Max Rose Sounds Like An Asshole And Picks Fights With Progressive Women Because He Thinks That's What His Constituents Want In A Congressman

 

One of my childhood homes was on East 17th Street between Avenues O and P in Brooklyn. Manny Cellar was the powerful congressman from that district from 1923, long before I was born, to 1973, long after I had moved away. The district has been redrawn many time since then and it is divided between the current 8th (Hakeem Jeffries), 9th (Yvette Clarke) and 11th (Max Rose) districts. About 2 blocks from my old house, Yvette Clarke's district ends and Max Rose's begins-- the corner of East 15th Street and Avenue P. All three congressmen are Democrats-- although Rose is a Blue Dog, not an actual Democrat-- but NY-11 is a swing district, blending Republican-leaning Staten Island with diverse Brooklyn neighborhoods that are traditionally Democratic but have seen an influx of very far-right Russian immigrants in recent years. The PVI-- a lagging indicator of reality, like everything that comes out of Cook-- is R+3. Obama won the district 51.6% to 47.3% in 2012 and 4 years later Trump won it 53.6% to 43.8%. The district keeps flipping back and forth from a bizarre set of Republicans to a just-as-bizarre set of quasi-Democrats. I couldn't imagine every moving back there, even though I have family still living in the 11th.

When Max Rose won the seat in 2018, it was always a career step for him, never about the people of the district; only about Max Rose. The DCCC was looking for a win for their "majority maker" program, not for someone who would represent the legitimate interests of the people in the district and not for someone to help push any kind of Democratic Party agenda. They got what they wanted-- a seat in their new majority and someone willing to do and say whatever it takes to hold onto it, including badd-mouthing his own party and kissing up to Trump.

Rose is saved from being New York's worst Democrat in Congress by Anthony Brindisi, another New Yorker, who happens to be America's worst Democrat in Congress. Progressive Punch rates both their voting records "F" (as it does half a dozen other New York members-- Brian Higgins, Joe Morelle, Kathleen Rice, Antonio Delgado, Tom Suozzi and Sean Patrick Maloney). Brindisi's crucial vote score is a jaw-dropping 24.69%, further right than several Republicans! Rose's is the 25th worst among House Dems-- 55.56%, far to the right of an average Democrat, but right about what the average Blue Dog/New Dem gets. Max Rose sits in the center of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

He's in a fight for his political life right now, but is likely to win in 3 weeks-- and then lose his seat in the 2022 midterms, when Democratic voters will be discouraged by a do-nothing Democratic White House/Congress and just stay home and not vote. Rose picks fights with progressive Democrats-- usually, though not exclusively women-- to show Staten Island conservatives he's one of them. Rose is working hard to create an image for himself that fits how he sees the unfocussed and very disparate district. He apparently thinks-- not without reason-- that most of the district is made up of assholes (it was after all the district that enthusiastically elected and reelected Mafia thug Mikie "Suits" Grimm, even after Grimm was indicted), so he has cultivated the demeanor of an asshole. Last week he was a guest on Peter Hamby's Vanity Fair podcast, Good Luck America to curse a lot, show he can be as much a boor as his Staten Island constituents and to talk about "why the presidential polls are bullshit, why police need more funding-- not less-- and why it’s cool to be a 'swagger-filled' moderate." Here are some excerpts from the interview that capture Rose's Blue Dog careerist mentality:

Peter Hamby: I want to ask you about some national politics. Talks fell apart between the president and the House over a second coronavirus stimulus deal. Who do you blame for that?

Max Rose: Well, first of all, everyone is to blame. I’m so sick and tired of this notion of finger-pointing in our politics. But with that being said, the president did walk away, and the president is the one that gave up. Now, I was a part of a bipartisan coalition that announced a significant, bold framework for COVID relief: $1.6 trillion. It’s clear that we don’t need something skinny that doesn’t match the scale of this public health and economic crisis, and it’s clear that we don’t need something that is blindly partisan, that is going to be dead on arrival. But we need everybody to rise to the challenge here, and that is clear. State and local aid, extended unemployment, direct stimulus checks. This ain’t rocket science at this point. It’s just not.

... PH: So you’re from the most conservative House district in New York City. It includes Staten Island, parts of Brooklyn. Trump won your district. So what’s it like when you say you support Trump on some things? Because you have. If you go into Manhattan, if you go to the halls of Congress and run into a lot of Democrats, are they like, “Hey, man, don’t say that stuff”?

MR: No. And it’s just so weird about the Democratic Party, and it’s weird about the state of partisanship today that people’s opinions become defined by their partisan affiliation. Just look at the war in Afghanistan. It’s like the perfect example, right? It’s a conflict that’s deeply personal to me, and I am of the belief that it’s got to end. It’s America’s longest war. We have soldiers enlisting today-- today-- who were not born on 9/11. Who were not born when we sent our first soldier to Afghanistan. Donald Trump stands up and says, “It’s clear that we need some type of peace, reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and we’ve got to get out of that war.” And suddenly the freaking Democratic Party becomes the pro-war party? Saying, “No, no, we should stay there longer.” It’s the oddest thing. It was the same with the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian terrorist, who was someone that deserved to be killed. The blood of over 600 soldiers, American soldiers, on his hands. So yeah, I’m not dictated by blind party commitment and dedication. It’s always got to be country first.

PH: One thing I was thinking about before this interview was the Democratic presidential primary. In a lot of ways, [Joe] Biden emerged from that as kind of like the perfect nominee for Democrats, because he has a little bit of a traditional view of politics, not just policy but also dealmaking, reaching across the aisle. He's pretty inoffensive, quite frankly, to a lot of people. What’s your biggest takeaway from the Democratic primary, which seemed like it was sometimes fought over certain issues that were either unpopular or uninteresting to a lot of Americans?





MR: Well, yeah, the Democratic Party is allergic to show business at times. So you can always rely on the Democratic Party to be fundamentally uninteresting at times. I think that what certain segments of the party learned, and have to relearn this lesson over and over and over again, is that politics is not about bullet points. Politics is about trust-building, and politics is about presenting a bold vision for the future. But it’s also, when you boil it down, right, it’s about trying to instill the message that if it matters to you, it matters to me, no matter how small, no matter how big. In that sense it’s like a job interview, right? Very rarely on job interviews do people say, “Oh, give me your 10-point bullet plan for this very specific problem 18 months from now.” So I am of the belief that when it came to that primary, when it comes to any election, it’s fundamentally a question of: Who do you believe down in your soul and down in your gut? And then I guess that’s what we saw here. But going forward, though, it is critical that the Democratic Party-- there will come a day when Donald Trump’s not the president. That day will come, and it’s critical that the Democratic Party not be just defined by anti-Trumpism. It can’t just be what we’re against. It has to be: “What are we for?” And this idea that if you’re a moderate or you’re a centrist, it means that you’re some shy, milquetoast incrementalist, I think is total bullshit. Rather, what you need is you need to figure out what are the bold and nonetheless unifying policies that we can put into place that will allow for us to address climate change, allow for us to address gun violence, allow for us to position America as the preeminent global power of the 21st century, all the while having an inclusively just capitalist economy. Being moderate or centrist cannot be shy. It can’t just be focused on what you’re not. Has to be what you’re for too.

...PH: Trump announced he’s got COVID. It's spreading throughout the White House and D.C. among his aides. The national polls are kind of opening up for Joe Biden as a consequence of that. But how is it playing in your district on Staten Island?

