What you're feeling is the banality of cruelty from Trump and the Republican Party

Elon Musk Responds to Trump's 'Back Home to South Africa' Comments

 https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-trump-south-africa-2093392

Musk was one of the most prominent supporters of Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, spending at least $250 million to support his bid. However, he has been deeply critical of Trump's "big, beautiful bill," a major tax and spending package that passed the Senate with Vice President JD Vance's tiebreaking vote. It now heads back to the House.

The package would raise the U.S. debt ceiling by $5 trillion, impose large tax cuts and increase spending on border security and defense. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would add $3.3 trillion to U.S. fiscal deficits over the next decade. The bill also reduces health insurance and food subsidies for some lower-income households.

Musk described the bill as "political suicide" and "utterly insane and destructive," adding on X, "It gives handouts to industries of the past, while severely damaging industries of the future."

After Running Hot and Cold, Trump Heaps Praise on Netanyahu

 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-netanyahu-israel-praise-566d399f?mod=hp_lead_pos10

Relations between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have had plenty of ups and downs. As the two leaders prepare for a White House visit set for next week, things are decidedly on the upswing.

Trump has showered Netanyahu with praise for leading a 12-day assault on Iran aimed at setting back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, a conflict the U.S. joined by launching bunker-busting airstrikes on underground Iranian uranium-enrichment sites.

Now the White House has renewed its push for a halt to the war in Gaza. In a Tuesday evening social-media post, Trump said Israel had agreed to the “necessary conditions” for a 60-day cease-fire with Hamas, a goal likely to come up in his meeting with Netanyahu.

“I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Since the Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran, Trump has weighed in on Israel’s domestic affairs, urging Israeli authorities to drop charges against Netanyahu that accuse him of corruption, fraud and breach of trust. Netanyahu denies wrongdoing. The calls represent rare interference by a U.S. leader in a foreign country’s domestic judicial process.

“Bibi and I just went through HELL together,” Trump wrote on Truth Social over the weekend, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “Bibi could not have been better, sharper, or stronger in his LOVE for the incredible Holy Land. Anybody else would have suffered losses, embarrassment, and chaos!”

Trump has called the case against Netanyahu a political witch hunt and compared it to his own legal issues. Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records by a New York court last year and also found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called both the cases against him disgraceful.

Trump’s decision to add U.S. forces to the air campaign against Iran and then to champion Israel’s leader reflects the president’s affinity—in military and political affairs—for leaders he sees as winners.

Trump-Musk feud reignites over the ‘big, beautiful bill’

 https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5380120-trump-musk-fight-over-bill/

The Senate’s version of the bill, which narrowly passed earlier on Tuesday, would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion between 2025 and 2034, roughly $1 trillion more than the House-passed version, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote on X.

“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” 

How Republicans got Murkowski to yes on Trump's megabill - Not in my backyard

 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/01/murkowski-trump-alaska-megabill-00435981

What Murkowski was wrangling for was pretty basic: How to blunt the impact of the bill on her state.

“What I tried to do was to ensure that my colleagues understood what that means when you live in an area where there are no jobs, it is not a cash economy,” she told reporters. “And so I needed help, and I worked to get that every single day.”

And as part of Senate Republicans’ sweeping final amendment to the bill that was part of the overnight negotiations, they removed a controversial tax on solar and wind energy projects that Murkowski and a handful of other Republicans were agitating to be removed.

Another goodie bordered on the obscure, if not for the senator: Bowhead whaling boat captains recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission will be able to deduct more for whale-hunting-related expenses, up to $50,000 from the current $10,000.

Tamar Epstein and the Scarlet Letter: The Kaminetskys and Rabbinic sanctioned adultery

Jewish society is faced with a major crisis - how to deal with a case of rabbinic sanctioned adultery. On the one hand we have adultery - which is one of the worst sins and one which is based on betrayal of the most important human - that of husband and wife. This betrayal aspect is why it is used as a metaphor for betrayal in the relationship of G-d and the Jewish people. There is a primal revulsion towards the betrayal of  a wife who has an affair with another man. It also is one of the most defiling of sins - because of its violation of the sanctity of marriage.

At the same time we are faced with another theme - loyalty to rabbinic authority and gedolim. There is no higher praise than to say one has emunas chachomim i.e., obeys the decisions and views of G-d representatives - the rabbis. In this case Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky and Rav Nota Greenblatt are American gedolim who have the stature of being of the select group of transmitters of G-d's Torah and Mesorah.

