Special Interest Glance
Ask anybody about the Jewish vote for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the election, and they’ll tell you he lost it badly. If they saw the news coverage, the headlines put a number on it: One-third went to Mamdani, and two-thirds went to his opponent Andrew Cuomo. To backers of Israel, the support for Mamdani was too high. To others, it was read as a sign that Mamdani was too divisive for the Democratic Party coalition—alienating large segments of New York City’s Jewish electorate.
On his first day as Mayor, Mamdani rescinded all executive orders issued by Eric Adams following his federal criminal indictment. This included revoking the Adams administration’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which equates criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism, even as Mamdani maintained the newly-created Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.
Unsurprisingly, Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor in the city’s history, has routinely been accused of antisemitism from segments of the Democratic and Republican Party establishments, given his advocacy for the Palestinian cause. Regardless, the election results have been used to promote the narrative that Mamdani has little more than marginal support within the Jewish community. But an exit poll of Jewish voters that tells us nothing about their denomination or the wealth of their neighborhood might be missing crucial variables.
A closer block-by-block analysis, in fact, reveals an entirely different story. Whether a voter was Jewish or not turns out to have little to do with their preference for Mamdani or his opponent. Jewish voters, like New York City as a whole, were split between New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his erstwhile opponent Andrew Cuomo based on culture, denomination, age, and income. Block-level results show that Jewish voters routinely voted in line with their neighbors.
Zohran Mamdani Has More Jewish Support Than You Think
A top DoJ official trained Pam Bondi on ethics rules in the department. Then he was fired
Joseph Tirrell was reaching the end of a vacation on 11 July, and watching TV at home. He checked his email on his phone and saw a message from his employer, the Department of Justice. He thought it was strange that he was receiving email from the government on his personal account. Inside was a message that he was being fired from his job as the top ethics official at the department.
The notice, signed by Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, did not give a reason for his firing. It also misspelled his first name, addressing it to “Jospeh W Tirrell”. Tirrell called his bosses at the department, who at first seemed as surprised as he did, before eventually confirming that he had in fact been terminated.
At the start of the year, Tirrell knew that he might attract scrutiny from the incoming administration because he had signed off on special counsel Jack Smith receiving pro-bono legal services from a private law firm as he prepared to leave the government, something Tirrell said was clearly allowed under the department’s ethics rules. As the department’s top ethics official, he was responsible for overseeing ethics compliance across the agency and training the department’s top officers in their obligations. But as months passed and Tirrell remained in his job, he thought he was safe.
US will 'run' Venezuela after capturing Maduro, Trump says
"We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition," Trump said at a press conference from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. “It has to be judicious, because that's what we are all about.”
The president did not provide details of how the United States will run Venezuela, but said that his administration is determining who will be in charge of the country. He declined to endorse Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, to lead the country. He also did not provide a timeline for how long the U.S. will run the country, saying that it will be “a period of time” as they rebuild Venezuela’s infrastructure.
Judge rejects Trump administration challenge to New York’s ‘Green Light Law’
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to block New York’s so-called Green Light Law, which allows the state to issue driver’s licenses to people without requiring proof that they’re in the country legally.
U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Trump administration failed to support its claims that certain provisions of the state law are preempted by federal law, impermissibly regulate the federal government, or impermissibly discriminate against the federal government.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit in February, challenging the constitutionality of the state law, saying it violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states federal laws take precedence over state laws, and asking the court to block enforcement of the statute.
The lawsuit named the state of New York, as well as its governor, Kathy Hochul (D), and its attorney general, Letitia James (D), as defendants.
The DOJ, in the lawsuit, challenged three specific provisions of the law, including one that prevented the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) from disclosing an applicant’s records or information to “any agency that primarily enforces immigration law or to any employee or agent of such agency” without a court order or warrant.
Ohio Dem on Kennedy Center board call says she was muted: Renaming ‘was not unanimous’
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board of trustees, disputed the White House’s claim that the vote was “unanimous” to rename the performing arts center to the Trump-Kennedy Center.
In a short video post on the social platform X, the Ohio Democrat said she tried to voice her opposition to the name-change decision but was muted on the call and not permitted to speak.
“For the record. This was not unanimous,” she wrote in a message along with her video.
She also said the vote was not on the meeting’s agenda, adding, “This was not consensus. This is censorship.”
Beatty also pushed back on the legality of the name change, noting, “Clearly, the Congress has a say in this. This center, the Kennedy Center, was created by the Congress.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced earlier Thursday that the Kennedy Center’s board — whose members were hand-selected by President Trump — voted “unanimously” to rename D.C.’s renowned performing arts center the Trump-Kennedy Center.
US judge will block hundreds of Trump administration layoffs, citing shutdown law
A federal judge on Wednesday said she would block Donald Trump’s administration from laying off hundreds of federal employees, the latest legal setback for the president’s efforts to downsize the US government workforce.
US district judge Susan Illston during a hearing in San Francisco said hundreds of layoffs at four agencies were likely not allowed under a law Congress passed last month to end a 43-day government shutdown.
“The chaotic nature of these has been continuing and has affected employees of the government in many ways, including loss of potential alternative jobs and loss of healthcare coverage,” Illston said.
Illston, an appointee of Democratic former president Bill Clinton, said she would block the US state department and education department from laying off about 250 and 150 employees respectively, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions.
She also said she intended to order state, the defense department, the General Services Administration, and the Small Business Administration to reinstate roughly 300 people who lost their jobs during the shutdown.
Flag linked to Christian nationalism, Jan. 6 hung at Education Dept.
A top official at the U.S. Department of Education has been keeping a controversial flag linked to Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6 insurrection hung outside his office, according to the agency's union and a department employee who has observed it.
It's the latest in a series of instances in which the flag – which depicts a pine tree and the words "An Appeal to Heaven" – has been associated with agencies and figures at the highest levels of the federal government.
Though long tied to the American Revolution, the banner in more recent years "has been adopted primarily by evangelical Christian nationalist groups," as well as the Proud Boys and certain neo-Nazi groups, according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, an independent nonprofit organization. It was flown in 2021 by rioters at the U.S. Capitol as they tried to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results.
The symbol's emergence at the agency responsible for overseeing billions of dollars in federal funding for the nation's schools is already raising concerns about the separation of church and state.
Rachel Gittleman, the president of the union for Education Department workers nationwide, said in a statement that the agency "has no place for symbols that were carried by insurrectionists."
“Since January, hardworking public servants at the U.S. Department of Education have been subjected to threats, harassment, and sustained demoralization," she said. "Now, they are being asked to work in an environment where a senior leader is prominently displaying an offensive flag – one that, regardless of its origins in the American Revolution, has come to represent intolerance, hatred, and extremism."
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