MR: I mean, for all we know, these polls are B.S. The only thing that matters is what happens on Election Day. So I think anybody who ever becomes arrogant in this business quickly regrets it. But with that being said, COVID is an unprecedented security crisis and health crisis, unprecedented in nature, but also no different in terms of the unifying and bold response that it warrants, whether it came to the world wars that we have fought in the past or to the counterterrorism fight that we’ve undertaken over the last 20 years. It requires strong government action. It requires solidarity. It requires resources. It requires a strategy. And it requires our leaders to rise above the political fray and not think about how they can divide us, but think about how they can unify us. Mitch McConnell came out with a skinny COVID bill a month ago. It’s a good thing we didn’t have a skinny plan to beat the Nazis. A skinny plan to get to the moon. That’s never what this country has been about. Never has been and never should be.

...PH: I know you think polls are bullshit, but one trend that seems pretty unmistakable is that Biden is opening up a nontraditional lead among senior citizens and older voters. You’ve got a lot of old folks in your district. Are they...

MR: Don’t call them old folks. They’re just getting started. All right, bro? Sixty-five is the new 45. But look, no one’s vote in this country should be taken for granted, and the Republican Party certainly has taken the senior vote for granted. There’s no doubt. The Democratic Party is guilty of taking the union vote for granted. It’s guilty of at times taking communities of color for granted, only going into some communities right before Election Day, treating them like fully owned subsidiaries. We hear so much in politics about: “Get out the vote.” It is the most messed-up terminology in politics today. Everything should be about earning the vote, not just communicating with someone 96 hours before an election, making sure they know where their polling booth is. It’s everything that is wrong with our system, that it’s become so bifurcated. You see all these wonks in politics that say, “Well, you don’t have to be on the ground anymore. You don’t have to talk to people. The off year doesn’t matter because I’ve got digital targeting. I’ve got the analytics behind me.” Fuck you and your analytics, okay? This is about people; it’s about trust; and it’s about finally positioning this country to fulfill its promise.

PH: From what I’ve read, I think the murder rate is up, like, 50% in New York City. Shootings are up almost 150%. Where is this crime wave and the violence coming from? What is it a result of?

MR: Well, if it were as easy as one thing, it would certainly be simpler to solve. Part of it is most definitely attributed to the failures of this mayor’s leadership, and I regret that I’m on Snapchat, because 15 seconds ain’t enough to describe how he is the worst mayor in the history of New York City. But with that being said, COVID certainly also plays a role. Skyrocketing unemployment. An absence of unity in the city. Right now an emerging sense of us against them. I think that there is a federal role here as well. The vast majority of the guns retrieved from crime incidents in New York City come from out of state. They flow up the iron pipeline from down south, from areas with lax gun laws, and they end up in inner-city New York City. We need federal action when it comes to gun legislation, but nothing should take us away from the fact that we can concurrently and simultaneously and boldly pursue justice for all and safety for all, all while supporting our police. I think defunding the police is 100% the wrong decision. I’m of the belief that we should be thinking about how to pay our cops more. We should be thinking consistently about, How do we invest in our public institutions, invest in our public servants more, make sure that they are the highest-paid public servants not just in the country, but in the world? Because that’s how we can truly have the most effective and just government and public services.

PH: Are you worried that police-- not just in New York, but in this country-- that police forces are becoming almost radicalized? That only certain kinds of white folks are going to sign up to become police officers at this point, that there’s a war now between police and communities, and it’s driving people in different directions?

MR: When you go to visit a police precinct in New York City, and I have more than a number of times, what you see when police officers line up, for 2020-- NYPD cops line up before they go out onto the street that day on to, on to their beat-- you see a group of people that represent the beautiful cultural mosaic that is New York City. You see folks who are striving to be in the middle class, stay in the middle class, serve their family, serve their communities. So from that vantage point, I think that there’s no public institution in America that can’t continue to improve. But on the same hand, I am of the belief that when you look at our cops, many of them represent exactly who New York City is in this modern day and age. But it is clear as well that if you want to continue to think about, How do we improve policing in America? Just like, How do you improve any public institution in America? And they all can improve, every single one of them, most especially Congress. You have to consider, How do you further invest in that institution? Not, How do you abandon the institution? How do you turn your backs on people who are putting their lives on the line each and every day? Rather, in my book, it is, How do you develop further strategies and how do you resource them?

...PH: You rail against Bill de Blasio on the campaign trail.

MR: Am I too subtle? Is it too nuanced? Is it nuanced?

PH: Not at all. Just define your loathing of him. Where does it come from? Why is he such a bad mayor in your mind?

MR: He’s not a leader. He’s not decisive. He doesn’t show a love for New York and a love for the job that I think the job requires. He doesn’t realize that if you’re antibusiness, then you can’t generate the tax revenue necessary to raise union salaries and help people who need help. And I don’t think people take pride in him, and that’s why New York City needs better than that. New York City can be the city that can run circles around every other city in the world. We could be showing the rest of the world how to have a testing strategy that actually works, that’s proactive, not reactive. We can show how you can build out an integrated health care system that’s ready for the next pandemic. You can do things like run and build out the best and most well-resourced and most efficient public housing units in America. Now, none of this, though, none of Bill de Blasio’s failures should take away from the fact that the federal government should not be telling New York to drop dead, should not be establishing federal aid for cities and states like New York and New York City as a blue-state-versus-red-state issue. And there is a moment in time, and I believe we are in it right now, where it requires bold federal action to be there for people. Thankfully, when a state or a city down south goes through a tornado or a superstorm, we’re not saying, “Oh, that’s a bunch of Republicans." That’s never what this country has been about, and it shouldn’t be now.

PH: Last thing: When a lot of people see you attack the mayor, they kind of see it as a political tactic. That he’s unpopular, he’s easy to run against. But when I hear that, I hear you want to run for mayor one day. I know you’ve got a tough race right now, but is that something you’d want to do one day? Be the mayor of New York?

MR: No. Look, man, I got an election ahead of me right now. I ain’t running for mayor. And you got to have a conversation with Leigh Rose about anything like that, all right, buddy? But with that being said, though, my North Star from the very beginning has been two things: Party cannot matter. If it matters to you, it matters to me. And who runs city hall, whether he’s a Democrat or not, his failures, the mayor’s failures, directly impact my own constituents. I’m not going to remain silent to the mayor’s failures just because he’s a Democrat. That to me represents a failure of leadership and a failure of public service.

PH: All right. Thanks, Max. Favorite Wu-Tang song before you go?

MR: I ain’t telling you, man. I’m not getting into it, man. I’m not getting into it. I love you, though, buddy. Thank you again.

That's not part of Rose's image. But this is, after all, Staten Island's contribution to culture:

Borough Park, Brooklyn... A Living Journey Back In Time-- WAY Back In Time... And, Of Course, Thick With COVID And Trumpists

 

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, there were always rumors of Republicans being there-- just not very many, and certainly never enough to be an electoral factor. Even last cycle, decades later, Hillary won Brooklyn 595,086 (79.7%) to 133,653 (17.9%). Still... where the hell did those 133 thousand people come from? Oh, basically Russia... and Israel. Russian neighborhoods in south Brooklyn are breeding grounds for treason and full-on fascism, and Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods like Borough Park are bizarrely alternative and nearly self-contained universes that have more in common with speaking-in-tongues and snake-handling communities in Tennessee and Arkansas than anything to do with Brooklyn.

Yesterday, the [Jewish Daily] Forward reported that in Borough Park, New York's pandemic central, an anti-shutdown protest turned into a Trump rally, complete with a reporter being assaulted. Keep in mind, the Ultra-Ordthodox in New York, like the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel are willful super-spreaders because they don't think man's laws apply to them-- just a warped Eastern European version of the Old Testament by which they live their lives. They're far more like extreme evangelicals than they are like actual Jews. A trio of Forward reporters wrote that "The religious Jews of Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood often pour into the streets during the harvest holiday of Sukkot to dance with Torahs in a celebration called Simchat Beit HaShoeva, a ritual having to do with rainfall." [Yes, these are very, very primitive people who have barely progressed from the Bronze Age.] "On Wednesday night, they danced along Borough Parks’s 13th Avenue holding Trump flags."

