Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of November 9

Bipartisan condemnation floods Israel and Palestine protests in Philadelphia

The targeted boycott Sunday of Jewish-owned businesses in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square drew bipartisan condemnation from area lawmakers as hundreds of residents gathered to counterprotest.

The highly publicized event gained traction across multiple media outlets when Philly Bike On Your Left, a cycling group that posts on Instagram and routinely organizes protests against Israeli action in Gaza and federal immigration enforcement in the city, encouraged others to join the ride.

Philadelphia police estimated 500 in Rittenhouse Square. Some of that total figure were in opposition to the protests.

The plan, according to their statement, was to boycott Jewish-owned businesses in Rittenhouse Square they say express support for Israeli military action in Palestine following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-driven attack on its citizens as they slept in their beds.

^That's actually disingenuous, they seem to have been targeting businesses that were pro-Zionism specifically but once again we're told they were targeting all "Jewish-owned businesses"

Counter-protestors who flooded the area Sunday to push back against the cyclists, backed by statements from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike called the boycott "antisemitic and shameful" and disconnected from the war.

The timing – between the anniversary of the Hamas attack and the Nazis' "Night of Broken Glass," or Kristallnacht, that targeted Jews across Europe in 1938 – further inflamed tensions in the city.

In the group's official statement, it called such criticisms "disingenuous," pointing instead to scheduling limitations.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, was among those who referenced the 88-year-old event, calling it "blatant antisemitic targeting."

"In the midst of blatant antisemitic targeting of Jewish-owned restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the City of Brotherly Love showed up to support our neighborhood businesses and prove once again that hate has no place in our commonwealth," he said on X.

I find it odd that a bike ride is a boycott, and I find it odd that they keep trying to frame a boycott as antisemitic, disturbing, unwelcome, etc

State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, the Republican who lost to Shapiro in Tuesday's general election, joined him in denouncing the boycott as "disgraceful" and "disturbing."

"No business owner, employee, or member of our Jewish community should ever have to live in fear or feel unwelcome in their own community," she said.

It's not the first time Garrity has expressed support for the war in Gaza. Just weeks after the Hamas attack, the state said it invested $20 million into Israel bonds, increasing the commonwealth's total ownership to $56 million at that time.

Advocacy groups have long said Israel bonds support the country's military and political special interests, particularly within the U.S. government. Palestine supporters frame the nation's foreign investments as integral to what it considers a genocide in the region perpetrated by a "Zionist government."

Rep. Amen Brown, who represents a state House district in the city, said "holding a rally in Rittenhouse Square that glorifies that massacre as 'resistance' is unacceptable."

His massacre reference is to Oct. 7, 2023.

"The murder of civilians is not resistance and it should never be celebrated," he said.

I didn't see anywhere in the protest where they were glorifying that

State Sen. Joe Picozzi, representing a district in northeast Philadelphia and claiming Jewish descent, joined others in calling the boycott "disgraceful."

"The right to peacefully protest is a fundamental part of who we are as Americans," he said in a statement. "Citizens have every right to disagree with the Israeli government, but targeting Jewish business owners here at home undermines American values.

Again, "targeted" with a boycott. I don't know how you do that with a bike ride but I also don't see how boycotts undermine American values. And again, they say targeting "Jewish business owners" leaving out the fact that these owners support the genocide

"Political disagreements should never be used as an excuse for attempting to intimidate Americans on the basis of their faith."

According to a 2019 population study of the greater Philadelphia area, the region is estimated to have 351,200 Jewish residents.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker directed city law enforcement to maintain peace and order, while condemning the protest's scope.

"Everyone has the right to peacefully protest and express their political views," she said. "But singling out businesses because their owners are Jewish is unacceptable and has no place in our city."

Again more framing. And again, they seem to be condemning free speech and twisting the words of the protesters. Yahoo News and Christen Smith also seem to be trying to bend the truth for them.

Heather Cox Richardson November 8

Since the dramatic victories of the Democrats on Tuesday, Trump has been posting increasingly provocative material on social media in what appears to be an attempt to turn attention away from the Democrats and back to himself.

Amidst all that mess, there are signs that the president is deeply concerned about anyone getting a window into how his administration has been operating. Yesterday he insisted that the Democrats are “threatening a lot of people…just because they happen to be Republicans, or Republican supporters.” He said that the Democrats’ promises to investigate the administration are themselves crimes and that he is ordering the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate. The post is convoluted, but Trump insists that “there have been no impeachable acts committed, or even thought of, by the victims of this illegal process.”

…

The lack of accountability for attacking the United States of America meant that the Confederates’ treason never became odious. Former Confederates were able to spread their ideology across the country in the postwar years. In 1871—just six years after the surrender at Appomattox—the first Confederate secretary of state, Robert Toombs, was being quoted in northern newspapers about the dangers of permitting poor men, especially poor Black men, to vote and his advocacy for a property requirement for voting.

…

That same partisan reworking of history took place after President Gerald Ford issued a preemptive pardon to President Richard Nixon for his actions surrounding the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Although Ford relied on the 1915 Burdick v. United States decision that said accepting a pardon carries with it “an imputation of guilt, acceptance, a confession of it,” Nixon never publicly accepted responsibility for his obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.

The theme that accountability for lawbreaking is somehow a partisan plot by those who hate Republicans continued to fester. Over time, it bolstered the right-wing drive to declare a strongman president above the law

…

But now, with the prospect of investigations into behavior that might fall outside a president’s official duties, Trump is trying to convince the American people that enforcing the rule of law is a partisan attack.

In fact, it is the opposite. The true rule of law is nonpartisan. It is the fundamental rule under which the American government was conceived.

“[W]here, say some, is the King of America?” Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the 1776 pamphlet that convinced British colonists in North America to cut ties with their king and start a new nation. “[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”