Schustal, granddaughter of Rav Dovid Schustal, rosh yeshiva of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood.
{Matzav.com}