Heshy Tischler, a community agitator and candidate for New York City Council, drew a crowd for the second night in a row to protest new social-distancing restrictions that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have imposed on the neighborhood and eight other ZIP codes with at least double the city’s positivity rate for coronavirus. And though he promised no violence after a counter-protester on Tuesday was beaten to the point of critical injuries, a Hasidic journalist was hit in the head, kicked and berated as a “Nazi” during Wednesday’s gathering of more than 300.

“Here is my army!” Tischler said Wednesday night pointing to the crowd that included Haredi-- or ultra-Orthodox-- Jews of all ages, some from outside the neighborhood. “We’re gonna fight back. This is our city, our town, our country.”

Tischler is not a rabbi, scholar or elected official, but he has emerged as a popular figure in this deeply religious neighborhood because its usual leaders have not been able to manage their communities’ resentment against the news media and government officials they see as biased against them, or even antisemitic.

“Community leaders all have their issues with standing up to the government,” said one protester, Avraham Mintz, who lives in Borough Park. “They don’t want to fight with Cuomo and de Blasio. So Tischler stood up and said, ‘I’m just going to stand up and scream.’”

Tishler had put out the call via social media and WhatsApp for people to find him at 13th Avenue and 50th Street at 9 p.m. The crowd included many young families with strollers, some grandfathers wearing masks, and teenaged boys from yeshivas in nearby neighborhoods, eager to see what would unfold. Women and girls stood on the sidewalk, as men gathered in the middle of the street to listen to Tishler and also dance to religious music played on loudspeakers.

After some protesters burned masks on Tuesday in a sign of defiance against the coronavirus restrictions, there was something of a concerted effort to show compliance with social distancing on Wednesday. Volunteers walked around handing out masks, and early into the festivities, some Hasidic teenage boys approached a news photographer and asked him to take pictures of them wearing masks.

The gathering was the place to be in a neighborhood unusually quieted for the holiday by the pandemic. “The boys are bored,” said one Hasidic mother who declined to give her name, pointing to the teenagers gathered in the street, rushing about in groups, clutching onto their kosher phones. “They didn’t have camp, they’re off from school now. This is all they have now.”

A teenage girl who said she was visiting from Israel, standing with a gaggle of girlfriends, also refused to identify herself to a reporter. “We’re here for both the protest and the party,” she said. “There’s not enough holiday action this year, so we came to see what’s happening here.”

Tuesday’s rally came a day after Cuomo’s announcement of new coronavirus restrictions that would essentially shut down the final weekend of the Jewish High Holidays in many of the state’s Orthodox communities. Synagogues are limited to 25% capacity with no more than 10 people inside, public and private schools have been ordered closed as of Friday, along with restaurants.

At that rally, protesters burned masks, and two people were attacked. One went to the hospital.

...Tishler, a gadfly who got 4% of the votes when he ran for City Council in 2017, has not issued demands or described specific goals for this new protest movement. He does say that he is running again in 2021 in the 48th District, which includes the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Midwood and Sheepshead Bay-- also subject to Cuomo’s new crackdown-- but not Borough Park.

The coronavirus might have provided him with a new lease on political life, although it is not clear what he is going to do with it.

“He tapped into the vacuum of no leadership,” Jacob Kornbluh, a Hasidic Jew who, like Tischler, lives in Borough Park, and is a journalist for Jewish Insider, said in an interview earlier on Wednesday.

Kornbluh has previously sparked the community’s ire by calling out violations of social-distancing rules. Tischler threatened him in a video he tweeted on Wednesday during the day. And on Wednesday night, when he recognized Kornbluh among the journalists covering his rally, Tishcler sent the crowd to chase him down the street.

Kornbluh was hit in the head and kicked by protesters, who screamed “Nazi” and “Hitler” at him.

Most of Tischler’s neighbors are Hasidic, but he is not. He does not wear the community’s uniform for men of black and white clothing, or curled sidelocks.

He works as an “expediter,” who facilitates official permits and other paperwork for construction professionals, but he also runs a weekly call-in show on YouTube and Facebook. After studying in yeshiva, he served time in prison for immigration fraud. He ran for City Council, but got only 4% of the votes.

Yet since the summer, when he gained wide attention among Orthodox Jews for taking bolt cutters to the chains around playgrounds in Hasidic neighborhoods, his profile has been rising.

“I don’t understand, why only the Jews?” Tischler said in an interview Wednesday, expressing the widespread Orthodox conviction that Cuomo’s rules unfairly single out their communities. “We contribute to this country more than anybody else, so you will respect us.”

In recent weeks, as coronavirus cases have spiked in Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn and other parts of the state, he has risen in prominence because religious and government leaders failed to explain that the community could open in the summer, but would likely need to shut down religious life again in the fall to accommodate a second wave, Kornbluh said.

“What they did is basically argue for a reopening process without communicating a message of adhering to certain measures: Wear a mask, social distance,” Kornbluh said.

The community also felt alienated by city workers and contact tracers, who Orthodox groups have suggested were culturally insensitive. The city admitted last month that it had only five Yiddish-speaking contact tracers on staff. “We have been targeted terribly,” said one Hasidic female protester at the Wednesday rally. “That’s what we are feeling right now.”

Tischler provides an appealing alternative.

“Heshy Tischler is popular because he has a certain charisma, a certain charm,” said Ezra Friedlander, a Borough Park resident and political consultant, adding that Tischler’s rhetoric is “totally unacceptable.”

And he expresses people’s anger for them.

“Coronavirus is a new flu, until God brings us a new virus,” said one Hasidic woman at the Wednesday night protest. “This is part of galus [exile]. People are gonna die and gonna live. If Hashem wants you to live, you live. If He wants you to die, you die.”

"Haters of Israel"

On Wednesday afternoon in Borough Park-- between the two evening protests-- life resumed as normal, with men carrying bags with prayer shawls, as well as the palm branches and etrog fruits that are used in prayer services during the harvest festival of Sukkot, which is this week.

Few in the neighborhood knew Tischler’s name, but the things they said demonstrate that he knows the grievances they harbor against both media and government.

At Amnon’s Kosher Pizza at 4814 13th Avenue, a man turned to a woman and warned her in Hebrew that there are “journalists, she should be careful,” pointing to a corner where TV stations were setting up. She turned to them and screamed, “Haters of Israel!”

“De Blasio and Cuomo hate us Jews,” said one Hasidic woman who declined to give her name.

Cuomo and de Blasio have repeatedly said that they are enacting the restrictions based solely on rates of positive coronavirus infection, which are highest in Orthodox areas.

In Borough Park, the rate was about 6% at the beginning of this week, according to state data. In Rockland and Orange Counties, rates are considerably higher: In Kiryas Joel, the Hasidic hub, positive test rates reached nearly 30%, the highest in the country. The New York state average is just above 1%.

Tischler maintains-- without evidence-- that those numbers are fake.

“These are not real tests,” he said of results from state-administered coronavirus tests.

Tischler’s comments reflect a widespread skepticism in the Orthodox world of the statistics on which the government is basing its shutdown of Orthodox areas. He suggested that the city’s testing machines are not giving accurate results, and that there are few people actually getting sick from contracting the coronavirus at the moment. Cuomo has said that hospitalizations are rising.

Orthodox organizations should do their own testing, privately, and report their results to the state, Tischler said.

“Let me do the testing,” he added. “My tests are negative.”

...His Twitter account has under 1,000 followers, and only 790 people watched a recent show on YouTube from September.

But his videos are shared widely on WhatsApp, where he occupies a role once played by one of his inspirations, Donald Trump, as the community’s outspoken id who tells it like it is.

