Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), the increasingly embattled freshman congressman from western North Carolina, drew added scrutiny on Thursday when he suggested cutting off all foreign aid until a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico is completed.

“Here’s a thought,” Cawthorn wrote in a mid-day tweet. “No more foreign aid to anyone until we finish the Wall.”

The extreme proposal — in keeping with an inflammatory social media presence he has cultivated throughout his first term in Congress — raised questions over Cawthorn’s support for continued security assistance to Israel, which he has previously endorsed.

Hours later, at least one of his opponents in next Tuesday’s primary — where Cawthorn is facing several Republican challengers — had pounced on the comments.

“At my core, I’m a fighter. I spent my entire career helping America be the world leader & I want to continue this work in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Rod Honeycutt, a retired Army colonel, shot back in a social media statement. “I will never deny foreign aid to @Israel.”

Luke Ball, a spokesperson for Cawthorn’s campaign, dismissed such accusations in a text message to Jewish Insider on Thursday evening. “He was referring to Ukraine,” he said of the congressman. “Not Israel.”

On Tuesday, Cawthorn was among 57 House Republicans who voted against a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, he has criticized as a “thug.”

“Imagine if we spent $40 Billion on veterans,” Cawthorn wrote in a separate tweet on Thursday.

In recent months, the flamethrowing 26-year-old has found himself on the defensive amid a cascade of controversies that have damaged his reputation in North Carolina’s newly drawn 11th Congressional District, which includes his hometown of Hendersonville.

A polling memo obtained by JI in late March suggested that Cawthorn may be “in danger” in the primary.

“His roadway campaign signs are being defaced all over Hendersonville with inappropriate images,” Rachael Jackson, the rabbi of Agudas Israel Congregation, a Reform synagogue in Hendersonville, told JI. “Some also have swastikas graffitied on his forehead.”

“It’s distressing to witness the divisiveness and the vitriol,” she said.

A Jewish candidate for the Kentucky state legislature is alleging his opponent invoked antisemitic tropes in a campaign mailer that accused him of attempting to “buy” the district for his own “interests.”

The mailer, distributed by longtime state Rep. Tom Burch, targets Democratic primary challenger Daniel Grossberg, a Jewish political activist who also ran for the state House in the 2020 election. The campaign material, first shared by a Louisville Courier-Journal reporter on Wednesday, is headlined “VOTER ALERT” and “DON’T LET THEM BUY OUR DISTRICT.” It goes on to allege “Daniel Grossberg is trying to buy our House seat for his own interests with $100,000 of his own money.”

Volley of attack mailers from Rep. Tom Burch and Daniel Grossberg in the Democratic primary for House D-30. Burch going after Grossberg loaning his campaign $100k, Grossberg going after Burch for many missed votes. (Told latter mailer hitting houses this week) pic.twitter.com/EdISxUXvMR

— Joe Sonka 😐 (@joesonka) May 11, 2022

The mailer does not specify to whom “them” refers, nor what personal “interests” Grossberg is pursuing. In a brief call with Jewish Insider on Thursday, Burch — the longest-serving lawmaker in Kentucky history — said he did not see “anything derogatory” in the mailer, and requested that specific questions be sent to him by email. He did not respond to those questions.

“I was completely shocked by it,” Grossberg told JI. “We were expecting an attack, but I wasn’t expecting him to go so low as to lean into one of the most famous of the antisemitic tropes, the whole concept of replacement theory, the theory that the Jews are taking over, that we’re buying away the power and influence of the White Anglo Saxon Protestants.”

Grossberg said his phone has been “blowing up” with messages from people in the district “outraged by what they saw.”

Grossberg told JI he is running for the seat because “we don’t have representation,” accusing Burch of frequently failing to attend votes in Frankfort, the state capital, meet with constituents or conduct constituent services. 

“I don’t know what personal gain I could have for being in a super-duper minority in Frankfort,” Grossberg said. “As it stands right now, there are 25 Democrats to 75 Republicans. That will probably only get worse. So the claims of personal interest are a little bizarre from someone who is collecting a fat paycheck on the public tax rolls without even showing up for work.”

Burch did not respond to the accusations of absenteeism.

AJC U.S. Director for Combating Antisemitism Holly Huffnagle said in a tweet, “This type of language, blaming Jews for grabbing power through money, is dangerous. Rep. Burch should know better than to wade into these troublesome waters.”

