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The Washington Examiner points out just low President Joe Biden has fallen in the public’s eyes, including among Democrats:

President Joe Biden has pushed the presidency to a place it hasn't been in nearly 50 years… Going back to 1975, Gallup has never recorded a confidence reading as low as Biden’s 23%.

…More than just another bad poll for Biden, Gallup was another sign of the nation’s feelings about the lackluster president, and it comes during a building wave of anti-Biden sentiment from Democrats.

Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod expressed pessimism about Biden’s effect on Democrats in the midterm election in an interview with CNN. Axelrod commented on the “unfortunate situation” Biden is in right now: “There is this sense that things are kind of out of control and he’s not in command.”

Later, [Jake] Tapper brought up the recent AP-NORC poll which showed that 85% of Americans think that "things in this country are headed in the wrong direction." Tapper pressed Axelrod, saying, "That frankly points to disaster for Democrats in November."

Axelrod admitted, "If you were looking at the chart, you’d say the vitals are not good. The President’s approval rating’s at 38%. His economic ratings are low. Consumer confidence is down. The number that you mentioned."

The Times of Israel reports that a UN watchdog organization, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), has released a troubling report: educational textbooks produced by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian public schools “continue to contain incitement to violence against Israel and hatred of Jews, despite a promise to remove such content.” UNRWA appears to have removed the offending content from its educational website, but it is still being distributed in classrooms in the West Bank and Gaza.

Among the content that IMPACT-se flagged was a grammar exercise teaching that “the Palestinians sacrifice their blood to liberate Jerusalem,” the statement said.

Other exercises include sentences about “Jihad warriors” against “the occupier,” commitment to “liberate” Palestine, and “resisting the enemy courageously,” according to the report.

A poem teaches students that to die as a martyr by killing Israelis is a “hobby.”

There is better news here in the US, where international law expert Eugene Kontorovich writes that the constitutionality and rightness of anti-BDS laws have been affirmed recently:

June was a terrible month for the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. On June 22, in Arkansas Times v. Waldrip, the Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals broadly upheld the constitutionality of anti-BDS laws. A week later Unilever, the multinational parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, overruled the boycott of Israel that the ice-cream company announced a year ago, and it gave the Israel-based licensee permanent ownership of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream making in Israel and the West Bank. In a jab at the Vermont subsidiary’s leadership, Unilever noted it “repudiates unequivocally any form of discrimination or intolerance.”

…Efforts to push companies to boycott Israel won’t fade away soon. The primary goal isn’t economic harm but making it culturally and politically acceptable to shun the Jewish state. What is most important about both the vindication of the state anti-BDS laws and the repudiation of the ice-cream embargo is their underlying message: The moralistic rhetoric of Israel boycotts can’t disguise their bigotry.

Zach Williams at the New York Post looks at the prospects for Jewish Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin (NY-1), who won the GOP nomination for New York governor and will face off against incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul:

Republican gubernatorial nominee Rep. Lee Zeldin faces an uphill battle in his “long shot” bid for New York’s top job — but political experts say he has a chance if he is laser-focused on specific areas and hot-button issues such as crime and inflation.

“Congressman Zeldin and Governor Hochul are now in a narrative war, and whoever wins it will win the election,” political consultant Bill O’Reilly told The Post in a text.

“To Zeldin, this race is about inflation, taxes, and crime. To Hochul, it’s about abortion, guns, and January 6. That’s all we’re going to be hearing from the candidates for the next four months,” O’Reilly, who backed former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino in the GOP gubernatorial primary, added.

Robert Showah, writing at the Wall Street Journal, explains why the Democrats are losing ground nationwide – they’ve focused on the national level, losing ground at the state and local levels that are the foundations of political power in America:

The U.S. isn’t a centralized regime but a vast democratic federation whose governing system is informed by scale. That means consent of “multimajorities”—not a single nationwide majority—is required to wield federal power. To elect senators who will confirm federal judges, parties need to remain competitive in the states. The Electoral College demands the same of presidential contenders. For most of the 20th century, Democrats succeeded in being the multimajoritarian party. But in recent decades, Republicans have attained much greater influence at the federal level by ascending at the more intimately democratic levels of American government.

… In a union of states, power is earned by notching multiple victories proximate to voters. For much of the 20th century Democrats won by sustaining an impressive coalition of Southerners—a mix of conservative Dixiecrats and neoliberal Blue Dogs—along with a pro-union arm of Midwesterners. This coalition provided Democrats a bench of figures with statewide name recognition to succeed retiring Senate Democrats or compete for Republican-held seats. But since then, Democrats broadly have staked their attainment of federal power on the imperial coattails of presidential politics while neglecting to fend off a decades-long ground-level offensive by Republicans emboldened by Democrats’ lurch leftward…

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The United States needs a better strategy to deter Iran

Dennis Ross, who served in national security roles in the Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama administrations, urges President Joe Biden to take a tougher stand on Iran. “To improve US deterrence in the long run, Washington should publicly declare what Tehran will lose if it continues down its current path—and what it will gain from changing course. The aim must be to restore Iran’s fear of US military action without putting the country in a corner with no diplomatic way out.”

Seven notorious fake quotes and misquotes about Israel

Chaim Lax lists – and refutes - some of the most popular false quotes or misquotes about Israel that are still shared by both reputed news outlets and online celebrities. This is a good article to keep on hand for when these lies come up in your social feed.

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