The halacha is very clear - Tamar Epstein is a married woman who is married to a man not her husband - the definition of adultery. But she did it with the guidance and encouragement of two major rabbinic figures. However the rabbis who sanctioned this adulterous relations refuse to justify their actions. By their silence they are demanding acceptance of their activities simply because of their status and authority as gedolim - not because they are experts in the halacha - or are correct.

From the point of view of the Kaminetskys and Greenblatts they are saying they have no need to justify anything they do - no matter how horrific in appearance - because they are gedolim. They are hoping that the perceived obscenity of what they are doing will eventually be forgotten and they will succeed in getting away with distorting the Torah. Thus they are not only giving the appearance of violating the Torah by facilitating apparent adultery but they are violating a specific requirement of halacha - that decisions which appear wrong - need to explained in detail to the public.

What about the other rabbis who know that R Greenblatt and the Kamenetskys are wrong? Why haven't there been loud cries of outrage from our rabbinic leaders? The answer is that the rabbis are very uncomfortable with being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Thus they are dodging the question with a technicality. They acknowledge that it is highly unlikely that there is a valid justification for the marriage without a get. However they say that they can not judge whether this is truly a case of adultery - unless they see a written justification for the act to which they can agree or disagree. Without this written justification - they feel they need to assume that what great rabbis have done - must be correct. The fact that the failure to provide a written justification is a violation of halacha - while puzzling - is also something which they say must be given the benefit of doubt.

So the crisis continues - a blatant act of adultery, a brazen concealing of justification,  demands of "trust me I am a gadol", timidity and fear of rabbinic leaders in addressing the issue - and the accelerated loss of emunas chachomim and growth of cynicism by the masses.

Rabbinic Authority - Descriptive vs rational justification

One of the outcomes of the discussions [ I II III ] about Chazal and Science is that there are two disparate models being used here. Each side thinks it is obvious that their model is correct. On the one hand we have the insular chareidi model which says that the only relevant information is that which comes from seeing the text the way our godolim see it. On the other hand are those that argue that it is fine to use that approach for practical halacha but one needs to be and has the right to be concerned with objective truth.

This reminded me of the summary of Prof. Michael S. Berger's excellent book - Rabbinical Authority. He says that determining the source of Rabbinic authority in the traditional world is basically a description of what a particular community considers to be authoritative. On the other hand the more modern elements say that we need to identity objective sources of authority - which are independent of what people in a particular community do.

p154-155

"Interpreting legal texts led us in chapter 9 to introduce Stanley Fish's analysis of literary criticism, which situates all interpretation within the context of interpretive communities. Indeed, a "text" has no existence independent of such a community, for only a community, with its values, assumptions, principles, etc., may construe a text as a "text" in the first place. We teased out the implications of such a model for interpretation in legal traditions in general and in the Jewish legal tradition in particular, showing how the ways the Sages read the Torah became characteristic of that community and were subsequently (consequently?) applied to the Mishnah, the Talmud, and even medieval codes.

All three chapters of part III offered alternative understandings of authority that, to varying degrees, rejected the Enlightenment assessment of authority. The Enlightenmentent model demands that some justification be provided for forgoing one's own independent judgments and decisions in order to defer to another's view. But in part III I tried to show that authority is embedded in a form of life which, in the end, renders such rational justification beside the point. Applying a Wittgensteinian approach to the issue of Rabbinic authority, we saw that the issue could not truly be understood outside a set of circumstances that already situates it - and those subject to it - in a particular context. Description, rather than justification, was seen to be a helpful and productive way of analyzing authority. The question that came up in the nineteenth century and that continues to the present is not really about the authority of the talmudic Sages but is about the contemporary relevance or appropriateness of a form of life that makes the Sages of late antiquity central to one's entire outlook and set of concerns. Various interpretive communities, represented in part by the range of Jewish denominations today, have resolved this issue in a variety of ways, and each, in the end, construes the "text of the Talmud" and "Rabbinic authority" quite differently. The choices made by each community naturally bear consequences for its members, but it is only in terms of these interpretive communities that we can properly discuss the issue of the Talmud's, or Rabbinic, authority.