The Kentucky Jewish Council, chaired by Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, tweeted on Thursday that the mailer was “absolutely shocking,” adding “[a]ccusations of ‘Them’ buying our elections is a transparent antisemitic trope, and the segregation of the Jewish candidate is reminiscent of the cries of ‘Jews Will Not Replace Us,’” a slogan employed during a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in 2017.

Kentucky’s local political arena has been plagued by a string of antisemitic incidents in recent months. Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg, who is Jewish, was shot at by an activist who appeared to have ties to a Black nationalist group with ideological links to the antisemitic Black Hebrew Israelite movement. Greenberg was subsequently the subject of memes depicting him with horns, showing him surrounded by money and picturing him alongside a Jewish bank president.

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), who is Jewish, addressed the images in a recent local event, saying, “I don’t think there’s any question” those memes depict antisemitism.

In February, two Kentucky state legislators used the phrase “Jew them down” during a state House debate. A week later, another state representative claimed that an abortion medication was the same drug as Zyklon B, the gas used by the Nazis to kill millions of Jews during the Holocaust, and that the drug had been developed by a Jewish person. The representative also made claims about the sex lives of Jewish women. All three legislators subsequently apologized.

On the federal level, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has also faced accusations of antisemitism for comparing vaccination madates to the Holocaust and referring to AIPAC as “foreign interference” in U.S. politics.

Activists who are hostile to Israel “don’t want to talk about” the “changing nature of the Middle East,” Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) said on Wednesday, pointing to the Abraham Accords as a “perfect example” of Israel forming alliances in the region.

“It’s no longer a question of being critical. It is an outright hostility to Israel… They don’t want to talk about the fact that more and more countries want to align themselves with Israel and everything Israel has to offer,” Deutch said at The Jewish Federations of North America’s Washington Conference. “The Abraham Accords will grow. I have no doubt there will be more countries to join there, as people look at what we know as the modern miracle, the modern State of Israel.”

Last June, the Florida congressman decried comments from far-left House members, linking domestic antisemitism to the previous month’s conflict between Israel and Hamas. On Wednesday, Deutch doubled down on the comments he made on the House floor last year, during which he accused some legislators of making antisemitic comments.

“When your position is that the only state in the world that shouldn’t exist is the one Jewish state, then we have an obligation to make sure that people understand that that’s antisemitism,” he told Jewish communal leaders. “We need other people to understand that as well.”

Deutch was asked about the recent decision by a Lufthansa crew to bar a group of Jewish travelers in Frankfurt, Germany, from continuing on to their destination, after some in the group had not worn masks on the prior leg of their flight. The congressman, who co-chairs the Congressional Study Group on Germany, called for “accountability” over Lufthansa’s actions.

“I reached out and will engage more directly with them to understand. I don’t want to rely just on what I’ve read. But what I read is terrible… the singling out of people because they appear to be Jews. And I think we need to get to the bottom of it.”

Deutch was speaking in one of his first in-person addresses to a major Jewish organization since announcing that he will leave Congress later this year to helm the American Jewish Committee, which has worked extensively in Germany.

Deutch also addressed right-wing antisemitism, sharing details about his experience during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

“I did all the things that the Capitol Police told me to do. I got into the back corner of my office in a cubicle. The lights are off, I pulled down the blinds, I silenced my electronics. And I sat there and I listened to people in the hallway, having no idea whether it was insurrectionists, if they were coming close or not. How pathetically sad is it that the first thing that went through my mind is, ‘Well, I just moved into this office. So thank God, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to hang a mezuzah.’”

The frenetic pace of New York City provides ample opportunity for mini-empires to rise and fall. But on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, one iconic mainstay has managed to weather it all. Since 1934, Zabar’s has been a focal point for the city’s food culture, helping usher in such groundbreaking revolutions as drip coffee. A new book, Zabar’s: A Family Story with Recipes, chronicles the history of the store and the family behind it.

On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein were joined by David and Willie Zabar, a father-son duo that represents the third and fourth generations of proprietors. The book is a product of the research and writing done by Lori Zabar, David’s sister, who died in February after a five-year battle with cancer.

The original Zabars, Lillian and Louis, came from families in Ukraine with extensive retail experience. Like many Jews, they fled during the pogroms of the 1920s. While much of that story was known to the family, Lori, who spent much of her final years researching the family’s history, uncovered new details.

“A lot of that information, which I really read about for the first time, is family members that were killed in pogroms, and why my grandfather really had to leave town — because he was being pursued because he had fought back,” David explained on the podcast.