Tischler said Trump’s return to the White House after being hospitalized for COVID-19, and the president’s claims of recovering from the disease, had inspired him to protest the new restrictions. Tischler also downplayed the deadliness of the coronavirus, claiming without evidence that Orthodox Jews who died from COVID-19 more often died from poor hospital care than the disease itself.

“When I’m on the street, I don’t have to wear a mask, just like the president,” he said.

...On Wednesday, Aron Wieder, a Rockland County legislator representing the Hasidic hub of Monsey, released a video urging his community to continue to distance and wear masks, not for Cuomo’s sake, but because it adheres to Jewish values that promote saving a life over religious obligations.

“When people lose trust in government, chaos happens,” Wieder said in an interview. “I was trying to mitigate that by acknowledging” the community’s anger at Cuomo.

So far, Tischler’s political strategy seems to be more about amplifying anger than mitigating it.

Some of the protesters were grateful to him for his community organizing. “I don’t know what he’s doing but he opened our parks for our kids, and now he organized this,” said one Hasidic mother, pointing to the young men dancing in the street. “He is saying that it’s time for us to get out and show we have a voice, too.”

Life is dangerous for Jews who behave, Tischler said.

“We tried to follow the laws and the governor and mayor still came after us. My father is a concentration camp survivor,” Tischler said. “We were quiet then, and we behaved. Not anymore.”

Time to roll out the classic definition of "idiot" again-- a kind of a palate cleanser after before the dueling OpEds coming up:

First is by Eliezer Brand, a right-wing rabbi in Brooklyn who senses a kinship between his own primitive Haredi tribe and the worst of the evangelicals-- and is all gung-ho on Amy Coney Island and writes that Mike Pence represents him and "has been a great leader for religious people in general and for Orthodox Jews in particular." It starts with Pence's anti-Palestinian and pro-Zionist beliefs "but," he wrote, "it’s not just Pence’s foreign policy that has gained him support in our community. It’s his larger view of life-- specifically, how deeply and unapologetically impacted it is by his religious beliefs."

Early in the Trump presidency, the Washington Post reported that Pence never eats alone with a woman other than his wife Karen, and that he won’t attend events that serve alcohol without her by his side.

This became known as the Pence Rule and was widely misunderstood, mocked, misrepresented as something sinister and outright ridiculed. Even Kamala Harris, now his opponent, jumped at the chance to attack his faith. “I disagree with him when he suggests it’s not possible to have meetings with women alone by himself,” she told Politico. “I think that’s ridiculous-- the idea that you would deny a professional woman the opportunity to have a meeting with the vice president of the United States is outrageous.”

But Pence’s rule is not about denying women opportunities; it’s about making sure you are living by your values every minute of the day.

It’s something we Orthodox and Haredi Jews are well versed in. We, too, have a rule about not being alone with a woman who isn’t your wife or a man who isn’t your husband. It’s one of a few things that unites us with evangelicals, many of whom adhere to the practice known as the Modesto Manifesto, which Pastor Billy Graham created. It was meant as a display of integrity, a means of avoiding sexual temptation, just like our rules of yichud-- not being alone with members of the opposite sex.

This isn’t something we choose to believe in; it’s a tenet of our larger belief system that is not optional. And yet, it’s not something we can discuss openly without facing the mockery, derision, and blowback Pence faced.

And though I was dismayed at the media reaction to Pence’s adherence to his religion, I was also happy that it did garner attention. To have this in the national news helped bring this issue to the forefront and normalized it somewhat. It made us Orthodox Jews feel less alien to the culture at large.

There’s another front on which Pence is a friend to religious Jews. He has since his days as Governor of Indiana has been a champion of religious liberty, and not just for evangelicals.

He has been a strong supporter of Indiana’s private-school voucher program, a meaningful position for Orthodox Jews who largely send their kids to private school. And in 2015, Pence signed a state bill protecting religious liberty, hailed by local Orthodox Jewish leaders as positive.

Now, together with President Trump, he is backing another proudly religious person for the Supreme Court-- Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Listening to Pence talk, I feel that he represents my interests and my fears as a Haredi Jew. He is a friend to the faithful, and, like me and my community, he does not compromise on his religious beliefs, even when they are unpopular, even when they come in for mockery.

In this sense, he is something of an avatar for Orthodox Jews in public life, despite being an evangelical Christian.

Yesterday, The Forward published an OpEd by Joel Swanson warning Jews about what Trumpism really is. "Sharing video of the protests, right wing Twitter activists decided to portray the tensions between Orthodox Jews and the police as 'rounding up Jews,' which President Trump retweeted with the added commentary, 'Wow, what does this grim picture remind you of? I am the only thing in the Radical Left’s way! VOTE.' It’s not the first time President Trump has sought to portray himself as a defender of the Jews, though comparing Democrats to Nazis is a new low."

But in light of new evidence confirming where the true threat to Jews comes from, it went from dangerous and disingenuous to absolutely galling. On the same day that the massive protests against new coronavirus restrictions broke out in Borough Park, the Anti-Defamation League released a massive new study of social media usage in the run-up to the 2020 election. The organization had uncovered what it called a “deluge” of antisemitism directed against Jewish members of Congress. According to the ADL’s findings, at least 10% of social media attacks against Jewish politicians are explicitly or implicitly antisemitic in nature, with 39% of those attacks focused on the false, antisemitic claim that Jewish Holocaust survivor George Soros is responsible for “funding and organizing the political careers of Jewish incumbents, the media, and Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests in order to assert a Communist or ‘Jewish supremacy’ agenda in the United States.”

The ADL particularly attributes what it calls an “alarming” rise in Soros-linked antisemitism directed against American Jewish politicians to the spread of the QAnon conspiracy theory on the far-right. But Trump himself has played a role in mainstreaming this fringe, antisemitic view, praising supporters of the conspiracy theory for their support for his candidacy and calling some its most prominent adherents “rising stars” in the Republican Party.

For President Trump to try to cast himself as some champion of the Jews in light of his own mainstreaming of one of the biggest antisemitic conspiracy theories of our time is absolutely ludicrous.

...[T]he coincidence that these anti-mask protests happened on the same day that the ADL released its new report on rising election-related antisemitism in the United States, showing that the overwhelming majority of this antisemitism comes from the far-right directed against Democrats and the left, reveals the breathtaking cynicism of politicians like President Trump trying to portray themselves as some kind of protector of the Jews.

On a week when the Department of Homeland Security has itself acknowledged far-right white supremacy as the leading cause of terror in the U.S., no one should be taken in by President Trump’s cynical attempts to portray himself as the protector of the Jewish people. A lot of new information came out this past week about where the real violent threats to the Jewish community in the U.S. lie in the final weeks leading up to the 2020 election. And President Trump is not going to protect us from those threats.

What do we know about religionist extremists (especially ones who wear uniforms as their everyday garb)?

• You can do anything and everything, no matter how savage and inhuman, in the name of their God
• They are extremely paranoid and way beyond self-righteousness and over the line into insanity
• They don't live in the contemporary world (except as leaches)
• They are, by definition and mass self-image, better than anyone else (outsiders)
• Magical thinking is A-OK, in fact, critical thinking is blasphemous, heretical and punished by ostracism if not death
• Members with normal IQs flee as soon as they can get away... which is very bad for the gene pool of the remaining community
• Classically speaking, the members are idiots, a problem for society
• And they gravitate towards authoritarian movements like Trumpism.

Predictably, The Pandemic Is Ravaging Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Communities

Gut Shabbos. I'm sure I'm not the only person in America who's never known an ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jew and who has been learning about them and their culture via Netflix during the shutdown. I had already seen Shtisel but in the last couple of weeks I watched the German-America mini-series Unorthodox and the 2017 film, One of Us.