No simple solutions, therefore, await us as we inquire into the nature of Rabbinic authority. Sages, texts, and interpretive communities and forms of life mix inextricably in complex and subtle ways such that the effort to separate them and view one as antecedent or primary to the others fails to capture how authority is to be understood in Judaism. Rabbinic authority is necessarily conceived in the intricate interface of community and text, a fitting condition for "the people of the Book."

Rabbinic Authority - Medical Model

 At one time I resided in the idyllic Brooklyn community of Midwood. One of my fellow residents was Rabbi Steinwurtzel a dayan of the Bobover Beis Din and a well known talmid chachom. He used to travel regularly by bus to Boro Park. One day I saw him waiting at the bus stop and offered him a ride to Boro Park. On the way I asked him what the basis of Rabbinic authority was. He replied it was like that of a doctor.

I assumed he meant that just as a doctor is understood to know more than I because of his training and education in scientific research and thus his authority comes from superior knowledge so is is the authority of the rabbi comes from superior knowledge. 

However I have recently come to a different understanding. Just as doctors were not automatically seen through history as authorities but only relatively recently partly because of advances in medicine and the need for extensive training and expensive equipment. However a major component of their authority comes from social pressure and taught cultural values. Similar rabbinic authiority requires social pressure and cultural training.   [See Paul Starr's book on the Social Development of Medicine]

Religious Freedom in America

 I'm reading "Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom" by Steven Waldman and wanted to share this quote with you.

"Those who demand religious rights have too often been mocked and murdered, tarred and feathered. The same nation that boasts of its commitment to religious liberty also allowed for the following injustices. In the seventeenth century, Massachusetts hanged people for being Quakers. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, nine of the thirteen colonies barred Catholics and Jews from holding office. In 1838, the governor of Missouri issued Executive Order 44, calling for the “extermination” of the Mormons. Protestant mobs burned convents, sacked churches, and collected the teeth of deceased nuns as souvenirs during anti-Catholic riots in the 1830s—just one of the many spasms of “anti-papism” that roiled America from the colonial era until well into the twentieth century.""Hundreds of thousands of Africans were stripped of not only their liberty but also their religions when they were brought to America, in what one historian called “a spiritual holocaust.” After the Civil War, the United States government banned many Native American spiritual practices while coercing indigenous children to convert to Christianity. Before and during World War II, Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned, beaten, and even castrated for refusing, as a matter of conscience, to salute the American flag."

Start reading this book for free: https://a.co/2wwL4Qy

U.S. Halts Key Weapons for Ukraine in New Sign of Weakening Support for Kyiv

 https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-halts-key-weapons-for-ukraine-in-new-sign-of-weakening-support-for-kyiv-35d78cfc?mod=hp_lead_pos9

Withholding Patriot air-defense missiles comes as Ukraine faces persistent Russian air attacks

The U.S. has stopped the delivery of air-defense interceptors and other weapons intended for Ukraine and is using them instead to beef up Pentagon stocks, a Trump administration official and two congressional aides said Tuesday.

The U.S. move to withhold arms deliveries earmarked for Ukraine reflects the Trump administration’s slackening commitment to aiding Kyiv in its defense against Russia. Administration officials have stressed the need to focus more on the longer-term threats from China and, more immediately, military needs in the Middle East. 

