JD Vance epitomizes the GOP’s move from morals to whataboutism

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/15/politics/jd-vance-young-republicans-texts-analysis

Pointing to recently disclosed violent messages from Democratic Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones, Vance basically argued Republicans should hold their tongues.

“This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance wrote on X. “I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

It’s hard to find a better epitome of the MAGA movement’s evolution on hateful rhetoric. The moral high ground is out; whataboutism is very much in.

It’s a remarkable entry in the GOP’s long-running shift toward a no-apologies approach to politics. The attitude seems to be that as long as the other side is perceived as worse, the GOP shouldn’t bother with policing its own.

Controversy over Tucker Carlson interview reveals conservative movement’s conflict over antisemitism

 https://apnews.com/article/heritage-foundation-roberts-tucker-carlson-nick-fuentes-e7347c9f414dfea41de7d63a0977d3b9

 As Republicans accuse Democrats of tolerating antisemitism in their party, the GOP on Friday was roiled by its own schism after the leader of a powerful right-wing think tank defended prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for his friendly podcast interview with a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views.

The outrage began when Roberts on Thursday posted a video in which he denied his group was “distancing itself” from the former Fox News host, one of the most powerful voices on the right, after Carlson’s podcast hosted Nick Fuentes, whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identify.

“The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” said Roberts, adding that, while antisemitism is wrong, conservatives do not need to always support Israel.

The flare-up comes as criticism of Israel and blatant antisemitism have risen in right wing circles. Activists such as Fuentes and Candace Owens have seen the popularity of their podcasts and videos grow, particularly among young conservatives who are increasingly skeptical of the notion that the Republican Party should stand by Israel’s side and support its war in Gaza, given President Donald Trump ‘s “America First” agenda

Heritage Foundation shakes up staff in wake of Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes controversy

 https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5584905-heritage-foundation-shake-up-carlson-fuentes-criticism

He made the announcement in an email to staff late Friday with the subject line: “Heritage’s Stand Against Antisemitism and for Civilizational Truth.”

The email, obtained by The Hill, opened by saying the thank tank had “launched and expanded numerous explicit efforts to combat antisemitism” under his leadership.

“Our position on Israel is principled and balanced: there’s a great deal of space between believing Israel can do no wrong and blaming it for every wrong,” the Heritage chief wrote.

ICE and Border Patrol’s use of tear gas injures, sickens and tests the law

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/11/01/dhs-ice-border-patrol-chicago-tear-gas

Federal officers have thrown chemical agents out of vehicles on city streets, creating a hazard for motorists. They have thrown tear-gas canisters near stores and schools, exposing children, pregnant women and older people to the noxious gas. And on numerous occasions federal officers have fired pepper balls directly at protesters — in one case, striking a pastor in the head.

The use of tear gas has persisted in recent days despite a court order forbidding officers from using chemical agents against demonstrators and journalists unless they pose a safety threat. Last week, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official leading the Chicago operation, was videotaped throwing a tear-gas canister into a crowd. In another incident, immigration officers deployed tear gas as families were walking to a Halloween parade.

On Oct. 9, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order blocking DHS federal agents from using riot control weapons, including tear gas, on journalists, protesters and religious practitioners who do not pose an immediate threat. The temporary restraining order also required federal agents to give “at least two separate warnings when feasible” at an appropriate sound level before using a riot control weapon.

Ellis questioned Bovino on Tuesday and warned him that agents appear to be violating her temporary restraining order barring them from using chemical munitions on protesters or journalists who do not pose a threat.

Ted Cruz to Jewish Republicans: Antisemitism is ‘an existential crisis in our party’

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/ted-cruz-to-jewish-republicans-antisemitism-is-an-existential-crisis-in-our-party

Ted Cruz warned of rising antisemitism on the right — and a lack of Republican voices calling it out — as he kicked off the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit Thursday night.

The speech reiterated comments he made at a San Antonio megachurch last week, including the core message that he’s recently seen more right-wing antisemitism than ever before.

“In the last six months, I’ve seen more antisemitism on the right than I had in my entire life,” Cruz said.

“This is a poison,” he continued. “And I believe we are facing an existential crisis in our party and our country.”