On Friday, the Jewish Daily Forward noted that there isn't a single synagogue open anywhere in the U.S.-- certainly not any of the 4 in Fargo, North Dakota, where the governor refuses to shut down and allows religious services. (North Dakota only has 748 confirmed cases, 39 new ones yesterday and just 994 cases per million. Because of Gov. Burgum's extreme ideological perspective and refusal to protect the people of North Dakota, it's likely that the curve there will steepen, just as it has next door in South Dakota, where there are over 2,000 confirmed cases and 2,260 cases per million.) Rabbi Yonah Grossman, co-director of the Chabad Jewish Center of North Dakota, told The Forward the same thing that most sane religious leaders are saying, regardless of faith: "In the Jewish tradition, sanctity of life takes precedence over anything else. If there’s room to be cautious… it’s important for us to take that step in our own community."

But most of America's 7 million Jews live in states like New York, California, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland where it is against the social distancing rules to leave the house to go worship. Of the 5 states still refusing to shut down-- both Dakotas plus Iowa, Nebraska and Arkansas (combined Jewish population is 17,500)-- there are 30 synagogues and all 30 have voluntarily shut down. But what about the ultra-orthodox communities, which are not in the Dakotas but are primarily in New York (especially Brooklyn and Rockland County), New Jersey and California.

There are two narrative about the Hasidim and coronavirus. One is that because they are so cut off from the surrounding society-- and do not allow the use of the internet-- they have largely ignored social distancing and the pandemic has ravaged their communities. And the second is that the survivors are giving antibody-rich plasma to treat other people (and not just Hasidim, all other people). Both are true.

At the beginning on the month, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that "The record of positive COVID-19 tests in the five boroughs shows that Borough Park, Crown Heights, Williamsburg and Midwood [each an insular Hasidic areas of Brooklyn] all have above-average positive test rates. In Borough Park, more than 67% of coronavirus tests have come back positive-- the highest rate in Brooklyn and sixth-highest of any Zip code in New York City. In Crown Heights, 63.4% of tests are positive, while in Williamsburg the figure is 62.5% and in Midwood it is 60.3%. The average positive test rate across the city is 53%."

Social distancing has been a particularly stark shift for Hasidic Jews, who make up a significant share of the population in Borough Park, Williamsburg and Crown Heights.

Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, men are accustomed to attending communal prayers three times a day, and social lives revolve around synagogue and lifecycle celebrations like weddings. Haredi families are also larger than average and tend to live in dense neighborhoods in the city.

In some haredi neighborhoods, social distancing measures like school closings came later than in the rest of the city.

Israel is experiencing an even more extreme phenomenon, as more than a third of the total population of the haredi city of Bnei Brak is estimated to have coronavirus, according to the Times of Israel.

By this week, the mainstream media was noticing how badly impacted the Hasidic community is. The NY Times Liam Stack took a look at the ultra-orthodox neighborhoods of Brooklyn and reported a Plague on a biblical scale. The pandemic is sweeping through families and friendship circles. "The coronavirus has hit the Hasidic Jewish community in the New York area with devastating force," wrote Stack, "killing influential religious leaders and tearing through large, tight-knit families at a rate that community leaders and some public health data suggest may exceed that of other ethnic or religious groups. The city does not track deaths by religion, but Hasidic news media report that roughly 700 members of the community in the New York area have died from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus."

Hasidic groups say they prepared for the pandemic-- for example, making decisions on the closure of schools and events-- by taking their cues from the state and federal authorities, whose response to the crisis has been at times halting and inconsistent. [Better than the Dakotas' but Governor Andrew Cuomo has been more interested in protecting his political viability than the citizens of his state.]

But community leaders say Hasidic enclaves in New York were also left vulnerable to the coronavirus by a range of social factors, including high levels of poverty, a reliance on religious leaders who were in some cases slow to act and the insular nature of Hasidic society, which harbors a distrust of secular authorities that is born of a troubled history.

That distrust has manifested itself in ways that have risked spreading the virus and have drawn the attention of law enforcement, which in recent weeks has been called to disperse crowds at events like weddings and funerals in Hasidic areas of Brooklyn, upstate New York and New Jersey.

That, in turn, has led to concerns over anti-Semitism in places like Rockland County, which has one of the highest per capita infection rates in the nation and was also the site of an anti-Semitic attack in December that killed one Hasidic Jew and injured four others.

Celebrations of the Jewish holiday of Purim, which fell on March 10 this year, were canceled by many Reform, Conservative and Modern Orthodox synagogues. But many Hasidic groups observed the festival, drawing people to gatherings where they may have been exposed to the virus.

“Not only the Haredi ultra-Orthodox Jews but a lot of Jews responded to the idea of not going to the synagogue or gathering in a public place with a feeling of outrage, because it brought to mind times when religious persecution closed down synagogues,” said Susannah Heschel, a professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College.

That sense of defiance has been evident in neighborhoods like Borough Park and South Williamsburg, where some businesses and religious bathhouses have displayed signs written in Yiddish-- a language not widely spoken outside the Hasidic community-- informing patrons of hours and prices or instructing them to use an entrance not visible from the street.

“The problem there was confusion of persecution that comes from a human being and a plague, a virus,” Dr. Heschel said. “But there was a sense that we are not going to be subjected to this kind of treatment, we are going to fulfill our lives as Jews in a rich way and we are going to go to the synagogue. It is a sort of defiance and affirmation of Jewish identity, combined.”

Dr. Heschel’s cousin, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, who led the Novominsker Hasidic dynasty as well as Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella ultra-Orthodox organization, died earlier this month of Covid-19.

He had urged Hasidic Jews to abide by public health guidelines and was perhaps the most high-profile Jewish leader in the world to die of the coronavirus. But others have died as well, most of whom have been deprived of the sort of large funeral that would typically honor a religious figure.

“Normally there would be tens of thousands of people here,” said Malka Phillips as she stood on Eastern Parkway earlier this month to watch the socially distanced funeral procession for Rabbi Leibel Groner. “We’re losing an entire generation.”

But not every event has been sparsely attended. Funerals and wedding in parts of Brooklyn and suburban towns have drawn widespread news media coverage.

A Hasidic funeral in Lakewood, N.J., turned “unruly and argumentative” once police officers arrived to disperse a crowd of more than 60 people earlier this month, Bradley D. Billhimer, the Ocean County prosecutor, said in a statement. His office charged 15 attendees with violating Gov. Philip D. Murphy’s executive order barring large gatherings.

Hasidic community leaders bristle at any discussion of such violations. They say they feel singled out by the news media, and several Hasidic people interviewed for this article asked to remain anonymous, citing fear of retaliation from others in the community.

“There have been several very disappointing incidents that are very unfortunate, but the vast majority of people in these communities are staying home under very tough circumstances,” said Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad, one of the largest Jewish religious organizations in the world. “When people violate the isolation guidelines within these communities, they become the focus of frustration and anger from others within the community.”

He said the community was vulnerable to the virus not because of isolated incidents of rule-breaking but instead because of the very things that make it vibrant: tight-knit families, a commitment to ritual and multigenerational households where the very young and very old live side by side.

“Everything that makes these communities so beautiful is likely a factor that puts them at risk in this situation,” Mr. Seligson said. “To really understand how the virus is spreading within these communities, one really needs to understand how these communities operate on a regular basis.”

Efforts to inform the community of public health guidelines may have been complicated by the strictures of Hasidic life, which emphasize the guidance of religious leaders and cast a wary eye at outside authorities, including health officials and the mainstream news media.

...The rules of Hasidic life have also made the prospect of giving up religious gatherings and staying at home daunting, said Meyer Labin, a Yiddish writer who said he knew many who had died of the virus, including several rabbis, the fathers of two friends and his eighth grade teacher.

Mr. Labin said going to synagogue-- which some might do three times a day-- or attending a wedding was more than a religious event. These activities play a social role for people who have fewer ways to blow off steam than most New Yorkers, he said.

