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Friends,

Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) summed it up: "Nearly half a century of precedent is poised to be overturned by a court with two procedurally stolen seats and three justices appointed by a far-right extremist President who lost the popular vote." The culprits? "A broken Senate, and broken Republican Party, a broken campaign finance system, and Mitch McConnell's breaking of norms."

The GOP has made no secret of its desire to criminalize abortion. As our Republican friends like to tell us about Iran, when someone says they are going to do something to you, believe them. The GOP is as dangerous as it sounds. We should be terrified.

We can pretend that we have two parties with different policies but fundamentally similar values, or we can open our eyes and accept that the Republican Party motto is "Dystopia Now!" We need to codify Roe v. Wade, but that means eliminating the filibuster, and that means ensuring Democrats keep the House and expand their majority in the Senate. Think party labels don't matter? Not one Republican voted to codify Roe v. Wade.

Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for 50 years, but this Court has no respect for precedent. President Biden said that "Roe is based on 'a long line of precedent recognizing ‘the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty’… against government interference with intensely personal decisions.' I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental, Roe has been the law of the land for almost fifty years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned." He's right.

Over the years, the Court has expanded rights, but never before has it taken away such a well-established right. This Court is illegitimate, and the only way to restore respect for an institution that should be respected is for Congress to pass H.R. 2584, which would increase from 9 to 13 the number of Justices on the Supreme Court.

This leak all but guarantees that once again, this will not be the election when Jews leave the Democratic Party. Recent polling from the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 75% of Jewish voters are concerned that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. Anyone concerned about protecting the right to abortion is voting Democratic in 2022.

The more we learn about returning to the Iran Deal, the more sense it makes. John Krzyzaniak and Akshai Vikram explain that "if the United States is ever going to restrict Iran’s missile program through diplomacy, re-entering the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is the best – and likely only – way to make it happen."

The bottom line is that "the only thing worse than an unchecked Iranian missile program is an unchecked Iranian missile program along with an Iranian nuclear weapon."

The State Department noted on Thursday that "our administration has actually increased sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program and on the IRGC over the past year. There is nothing in a potential return to the JCPOA that would in any way diminish our resolve or our ability to continue combating these aspects of Iran’s policies in the region."

If we don't reenter the JCPOA, which means prioritizing Iran's nuclear program and then, with that threat off the table, focusing on Iran's missile program, we will end up in the worst of all worlds.

Zvi Bar'el reminds us that the IRGC is "subject to more than 80 sanctions that will remain in force even if the organization is removed from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. Interestingly, Iran isn’t demanding the lifting of these sanctions, only the group’s removal from the list."

Delisting the IRGC, which would give Iran's government a symbolic selling point for its hardliners, seems like a bargain we should leap to take, but as Bar'el writes, Biden's "problems are with his own equivalent of Iran’s parliament, where members of Congress are demanding that he impose additional sanctions, withdraw from the talks and certainly not capitulate to Iran’s demands."

We saw some of this with Wednesday's legally non-binding Senate votes, where some Democrats joined Republicans in a motion to instruct that called for the Iran Deal to address "the full range of Iran's destabilizing activities" (hint: it won't) and not delist the IRGC. This does not signal that these Democrats will oppose the deal we are more likely to get (politics are complicated), but it does show that some Democrats are not immune to gamesmanship either, even on an issue as straightforward as this.

Politico reported that at least two Democrats said their votes in favor of Lankford’s motion weren’t indicative of their support for an eventual agreement between the U.S. and Iran. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that “If we get down to a serious negotiation and the potential for reining in nuclear weapons in the Middle East, I think people will look at it differently,” and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said that "motions to instruct are like Student Council.” They carry no legal weight and are mainly for show and tell.

Democrats clearly have the votes to sustain a veto of any legislation blocking reentry into the JCPOA, but it's up to us to ensure that members of Congress know that we have their backs and will support them if they support the only viable option available to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons--returning to the JCPOA. Not one Democrat who supported the deal in 2015 lost in 2016. Supporting the deal is smart policy and smart politics.

Still not sure? This from two Israeli security experts is the article to read.

Jewish members of Congress condemned antisemitic remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The 22 members, all Democrats, said that "defaulting to antisemitic tropes, including blaming the Jews for the Holocaust and using the Holocaust to cover their own war crimes, reflects the gutless depravity of the Russian regime."

President Biden proclaimed May 2022 Jewish American Heritage Month. The proclamation is pursuant to legislation sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) in 2005. Separately, the State Department vehemently condemned the terrorist attack in Elad, Israel, which killed at least three and wounded many others.

Opposing Zionism and criticizing Israel is not necessarily antisemitic. It can be, but as Jonathan Jacoby explains, "understanding when anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitic is just as important as understanding when it is." T'ruah explains that criticizing Israel is not inherently antisemitic either.

The Harvard Crimson recently published a poorly reasoned, wrongheaded editorial supporting BDS. Natalie Kahn responded the right way: Instead of attempting to shut down debate by labeling the editorial antisemitic because it supported BDS, she addressed its arguments. You don't have to agree with everything she wrote to see that her approach, responding on the merits rather than jumping to false accusations of antisemitism, is the better approach, one that we and the organizations that purport to represent us should follow.

But there was more to that editorial than BDS. Michael Koplow writes that "a bunch of college kids endorsing BDS under an unattributed collective byline is not going to threaten Israel’s status or standing, and I am firmly of the view that endorsing BDS should be treated from a free speech perspective no differently than condemning BDS. What should worry us is that the same editorial unambiguously asserted that nothing about the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s Wall of Resistance—including the first panel that read 'Zionism is racism, settler colonialism, white supremacy, apartheid'—was deserving of the 'delegitimizing label' of antisemitism. Note that the Wall of Resistance did not accuse Israel, the Israeli government, or Israeli policies and actions of white supremacy, but rather labeled the idea of Jewish self-determination as white supremacy." Still deserving of free speech? Yes. Antisemitism? Yes. There are lines, and parts of the editorial crossed them.

Confused? If the short T'ruah guide is too long, here's an even shorter one-page explainer from Nexus.

Hugs and kisses are not the point. Writing about her sister, Orli Sheffey z''l, Ayelet Sheffey explains that the point is society's stigmatization of mental illness. Please donate if you can to Ariel Sheffey's NYC Marathon fundraiser for National Alliance for Mental Illness - NYC Metro.

Last week's newsletter.

ICYMI. What The New Yorker Didn’t Say About a Famous Writer’s Anti-Semitism.

Tweet of the Week. Dan Pfeiffer.

Twitter Thread of the Week. Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL).

Video Clip of the Week. GOP judges exposed.

Upcoming Events. Please join hosts Lynn & Skip Schrayer, along with me, Dana Gordon, Politics with Dana and Steve, Mike & Eileen Tarnoff, and many others for a Zoom discussion on the impact of the Jewish vote in 2022 and protecting our democracy with special guests Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH), Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), and JDCA CEO Halie Soifer on Monday, May 16, from 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm Central Time. Contributions to JDCA are encouraged but not required. RSVP to Lauren@katzwatsongroup.com to reserve your space and get the Zoom link.

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