The MAGA Right’s Antisemitism Problem

 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-maga-rights-antisemitism-problem-ddbc39cb?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

By failing to draw a clear line, JD Vance and the Heritage Foundation put conservatism in jeopardy.

The right has a racism problem. This doesn’t mean that the Trump voter coalition is full of racists. Rather, the racism is concentrated in a faction of MAGA’s online leadership. They call themselves “America first.” Their detractors call them the “woke right.” These people mirror the woke left’s self-obsessed identity politics and fantasies of malign Jewish influence.

US footage shows: Hamas operatives loot humanitarian aid truck

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/417133

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) released footage from an MQ-9 drone showing suspected Hamas operatives looting a humanitarian aid truck in northern Khan Yunis, Gaza.

The truck was part of an international humanitarian convoy delivering essential aid to civilians during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

According to CENTCOM's statement, the suspects stopped the truck, assaulted the driver, and moved him to a central traffic island. They then boarded the truck and stole both its contents and the vehicle itself.

A Rude Awakening for Israel

 A Rude Awakening for Israel

Judging from a series of jarring public statements US officials have made, starting with President Trump and then the caravan of top officials he dispatched to Israel last week, America, too, is parroting the same long-standing misconceptions from previous administrations that are more likely to hinder peace instead of promoting it.

When Trump blames “rebel forces” for killing Israeli soldiers and avoids holding Hamas leadership accountable, he is following the Clinton-Rabin-Peres playbook, which blamed the “enemies of peace” for the wave of terror the Palestinian Authority unleashed on Israel’s streets right after the Oslo Accords, as if the PA leadership had no culpability. When the president excuses Hamas gangs conducting revenge killings against rival gangs in Gaza as “rambunctious,” as if they were a bunch of rowdy boys out for a night on the town, it emboldens Hamas to believe that the efforts to disarm them and demilitarize Gaza, which is the next phase of Trump’s 20-point plan, are not serious.

Kushner’s efforts to shift the responsibility onto Israel to “make life easier” for the Palestinians are also rooted in the failed Oslo paradigm. The Palestinian Authority and its predecessor, the Palestine Liberation Organization, have made life difficult for Israel, murdering nearly 5,000 Jews in various terrorist attacks since 1948. The Jerusalem-based NGO Palestinian Media Watch reported last week that 160 of the 250 Palestinian terrorists serving life terms who Israel released in exchange for the 20 hostages are now millionaires, in shekels, thanks to 229 million shekels in PA pay-for-slay payments. This sum does not include additional stipends the PA paid to their spouses and children. Wouldn’t that money have gone a long way toward making life easier for the Palestinians if spent on honorable causes?

J. D. Vance’s Bad Answer to an Anti-Semitic Question

 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/jd-vance-answer-anti-semitism/684780

But Vance should not have been surprised to face a baldly anti-Semitic assertion at a Turning Point gathering. At his own campus events, Kirk regularly fielded hostile questions from far-right acolytes of his archnemesis, the white-supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes. Among other lowlights, Fuentes has denied the Holocaust, called for the execution of non-Christians and “perfidious Jews,” and labeled interracial relationships as “degenerate.” “Oh, I’m anti-Semitic?” he said in 2022 on his web show, rhetorically addressing religious Jews. “I piss on your Talmud.” Once a fringe figure, Fuentes has moved closer and closer to the center of conservative power—dining with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, shaking hands onstage with a grinning Marjorie Taylor Greene that same year, and finally being interviewed by the most influential right-wing commentator in America, Tucker Carlson, just this past week.

Carlson is a longtime ally of Vance and was reportedly influential in helping him secure the vice-presidential nod from Trump. The former Fox host spoke before the president did at the 2024 Republican National Convention, and his son now serves as a press aide in Vance’s office. Carlson has also spent years mainstreaming anti-Semitic voices and ideas. He has hosted a parade of Hitler apologists on his podcast; claimed that Israel had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks but did not share the information with the U.S.; slurred the prominent Jewish conservative Ben Shapiro and those like him as foreign anti-American subversives who “don’t care about the country at all”; and, in his speech at Kirk’s funeral, blamed a cabal of people “eating hummus” (i.e., Jews) for killing Jesus. And all that was before he sat down for a cordial conversation with Fuentes.