“That’s where we get our news and our information or our entertainment, everything is the community,” Mr. Labin said. “Our lives are completely, completely different than life for most other communities and people in that we don’t have a lot of other entertainment at home. For example, no Netflix or TV.”

From a Hasidic perspective, he said, the stay-at-home orders issued last month across the country did not seem like “that much of a sacrifice” for non-Hasidic people, he said.

“I don’t mean to minimize it, but like you lay back, watch Netflix, drink tea-- now imagine a family that is not set up that way,” he said. “The way we live-- small apartments, big families-- our outlet is to go out and mingle and socialize, and now it’s very hard to put an abrupt stop to all of that.”

In the 2016 presidential election 71% of Jews voted for Hillary. But the Hasidic rabbis went for Trump and visually the entire ultra-orthodox community followed along. The ultra-orthodox neighborhoods were Trump's biggest precincts in New York. Last year Haaretz published a piece for Israeli readers about how so many of the ultra-orthodox have become right-wing, even if it means making common cause with Nazis who would like to try the ovens again.

Author and sociologist Chaim Waxman is a long-time observer of Jewish-American society and he says he wasn't surprised when the orthodox flocked to vote for Trump. "After all," he said, "many Orthodox Jews today feel they have a lot more in common with conservative Christians and right-wing Republicans than they do with liberal Jews who vote Democrat."

In his recently published book Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy (Liverpool University Press), Waxman examfines the processes responsible for the rightward lurch of Orthodox Jews in America-- with his focus on the tendency toward greater stringency in religious observance. But it is no coincidence, he says, that their politics are also moving in this direction.

According to a survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, 54 percent of Orthodox Jews voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election. This compares with 24 percent of Conservative Jews; 10 percent of Reform Jews; 8 percent of Reconstructionist Jews; and 14 percent of those who identify as “just Jews.”

This tendency among Orthodox Jews to go against the streams was already evident in a first-of-its-kind comprehensive survey of the American Jewish community conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013. Roughly half of Orthodox Jews surveyed described themselves as political conservatives, with 57 percent saying they identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party. In their attitudes toward homosexuality, for example, the survey found that Orthodox Jews more closely resembled evangelical Christians than other Jews, with nearly six in 10 saying same-sex relations should be discouraged by society.

According to Waxman, support for the Republican Party among Orthodox Jews is a relatively new phenomenon. “It’s something that seems to have begun in the last two presidencies,” he tells Haaretz. “Under [President Bill] Clinton, the percentage of Orthodox Jews who voted Republican was still higher than non-Orthodox Jews, but the gap was certainly not as wide as it is today.”

The Democrats tend to be seen as more critical of Israeli policy than Republicans, particular insofar as the occupation and settlement building are concerned. But Waxman does not believe this is the only reason Orthodox Jews are embracing the GOP.

“Israel plays a role, no question about that-- but it’s beyond that,” he says. “The values that right-wing Republicans represent are interpreted by many Orthodox Jews to be similar to their own religious values.”

And Trump has certainly repaid the favor, appointing Orthodox Jews to some of the top positions in his administration. These include his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who holds numerous portfolios; his former bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, now serving as ambassador to Israel; and another former lawyer, Jason Greenblatt, who recently stepped down as key architect of the White House Middle East peace plan (aka the “deal of the century”).

Waxman was raised in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn and attended strict Orthodox yeshivas growing up. He describes himself as Modern Orthodox, but adds that he doesn’t like labels. After retiring from Rutgers, where he was on faculty for more than three decades, he moved to Israel 13 years ago. Today he serves as chair of the department of behavioral sciences at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem.

Modern Orthodox Jews in America, as his book notes, weren’t always as religiously observant as they are today. Up until the latter part of the 20th century, for instance, it was common for Modern Orthodox synagogues to hold dinners and balls that included mixed-gender dancing. It was also common for Modern Orthodox Jews to eat dairy or fish dishes at restaurants that had no kashrut supervision. Such practices would be frowned upon today.

In his book, Waxman attributes growing levels of observance among Orthodox Jews in America to greater knowledge about halakha (religious law), with this in turn being due to the proliferation of yeshiva day schools around the United States. Indeed, up until the latter part of the 20th century, it was common for children from Orthodox homes to attend public schools, with yeshiva day schools few and far between.

“There were two main reasons for the expansion of Jewish day schools in America,” he says. “One was a desire for more Jewish knowledge; and the other was the desire of Jewish parents to pull their kids out of public schools because of the racial situation-- and that was especially true in the New York area.” Waxman was referring to the growing numbers of black children attending previously all-white public schools from the 1960s onward.

Another factor behind the growing stringency in the Modern Orthodox world, he says, was a fear of the “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” culture outside. “We see a similar rise in fundamentalism in Christianity at this time, also in response to this culture-- and so it wasn’t unique to Orthodox Jews,” notes Waxman.

Like I said up top, I have never spent any time with a Hasidic Jew so I don't know much about them as individuals. I do gather from what I've read, though, that many are far less educated than non-Hasidic Jews and that their rabbis-- who are often very rich while their flock is very poor-- very much prefer keeping them ignorant, out of touch with the secular world around them and obedient.

Staten Island Blue Dog Max Rose, Who Opposes Medicare-For-All And The Green New Deal, Gets Lucky

Another colorful lesser of 2 evils race shaping up in NY: Rose v Grimm?

There's a subway stop on the corner of Kings Highway and East 17th Street in Brooklyn, a few feet from the famous Dubrow's Cafeteria where JFK came for a rally in 1960. Back then that area around Dubrow's was the heart of Brooklyn's liberal Jewish bastion. The nearest high school was James Madison which graduated Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer-- and me. I didn't see any of them at Dubrow's the evening JFK was there, but my mother brought me to see the next president. A policeman on horseback accidentally stepped on my foot and I was carried into the cafeteria-- which was reserved for the local politicos and donors-- and Kennedy came over to me and offered my mother and I some solace for my wound. A few months later he defeated Vice President Richard Nixon-- massively so in that part of south Brooklyn.

That area is the furthest corner of NY-11, the "Staten Island district," currently represented by Blue Dog freshman Max Rose. The actual furthest corner of the district is Avenue P and East 17th street, 3 doors down from what was then my family's house. The congressional district itself is the most heavily-Italian district in America. But the eastern part of the Brooklyn section is still predominantly Jewish, although no longer liberal Jewish. They've all moved and the neighborhoods are filled with right-wing Russian immigrants; huge Trump supporters. The precincts that had traditionally given liberal Democrats immense margins turned out to give Trump his biggest wins in New York City. It broke my heart.

NY-11 itself, was the only New York City congressional district that Trump won-- beating Hillary 53.6% to 43.8%, a shanda. 4 years earlier, Obama had beaten Romney there, 51.6% to 47.3%. The PVI is R+3 and it's a pretty classic swing district. In the last few years there have been two Republican congressmen-- Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm and Dan Donovan-- and two Democratic congressmen-- Mike McMahon and now Max Rose. Rose flipped the district after a bruising GOP primary in which Grimm, straight out of prison-- and all Trumpified and with Bannon's blessing-- tried unsuccessfully to displace Donovan. In the general, Donovan was a dead man walking and Rose eviscerated him in the Brooklyn third of the district and even beat him, albeit narrowly, in the Staten Island bulk of the district. It was a 101,823 (53.0%) to 89,441 (46.6%) Democratic win.

But it's still a Republican-leaning district where Trump has a big following and Rose is definitely at the top of the GOP list of Democrat-held seats they hope to flip. The NRCC and the Republican establishment in general has rallied around popular state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, who ran for mayor of NYC in 2017. Although she only took a minuscule 27.6% of the vote citywide, her win against Bill de Blasio in Staten Island was massive: 70,125 (70.6%) to 25,466 (25.6%).

