Rep. Shontel Brown, (D-OH), is seen in the U.S. Capitol’s Rayburn Room after a group photo with the Congressional Black Caucus, on Wednesday, April 6, 2022.

As a cluster of gathering storm clouds prepared to burst just after polls closed on Tuesday evening, the stage had been set for an appropriately cathartic end to the bitter primary rematch between Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH) and Nina Turner in Cleveland and its surrounding suburbs. With two-thirds of the vote, Brown claimed a decisive victory over her opponent, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports from Cleveland, setting her up to win her first full House term in November and bolstering her position as the establishment heir to Ohio’s 11th Congressional District. “This was a faith fight,” Brown said last night at a post-industrial event space in downtown Cleveland. “It’s always been a faith fight for me. The first time, the odds were stacked against us.”

Who’s who: The party was attended by a number of local Democratic officials, most notably Justin Bibb, Cleveland’s newly elected mayor. While Turner endorsed Bibb when he ran for mayor last year, he did not return the favor in the primary and instead threw his support behind Brown, who has built strong ties with Cleveland’s Democratic establishment as a Cuyahoga County party chair. “I don’t care what you call it — progressive, Democrat, I want a fighter in D.C.,” Bibb said last night, drawing snickers from the audience.

Rabbi in the room: Pinchas Landis, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi who lives in the suburb of University Heights and delivered remarks at Brown’s event, suggested that the Jewish voters had stood with Brown. “We saw a woman who brought this community together,” he explained. “Seriously, by a show of hands, how many of you, on a Tuesday night in May, would be listening to a rabbi speak in downtown Cleveland? Seriously now, come on! Yet here we are!… For the Jewish community especially, times are tough. As I’m sure you know, there’s been a rise in antisemitism. There’s more Jew-hatred in the world right now than ever before. So, to have a congresswoman who’s willing to stand up and cosponsor legislation supporting the State of Israel or to stand up and tweet that antisemitism has to stop — that is something that truly is remarkable.”

Read more from Brown’s watch party here.

Going national: After her second loss to Brown, Turner turned her sights to 2024, saying, “Just like King James, LeBron James, decided to take his skills to South Beach, what Sister Turner is gonna do is continue taking my skills all over this nation. And I’m gonna see some folks in 2024.”

Bonus: Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who was in Cleveland to campaign for Brown, expressed an affinity for Brown as a self-identified progressive who, at the same time, has remained vocally supportive of Israel, in an interview with JI. “Shontel is a national symbol of a central truth,” Torres mused, “that you can be both progressive and pro-Israel. That the notion that you cannot be both is a vicious lie that should and must be finally put to rest.” Read the full interview here.

Steven Mnuchin speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference.

Washington’s approach toward Ukraine could reverberate in its dealings with Iran and in relationships with Middle East nations, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Tuesday at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. Washington’s decision not to more strongly come to Ukraine’s aid militarily when the U.S. urged Ukraine to abandon its nuclear weapons three decades ago, Mnuchin argued, could send signals that the U.S. will not honor its nuclear commitments as it works toward a nuclear-free Iran, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

History lesson: “Ukraine had the third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, and post the Cold War, there was an agreement entered into to dismantle those nuclear weapons, signed by the United States, the U.K. and Russia, effectively guaranteeing the borders,” Mnuchin told a packed crowd at a morning panel about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Not the answer: “Other countries that either have nuclear weapons or want nuclear weapons — Iran is something I’m very concerned about — we need to make it clear that if we say you don’t have nuclear weapons, and we support you, we’ll support you, and that nuclear weapons are not the answer,” added Mnuchin.

Price hike: Mnuchin was joined on the panel by Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN), who grew up in Ukraine. She urged the Biden administration to take a stronger position on Ukraine, arguing that sanctioning Russian energy might lead to higher oil prices, but for a brief period of time — and that her constituents can handle it. “Do you want to have a shorter pain, maybe deeper, or do you want to have a prolonged pain for a long time? The economy is very strong. We can clean it up,” said Spartz.

Read the full story here.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides speaks at Jewish Insider’s Insider Access event in Washington, D.C.

As President Joe Biden assembles the agenda for his first Middle East visit since taking office, his administration is trying to coax at least one more Arab nation to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said on Tuesday, The Circuit’s Jonathan Ferziger reports.

What he said: “My job personally is to go deeper with the countries we have, and the [job of the] White House is to go wider and bring more countries into the forum,” Biden’s envoy to Israel said in a webcast from Jerusalem organized by the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. “Wouldn’t it be great if Saudi Arabia had normalized relationships with Israel, and Kuwait and the whole region,” Nides said in an interview with Dan Shapiro, the former ambassador to Israel under the Obama administration who was recently named a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. “You’ve got to create the momentum. Every one of these is difficult to do. Our view is, the more the merrier.”