“We’ve been at our current location since 1934, but the story actually goes back earlier than that,” Willie said. “So my great-grandparents came over to the United States separately — about 1920 and 1921 — and they had a series of business ventures throughout the city starting in Brooklyn and moving into Manhattan. And eventually they were able to get a concession, get just one part of a store on Broadway between 80th and 81st streets.”

“There’s always been family members involved. All of my children, and my niece and nephews have worked in the store at one point,” David said, adding that, while some have gone on to other careers, “the experience of working here is part of their growing up and livelihood.”

In the Zabar family, exposure to the family business begins as early as high school. “There was this idea that at any given summer, you have to be doing something. If you got a job or an internship; you’re doing a program somewhere else, that’s fine. But if you’re not, you’ve got to be working at the store.” Willie recalled. “At the time, I felt like that was kind of a drag. But looking back, I’m actually really glad to have had that experience.”

The family has also spawned other food ventures, most notably Eli’s and E.A.T., two Upper East Side gourmet stores founded by the youngest son of Lillian and Louis, Eli Zabar.

“[Eli] had better ideas and more exposure to European and other foods and traveled more; he felt like Willie Sutton and Horace Greeley,” David added facetiously, referencing the bank robber and 19th century newspaper editor. “It was ‘go east, young man.’ And he went to the East Side.”

Still, the Zabar’s store carries many of Eli’s products, and, every Passover, the entire Zabar family gathers at Eli’s home. (Two other brothers, Saul and Stanley, host Hanukkah and Yom Kippur break fast, respectively.)

“Eli’s is an empire, Zabar’s is a city-state,” Willie added.

But the city-state has made an impact far beyond its Broadway footprint.

Zabar’s has become a cultural icon, referenced or appearing, as Goldberg and Bernstein recalled, in “You’ve Got Mail,” “The West Wing” and on the House floor during an impeachment debate.

Now, with the release of Zabar’s, the story of the family behind the famous store is gaining new attention.

“I think it is going to make customers feel just much closer to the store and the family knowing more about it,” David said, concluding, “It’s a great way to honor my sister.”

In a video message set to be delivered to The Jewish Federations of North America’s Washington Conference, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reiterated his support for $360 million in funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.

Schumer was scheduled to appear in person at the conference butcanceled his appearance due to Senate proceedings on legislation codifying abortion rights. Technical issues at the conference prevented organizers from playing the video, which was obtained by Jewish Insider.

“We must make sure we do everything, everything in our power to fight antisemitism here at home. That’s why I’m working alongside JNFA to secure resources for religious institutions to protect themselves,” Schumer said in the video. “The president’s budget just came out and heeded my call for $360 million for the NSGP next fiscal year. Together, together we will continue to push for that $360 million. We all know how greatly this funding is needed, with antisemitism unfortunately on the rise.”

That figure, which Jewish leaders have been advocating for, represents a significant increase from the $250 million allocated to the program in the 2022 budget. Schumer has been a longtime proponent of the program and increasing funding for it.

Schumer also pledged that the Senate will “soon” pass a bill providing supplemental aid funding for Ukraine. Senators have yet to reach a deal to pass the $40 billion aid package, which passed the House last night. 

The Senate majority leader praised JFNA for its work on the Ukrainian refugee crisis, saying the group has “been at the forefront” of the efforts to resettle refugees and provide humanitarian assistance. 

“It fills me with pride to know that JFNA has been instrumental to make sure more refugees can find safety and dignity and respect as they get comfortably resettled,” he said. “I believe it’s a Jewish value and an American value to care for the refugee.”

Watch the full video here:

Following her decisive victory in a high-profile primary rematch last week, Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH) is poised to step down as the chairwoman of Cuyahoga County’s Democratic Party. Her impending departure next month sets up another consequential Cleveland-area race, whose outcome — while unlikely to attract national attention — could carry broader implications in the midterms.

“If Cuyahoga County actually does its job in November, then Tim Ryan has a chance against J.D. Vance,” said Rob Zimmerman, a former longtime city councilman in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, referring, respectively, to the Democratic and Republican nominees in Ohio’s upcoming Senate election. “Hence, one of the main reasons I’m running.”

Zimmerman is among at least three candidates who are jockeying for the influential county role, which covers Cleveland and its surrounding suburbs. His opponents include state Rep. Kent Smith and Andrew Mizsak, a senior leader of the Bedford/Walton Hills Democratic Party. 

The field could grow even more before central committee members of the county party cast their votes for Brown’s replacement at the beginning of June.