She seems like the perfect candidate for the GOP to take on Rose. But that clashes with Mikey Suits' career plans. There's been a buzz on Staten Island for months that Grimm was thinking about running again but yesterday Laura Barrón-López broke the news for Politico readers: The former GOP congressman and tax felon says he's "90% of the way there to run" against freshman Max Rose on Staten Island. The Mafia congressman "is trying," she wrote, "to come back from the dead-- again." She interviewed him and he told her "he’s very close to launching the second bid for his old seat in as many years... Grimm says the shadow cast by his felony guilty plea is no longer a factor. He’s spoken to multiple people at the National Republican Congressional Committee, Grimm said, and he's in the process of setting up a meeting for an upcoming trip to Washington. 'The cloud is gone. It’s over; it’s in the past,' he said. 'I’ve had a lot of colleagues call me and tell me they’d love to have me back.'" (Another GOP criminal congressman, wanted to have his backside; I remember that.)

The move by the scandal-tainted tough guy, who once threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony, could jeopardize Republicans’ chances in a district key to the party’s hopes of recapturing the House in 2020.

...The one-time FBI agent said he was railroaded by his political enemies-- “They don’t want rising Republican stars in New York City,” he said-- when he was sentenced to less than a year in prison. And Grimm’s opponents all happen to have one thing in common: They’re President Donald Trump’s enemies, too.

“Who signed off on my indictment? James Comey,” Grimm, stirring his tea at the Z-One Diner here, said of the former FBI director whom Trump fired. “It’s the same exact players and the same exact playbook.”

He compared his felony charges for tax evasion to the “witch hunt” Russia investigation carried out by special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. But there are obvious differences: Grimm pleaded guilty to concealing more than $900,000 in gross income and admitted failing to report hiring busboys “off the books” when he owned a Manhattan restaurant, Healthalicious.

...In what could be a sign of the battle to come, Grimm and Rose are already attacking each other gleefully more than a year before the start of the general election.

Grimm took issue with Rose boasting about passage of legislation that allows construction and maintenance of a seawall along the east shore of Staten Island. He said he’s the one who got the plan and the funding for the wall approved. What Rose passed was equivalent to pulling a permit, said Grimm.

“If [Rose] was a gentleman, and he wasn’t insecure because I know he is about me-- he’s terrified I’m going to run-- he’d be honest and say, ‘My congressman, Grimm, funded this wall, and I’m now making sure it’s getting done,’” said Grimm.

Rose-- a blunt-spoken Army veteran-- gladly fired back at his would-be opponent.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that Mike played a part, and then he had to pass the baton to Dan Donovan when he took a vacation in federal prison,” said Rose. “And then Dan Donovan passed the baton to me after I beat him.”

"God bless him," Rose added of news that Grimm is close to launching a campaign. "He's just the gift that keeps on giving."

Nearly three months on the job, Rose hasn’t shied away from defying party leaders. He voted against Nancy Pelosi for speaker. He isn't embracing proposals championed by leading progressives in the party and sided with Republicans on a symbolic procedural measure saying authorities should notify ICE when an undocumented immigrant buys a gun.

At the same time, Rose is being squeezed by an emboldened left flank of the party that dominates the news cycle and increasingly threatens primary challenges. And Rose, in particular, may end up feeling more of the heat because his district is just miles away from the one represented by fellow freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Speaking to fewer than 100 constituents at his second-ever town hall last weekend in the auditorium of a high school in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, Rose got five questions about freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), two about the Green New Deal, and went round for round with a constituent about why he opposes "Medicare for All." (Rose supports lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 50, instituting a nationalized system of all-payer rate-setting and a public option.)

Rose was pressed the most on policies boosted by Ocasio-Cortez and his response to comments made by Omar that were widely considered anti-Semitic. “Someone in this country does have a right to criticize Israel. Someone in this country does have a right to criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Rose said. “All I ask is that they do it without causing Jewish people pain by bringing up anti-Semitic comments."

Rose panned the "economic unorthodoxies" of the Green New Deal and said instead, he wants an “Apollo project for battery technology” to advance solar and wind energy and a cap-and-trade system to get the U.S. to a carbon-free economy by 2050.

While Rose works to position himself as more centrist than some of his Democratic colleagues, Republicans are eager to hit him from the right. As with other Trump-district members, Republicans plan to tag Rose as the tip of a socialist spear-- hoping that by tethering Rose to Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi they can make him a one-term member. That playbook failed in 2018, after Republicans spent millions labeling Democrats running in red districts Pelosi soldiers.

“As the daughter of a Cuban refugee, the threat of socialism is something I don’t take lightly," said Malliotakis, who calls Rose "a Park Slope liberal," labeling the Democrat an off-island Brooklynite. "When I see individuals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's from New York City, trying to move our country more to the left, it really bothers me."

Rose has an answer to that charge at the ready, one he test-drove at a Staten Island town hall earlier last week. “I’m not a socialist. Everyone here knows I’m not a socialist,” he said in an interview. “It’s very obvious I’m not a socialist.”

But Rose could also benefit from a fractious Republican primary. Malliotakis touted establishment Republican support she’s quickly lining up, noting that New York Reps. Lee Zeldin and Elise Stefanik are backing her bid. Stefanik’s new Elevate PAC, formed to boost female Republicans in primaries, is “supporting” her. Malliotakis has also met with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy “personally,” she said, and “he’s very supportive.” (McCarthy did not respond to a request for comment.)

Looming large over any Republican primary is Trump, who endorsed Donovan over Grimm in the 2018 primary. Grimm said he doesn't harbor a grudge, but he'd be less enthusiastic about a run this time if the president is going to back another candidate in the race.

"The president got involved to save an incumbent, which I respect," Grimm said. "I wouldn’t want to be in a position now where the president would jump in again."

Malliotakis wouldn't necessarily be a natural fit for a Trump endorsement, but neither was Donovan, who voted against Trump's tax overhaul. In her failed campaign for mayor in bright-blue New York in 2017, Malliotakis said she voted for Trump but later regretted it.

“I agree with the president on most policies," Malliotakis said in an interview at a The Coffee Club Diner in South Brooklyn. "When I disagree with him, I’ll disagree with him. I’m not anybody’s rubber stamp. I’m my own individual person.”

Grimm thinks he's the best shot at taking the seat back, calling Malliotakis too "liberal" to win. And he claims his recent history as a criminal defendant makes him the right person to send back to Washington during Trump's reelection campaign.

"Bad things happen to good people every day, and my experience would make me a better legislator because I look at how it's happened again to Donald Trump," said Grimm, returning to his felony. "My love for this country just exudes from me. It just comes out of me."

See it exuding?

Like Al Capone, they put Mikie Suits away for tax evasion but never charged him with murder, etc

Oh God! A Speaker From Brooklyn?

Manny and Hakeem

The way Brooklyn was divided up into congressional districts when I was growing up was different back then. I mostly grew up on East 16th street and Avenue P, the exact border (depending on which side of the street you lived) between what is now Yvette Clarke's 9th district and Dan Donovan's/Max Rose's 11th district and then in Atlantic Towers in Sheepshead Bay, where, today Hakeen Jeffries 8th district meets Yvette Clarke's 9th. Back in the day, it was all Manny Celler's district. Celler's was a legendary figure who, when he died in 1981 (age 92-- born in 1888), the NY Times called "one of the most influential New Yorkers who ever served in the House." He served during the administrations of 7 presidents starting with Warren G. Harding. Over the course of his 50 years in Congress his district was numbered and renumbered NY-10, NY-15, NY-11, NY-10 again and finally, NY-16. But it was always, basically, the most Jewish and most liberal part of Brooklyn.

