The Republican Jewish Coalition PAC has released its first set of endorsements for the 2022 election cycle. The five candidates on this first slate are freshmen members of the US House of Representatives.

The endorsees are: Mike Garcia (CA-25), Young Kim (CA-39), Michelle Steel (CA-48), Carlos Gimenez (FL-26), and Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27).

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said:

This is an outstanding group of strong Republicans, each of whom defeated an incumbent Democrat and flipped their seat to the GOP in 2020. Leaders in their home districts, they are already taking leadership roles in the House. They are fighters for America’s freedom, security, and prosperity, and they support our ally, Israel. The RJC PAC enthusiastically supported each of them in 2020 and is proud to do so again in 2022.

The RJC PAC had a significant impact in 2020 and will continue to make a difference in highly competitive races like these. The five candidates we are endorsing today are must-wins for 2022, both because of their tremendous talent and dedication and because their elections are key to the GOP taking back control of the House.

JTA notes:

The first slate of 2022 endorsees named by the political action committee affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition is made up of three Latino and two Asian lawmakers, all of them relative newcomers to the US House of Representatives.

The RJC did not note the diversity of the five lawmakers in its release Thursday, but Jewish Republicans for years have been at the vanguard of efforts to attract voters from constituencies where Republicans have historically fared poorly.

The best way to help these candidates is to donate to them through the RJC PAC.

David Harsanyi writes at National Review:

In leaked audiotapes obtained by the UK-based Iran International, as reported by the New York Times, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a supporter that the former secretary of state [John Kerry] had informed him about “at least” 200 covert Israeli actions against Iranian interests in Syria. Zarif listened to this information in “astonishment.”

… A high-ranking American official feels comfortable sharing this information with an autocratic adversary — a government that’s murdered hundreds of Americans, regularly kidnapped them, interfered with our elections, and propped up a regime that gasses its people — about the covert actions of a long-time American ally. What else did he tell Zarif? The Times doesn’t say.

Jim Geraghty suggests some context: 

[W]e don’t know whether the alleged leak was before or after public reports in September 2018 that Israel had struck 200 Iranian targets in Syria, but the fact that Zarif was surprised by what Kerry had told him — and that the Iranian military had not kept him in the loop — strongly suggests that this information had not yet appeared in news reports.

Join us in demanding that Biden fire Kerry immediately!

Further reading on Iran: 

• Shoshana Bryen: Iran’s Goals
• Jonathan Tobin: Israel has no choice but to act on its own to stop Iran

Last Thursday, a majority of the Virginia Republican Party State Central Committee voted for a religious exemption to voting at their convention on May 8, a Saturday, but it did not meet the 75% threshold to pass. That disenfranchised Orthodox Jews and Seventh Day Adventists who are delegates to the convention that will choose the party’s nominee for governor for the election this fall.

The RJC tweeted: “It is very disappointing to see observant Jews disenfranchised like this. We hope @VA_GOP will reconsider this decision.” 

And they did, as the JTA reports:

The Republican Jewish Coalition asked the party to reconsider. On Monday, two members of the Norfolk Orthodox Jewish community who are also active in the state GOP announced the change. [Orthodox Jews will be able to vote during the day on May 7, Friday, the day before the convention.] 

…The statement also thanked Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, and the Coalition for Jewish Values, a national advocacy group, for weighing in on the issue.

President Joe Biden spoke to the nation last night, addressing a joint session of Congress, and outlined his radical, top-down, government-control agenda. Although Pres. Biden talked about “bipartisanship,” there has been very little of it in the last 100 days. 

The Jewish Insider reports:

Biden’s “idea of bipartisanship is not having a meaningful dialogue and a negotiation and working together to come to a common goal,” said Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks. “They’re not really interested in collaboration with the Republicans. They’re interested in capitulation with the Republicans.” Brooks also expressed concern about “the incredible runaway spending and printing money that the administration is doing under the guise of COVID relief and infrastructure.”

…Now, as Biden turns to the next phase of his administration and looks to pass marquee legislation including a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, Brooks says Republicans won’t let him ram through bills that lack Republican support.

“Thankfully, we have Democratic senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who understand the value and the need for the continuity of institutions like the filibuster in the Senate, not to have a tyranny of the majority, which is what the Democrats want,” Brooks added.

Further reading: 

• Heritage Foundation Scholars Sound Off on Biden’s Address to Congress
• Penn Wharton Budget Model examines President Biden’s American Jobs Plan
• Sen. Tim Scott’s Powerful Response to Biden’s Address to Congress

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