Worth the effort: Nides, who left his post as vice chairman of Morgan Stanley to take over the top job at the embassy in Jerusalem, said dates are still unsettled while advisers grapple with how to make the maiden presidential trip to the Middle East a success. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced after a phone conversation with Biden that the president has accepted his invitation to visit in the coming months. “Each of these countries wants something from us and we want something from them, and they want something from the Israelis,” Nides said. “This little maneuver is not for the faint-hearted, but I think it’s well worth the time and the energy.”

Read the full story here.

Activists rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 3.,2022., Tuesday after the leak of a draft majority opinion preparing for the court to overturn the landmark abortion decision in Roe v. Wade. (Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Orthodox Jewish groups have frequently found themselves aligned with Christian conservatives at the Supreme Court on religious liberty issues. But Monday night’s leaked draft opinion indicating that the Court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade brings into focus one area of potential difference between the frequent allies, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Both sides: In a statement on Tuesday evening, the Orthodox Union’s leadership said it does not support absolute abortion bans nor abortions when not medically necessary. “Jewish law prioritizes the life of the pregnant mother over the life of the fetus such that where the pregnancy critically endangers the physical health or mental health of the mother, an abortion may be authorized, if not mandated, by Halacha and should be available to all women irrespective of their economic status,” the statement reads in part.

Wait and see: Abba Cohen,the vice president for government affairs for Agudath Israel of America, told JI the group could not comment until reviewing how the final decision would treat certain circumstances. “We would have to review the precise nuances of the final decision itself — how, for example, it treats abortion rights when the ‘mother’s life or health is endangered’ or when the ‘mother’s sincerely held religious beliefs allow or require’ her to seek an abortion.”

Big tent: Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women — the most prominent Jewish community organization in the pro-choice movement  — said her group is working with some prominent Orthodox rabbis. She acknowledged the Orthodox community generally takes a more restrictive view of abortion than NCJW, but added, “the reality is there are seats for everyone at this table because this fight actually is about that too… There’s space for everyone, including those who care deeply about religious freedom issues.”

Word of caution: One prominent Jewish voice in the legal community urged caution about the leaked opinion itself. “I think the proposition that this is what the Court will do is wrong,” experienced constitutional lawyer and former Supreme Court clerk Nathan Lewin told JI. “It is an early statement of what Justice [Samuel] Alito believes the Court should do. I think it is comparable to the long opinion that Alito wrote in the religious-liberty Fulton case (to overrule [Employment Division] v. Smith). As was true in Fulton, it may end up being a concurring opinion when the Court’s internal process is concluded and the case is decided.”

Read more here.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) questions U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as he testifies before the House Judicary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on April 28, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

Mark Mellman, the president of Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm, warned leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus that it would be engaging in potentially discriminatory behavior if it changes its endorsement rules to exclude members who accept campaign contributions from the pro-Israel group, he told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel.

Countering CPC: Mellman was responding directly to comments from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the CPC chairwoman, who suggested to Punchbowl News on Monday that caucus leaders had been weighing the imposition of such a provision. Her remarks came amid rising tensions between far-left and moderate Democrats over the CPC’s recent endorsement of DMFI-backed Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH) in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District. Jayapal said the CPC’s executive board had been mulling the possibility of revising its political action committee’s endorsement process “based on,” among other things, “whether somebody accepts this kind of giant PAC money, whether it’s from the crypto billionaires or whether it’s from DMFI.”

Caucus concern: DMFI spent more than $1 million on Brown’s behalf as she faced a primary rematch with Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator and presidential campaign surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Turner had earned an endorsement from the CPC’s PAC when she unsuccessfully campaigned for the seat in a heated special House election last year.

Second time’s a charm: Brown, who prevailed with support from establishment Democrats and pro-Israel groups, among others, joined the progressive caucus after she assumed office in November. She was endorsed by the CPC PAC last month, though not without some apparent resistance from left-leaning members who had previously supported Turner.

New rules? While Jayapal had also personally supported Turner in 2021, she has defended the CPC’s decision to back a fellow incumbent “in good standing for four months.” Still, speaking with Punchbowl, the chairwoman acknowledged “the frustration” among critics of the endorsement and said she is now reviewing the process behind it. “Should we have a certain period of time,” Jayapal said, “whether it’s six months or a year or something, that you have to be a member of the CPC and [in] good standing?”

Read more here.