His first blockbuster move in the House-- in 1924-- was to lead the opposition to an ugly xenophobic immigration bill proposed by Rep. Albert Johnson (R-WA) and Senator David Reed (R-PA) that sought to severely limit the number of Jews, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Russians, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbians, Ukrainians, Muslims, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese immigrants and to deport large numbers who were already in the U.S. Despite Celler's strenuous efforts, H.R. 7995 passed the House, 323-71, and was signed by Calvin Coolidge on May 24, 1924. It wasn't until 1952 and 1965 that these restricts were eased. During World War II, Celler led the fight to force FDR to relax the restricts on refugees fleeing the Nazi Holocaust.

In 1950 Celler was the lead House sponsor of Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver's bill to strengthen anti-trust legislation and protect consumers from monopolies. At the same time, he was one of the only members of Congress willing to take on McCarthyism. "Deliberately and calculatedly, McCarthyism has set before itself the task of undermining the faith of the people in their Government," he thundered at the 1952 Democratic National Convention. "It has undertaken to sow suspicion everywhere, to set friend against friend and brother against brother. It deals in coercion and in intimidation, tying the hands of citizens and officials with the fear of the smear attack."

As Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 1949 to 1973 (except for a brief break in 1952 when the GOP controlled the House for 2 years), Celler was involved in drafting and passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1965, he proposed the 25th Amendment, which might help us get rid of Trump. 50 years in Congress... a stunning record of accomplishment and no talk of any advancement beyond that.

I want to compare that to someone who sits in part of his seat now, 48 year old Hakeem Jeffries, basically an unaccomplished political hack and self-promoter who lost his first race after accusing his opponent, Assemblyman Roger Green, of being a Muslim. Six years later, in 2006, Green retired and Jeffries grabbed the seat. In 2012 he decided to take on corrupt Congressman Edolphus Towns but Towns announced his retirement instead and Jeffries beat a more progressive city councilman, Charles Barron, in the primary-- spreading around talking points that he was the "Barack Obama of Brooklyn" and that Barron was anti-Semitic and would not protect Israel. Jeffries was heavily supported by Wall Street banksters, hedge fund managers and charter school interests, refused to debate and went on to win the seat. [So far Jeffries has taken $982,984 from the financial sector. 48.71% of his campaign cash comes from PACs and only 1.28% from small individual contributors.]

He's generally considered a Wall Street Democrat and an AIPAC Democrat and he successfully got himself labeled a "rising star." On November 28 he celebrated the dubious distinction of defeating-- with the help of conservative Democrats-- Barbara Lee to become Chair of the House Democratic Caucus, following in the footsteps on another corrupt Wall Street shill, Joe Crowley, widely touted as the "next Speaker" until Alexandria Ocasio defeated him in a primary earlier this year. And now he's spreading the word that he's the "next Speaker." Politico, of course, bit-- hook, line and sinker: ‘What Obama had, he has that’: Jeffries’ stock rises as Pelosi successor. Heather Caygle, Rachael Bade and John Bresnahan reported that Juan Vargas (New Dem-CA), one of the most corrupt and conservative Democrats in Congress and a Jeffries backer, crowed after Jeffries beat Barbara Lee that "What Obama had, he has that. I call it lightning in a bottle. I do think he’s somebody that could, with a few breaks, become our speaker and also our president. He has that talent." Vargas-- who was considered the worst member of the California legislature when state Dems backed his congressional bid to get him out of Sacramento-- wouldn't recognize talent if it bit him in the ass.

More than a few Democrats see Jeffries’ youth and Brooklyn swagger-- he’s been known to quote rapper Biggie Smalls on the House floor-- as the antidote for a caucus long ruled by a pack of old-school septuagenarians. But the speakership is far from guaranteed.

With Nancy Pelosi’s grip on the gavel likely secure for at least the next two years, Jeffries, 48, would first have to elbow aside others on a leadership team that’s suddenly brimming with young upstarts. He also must navigate some of the same land mines that tripped up his fellow New Yorker, outgoing Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley.

Crowley, too, was often whispered about as the heir apparent to Pelosi’s throne. That is, until he was ousted in a primary upset by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in June. And now Ocasio-Cortez reportedly has Jeffries in her cross hairs, as she and some of her liberal allies consider trying to take him out in 2020.

Caygle, Bade and Bresnahan laughably construct a future race for Speaker as one being between conservative "rising stars" Ben Ray Luján (NM), crediting him with winning the 2018 midterms, Blue Dog Cheri Bustos, a Rahm Emanuel protégé, who has never accomplished anything and progressives Katherine Clark (MA) and David Cicilline (RI), a good voter but, unfortunately, a bit of a stiff, who may have trouble holding onto his seat after Rhode Island loses one of its two House seats in 2022.

“In terms of whether or not I am as progressive as Barbara Lee, I plead guilty as charged,” Jeffries said. “Neither are 434 members of the United States House of Representatives.”

Jeffries pointed to his voting record to push back on the notion that he’s a moderate in any sense of the word: “My record, based on what outside groups have determined to be the case, places me squarely within the top 25 most progressive members of the United States Congress. The record speaks for itself.”

Jeffries has supporters at the ready to fight for him. After Politico reported that Ocasio-Cortez and leaders of the progressive Justice Democrats were toying with the idea of supporting a primary challenger to Jeffries, multiple lawmakers came to his defense.

“[S]he’s helping stir enthusiasm for the domestic agenda that’s really been blocked for years by Republican leadership, but the reality is these are the same policies that my best friend Congressman Jeffries has been a leader on for years,” Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana said of Ocasio-Cortez. “She has been rightly calling for people to give her a chance, not to prejudge her leadership and potential. I hope that she gives the same courtesy to Congressman Jeffries.”

Added New York Rep. Kathleen Rice [another corrupt Wall Street New Dem]: “This whole concept of ‘if you do not subscribe to the 15 principles of the Justice Democrats, you’re not a Democrat,’ it flies in the face of what I think is the best thing about the Democratic Party, which is we are truly a big tent party.”

Jeffries’ allies also argue that just because he’s an effective legislator doesn’t mean he’s not a true-blue progressive. Jeffries has had seven bills passed in a GOP-controlled House, four enacted into law. That record, they say, shows he knows how to get things done.

...Jeffries credits House Democrats’ romp to winning 40 new seats on election night to a strategy he, Bustos and Cicilline crafted as co-chairs of House Democrats’ communications arm: ignoring Trump and adopting a tunnel-vision focus on pocketbook issues, including protecting people with pre-existing medical conditions and hammering the GOP’s “tax scam.”

Throughout the campaign cycle, the trio reminded lawmakers on a weekly basis to stay on message, even printing little note cards displaying their talking points to reinforce that strategy.

“Now this so-called tax cut is more unpopular than tax increases that have been enacted by the United States Congress!” Jeffries boasted. “We lost the legislative battle. We won the messaging war.”

But it’s more than just a having a simple message. Jeffries says Democrats have to avoid getting in the mud with Trump when he goads them.

“Trump is Trump, but you have to make a strategic decision. Are you going to take the bait or not?” he said. “Don’t take the bait. Don’t take the bait.”

One person unlikely to stand in Jeffries’ way if he ultimately goes for the speaker’s gavel? Clyburn, currently the highest ranking African-American in Congress and a veteran politician who had previously toyed with the idea of running for speaker himself.

“I think that Hakeem Jeffries has everything it takes to be the speaker of the House,” Clyburn said. “I look forward to being around, if not inside the Congress, hopefully from the clubhouse at the Santee Cooper Golf Course when he takes his next step up.”

Jeffries is an avid self-promoter and, basically a follower of the crowd... not a leader. So, of course, don't be surprised that he hasn't signed onto the Green New Deal. I'd be surprised if he even understands what it is, although when most Democrats back it, he will too. There have been 54 House speakers since the office was created in 1789. Two were New Yorkers-- John Taylor (Albany) in 1820 and again in 1825 and Theodore Pomeroy (Syracuse) in 1869-- and none have ever been from Brooklyn, not even the great Manny Celler.