Religious Freedom

Darash Moshe (Devarim 25:17 Vol. I, pp. 415-6)  Remember what Amalek did to you .. Don’t forget It is difficult to understand what is the need for us to remember the deeds of Amalek in our mouth and heart (Megila 18a) or what we are to do?  However the verse (Shemos 27:20) “You are commanded to bring clear oil of beaten olives for lighting and not the dregs , for kindling lamps regularly” answers this. The Torah is revealing to us something very important. The fact is that every superstition and nonsensical belief in the world claims to bring light to the world and creates beautiful things to deceive and capture souls. And nonetheless because many do not accept them, they compel anyone they can, with sword and spear, to adopt their faith and creed as is well known from history. This is true in all times, with respect to both matters of faith and matters of ideology, past and present, and especially in Russia and Germany Thus force is the dregs of their illumination. Ultimately, all that is left is wickedness, not the ideology. So what need do they have for the ideology once they have swords and spears?  In the end, only the sword and spear remain, while the light is completely extinguished, as we saw especially in places such as Germany and Russia. Because the coercion is mixed with ideology  some might mistakenly think that coercion is itself illuminating and that there is no need for ideology. as we saw in Germany and Russia. Therefore,no government should accept one single faith or one single ideology, because ultimately only the power will remain, without an ideology, and this leads to destruction, as we see with our very eyes …You might mistakenly think that this advice applies also to Torah since our nation is to be directed solely by Torah.  That is hinted at by the verse in Shemos that illumination is to be only from pure oil and not the dregs which symbolize coercion. It is only as a wise and understanding nation that we influence the world as we saw in the times of Dovid and Shlomo when many goyim converted solely from the love of G-d and Torah because it is forbidden to convert through force. Also in regard to Amalek, he attacked regarding a certain ideology that he wanted to demonstrate according to his faulty understanding which was not based on miracles and presented nothing to be afraid of. Thus he should have simply explained his views which could be accepted or rejected on its merits. However he didn’t attempt to show the light and good points of his ideology but immediately attempted coercion which is the dregs of any ideology.  Thus we are enjoined that we need to remember with our mouth and hearts that all religion and ideology that is forced solely by the government or by any coercion is inadequate to illuminate our lives and is nonsensense and false and misleads mankind and lacks true illumination. This is the lesson from remembering Amalek. The lesson is that no government should adopt a particular ideology or religion. It should focus on its basic purpose which is  to make a just society and protect the wellbeing of everyone and safeguard them from all harm as it states in Avos – that if it weren’t for the fear of the government, people would destroy each other. However in regards to religion and ideology,  each person should be free to do what he wants. In fact America established legally over 150 years ago that the country can not adopt a particular religion or ideology but all citizens are free to choose what they want and the government is concerned only with the welfare of each person and the well being of society and they do according what G-d wants. As a result America has prospered and been successful. We are obligated to pray to G-d for continued success and that soon Yehuda and Israel should be saved. 

Senate GOP closes in on passing Trump’s tax bill, but holdouts remain

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/30/senate-trump-tax-bill/

Senate Republicans inched toward passing their massive tax and immigration bill Monday, working through the evening to win over the final holdouts as they seek to deliver the first major legislative victory of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act would extend tax cuts passed in 2017, enact campaign promises such as no tax on tips, spend hundreds of billions of dollars on immigration enforcement and defense, and slash spending on social benefit programs.

The $3.3 trillion legislation survived a brief GOP revolt over the weekend to allow the chamber to move forward with debate on the measure — but its passage remains far from certain.

Tucker Carlson and the new country club antisemitism

 https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/bk72ivwnex

There’s a new kind of antisemite in America. He doesn’t wear a swastika. He wears a sports coat. He sips whiskey, quotes Churchill out of context and claims to love Israel—until Israel fights back. His name is Tucker Carlson, and he just exposed the true soul of the MAGA far-right: sanitized, smiling and full of contempt for Jewish sovereignty.

Because what we’re witnessing is the rise of the Power Libel—the 21st-century mutation of the oldest antisemitic accusation. It’s not about blood anymore. It’s about influence. It’s about power. It’s about blaming Jews—individually or collectively, through the symbol of Israel—for the political, cultural and even spiritual decline of a nation. It’s the slander that says, “Israel is dragging us into war,” “Zionists control our politicians,” “Jewish interests corrupted our foreign policy.” It’s not screamed anymore. It’s performed. By pundits with Yale degrees and clean hands.

Carlson doesn’t just criticize Israel—he builds the stage for suspicion. He frames support for Israel as weakness. He suggests that the American public is being manipulated by shadowy forces that are never quite named, but always understood. And most dangerously, he wraps that message in a patriotic aesthetic that makes it palatable to millions of well-meaning people who don’t even know what they’re absorbing. And that’s what makes this moment so dangerous.

Senior Trump official: Israel’s border agreements ‘are all illusions’

 https://thehill.com/policy/international/5377340-trump-administration-israel-border-remarks/?tbref=hp

A senior Trump administration official described Israel’s modern borders as being drawn along “illusory” lines during wide-ranging remarks in which he also raised doubt about the survival of some Middle Eastern nation-states, blamed Europe for carving up the region over the past decade and offered praise for the Ottoman Empire.

The official made the remarks during a background briefing discussing President Trump signing an executive order on Monday lifting sanctions on Syria, and the administration’s efforts to establish diplomatic ties between the new Syrian government and Israel.