Despite his enthusiasm for the race, Zimmerman said he had no intention of seeking the chairmanship when Brown announced in January that she would vacate the post at the end of her current term. He had recently retired from a 16-year run as a local city councilman and was otherwise keeping busy as a partner at the Cleveland law firm Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff, where he specializes in civil trial and appellate law. 

“It didn’t even occur to me to be her successor,”  Zimmerman, 56, told Jewish Insider in a recent interview.

But after a friend with Ohio’s Democratic Party reached out to suggest he consider running, Zimmerman said, he began mulling a possible bid. “I looked into this and I finally decided that the party needed help,” he reasoned. “Ohio is getting redder and redder.”

Zimmerman — who shares a birth name but no relation with Bob Dylan, otherwise known as Robert Zimmerman — argues that he is uniquely suited for the position, not least because, in contrast with his opponents, he is no longer an elected official.

Brown, for her part, drew criticism for holding onto the seat after launching her campaign to replace former Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) in a hotly contested special House election last summer, when she pulled off a surprise upset over Nina Turner, a former state senator and progressive stalwart.

The editorial board of Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, which endorsed Turner, demanded Brown’s resignation as county chair, describing her control over local party machinery as an “obvious conflict” in the crowded race. The paper expressed similar concerns this cycle, where Brown defeated Turner for the second time in nine months, all but assuring her first full term in Ohio’s newly drawn 11th Congressional District, situated entirely within Cuyahoga County.

Zimmerman, who supported Brown in both congressional races, said his tenure as party chair would face no such scrutiny. “I don’t have those issues,” he told JI. “If I were elected, I would be solely focused on building the party.”

“I’ve got more comprehensive ambitions for what the party can be and what it will be,” Zimmerman said, invoking his campaign motto — “win bigger and win better” — as a call to action in what is expected to be a bruising election season for Democrats.

His campaign site features a detailed list of proposals, including outreach to “disenfranchised and disaffected” voters in Cleveland where Democrats have “underperformed,” countering “Republican attacks and extremism” and recruiting “new talent” to build a “more diverse pool of candidates for office,” particularly at the local level.

“I view the job as being the architect of what the county party should be, building out its infrastructure,” Zimmerman said, pointing to a broader goal of “maximizing” Democratic engagement in Ohio’s second-largest county.

Even as he has campaigned aggressively across the state for months, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), who handily beat back a Democratic challenger last Tuesday, is facing tough odds as he prepares to go up against J.D. Vance, the author and venture capitalist, in the open-seat race to replace outgoing Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH).

Ohio’s Senate election is shaping up to be among the most closely watched matchups of the midterms, as Democrats fight to maintain their tenuous majority in the upper chamber.

And if Ryan has any hope of prevailing, Zimmerman believes, his success will, in many ways, run through the heavily Democratic Cleveland area. “It’s going to require a big vote from Cuyahoga County,” he told JI. 

Zimmerman, who is Jewish, studied political science at The Ohio State University, where he worked on Democratic campaigns, before graduating from The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. Previously, he served as an assistant Ohio attorney general. He first ran for city council, where he focused largely on infrastructure and public works initiatives, in 2005.

The Cleveland native, who lives in Shaker Heights, has long been involved in organized Jewish life, having served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, among other places.

Zimmerman described Brown as an “accessible” chair who has been eager to “listen” when asked to address any number of local party concerns, but he said he would bring his own personalized approach to the role.

The chairmanship covers what he characterized as a host of responsibilities, including “raising money to effectuate a vision” as well as  “refereeing primaries” in order to “keep the peace within the party,” which seems to have frayed somewhat after two bitter matchups between Turner and Brown.

His legal background, he quipped, will give him an “advantage” as he navigates such tensions. 

Before Brown, who has held the position since 2017 — when she became the first Black and female local Cuyahoga County party leader in history — previous chairs have included Stuart Garson and Jimmy Dimora, now serving out a 28-year sentence in federal prison for corruption. 

But while Brown went on to pursue higher office, Zimmerman insists he harbors no such aspirations. “This isn’t about me,” he told JI. “I have no political ambition beyond the party chair.”

The Jewish Democratic Council of America is set to send hundreds of activists to virtually lobby Democratic lawmakers today and tomorrow on a range of issues, including antisemitism, voting rights and abortion access.

As of Monday, JDCA had confirmed 52 meetings with lawmakers: 14 senators and 38 House members. The group’s Week of Action last year had more than 700 activist participants, and organizers are expecting a similar turnout this year.

Under the antisemitism umbrella, the group plans to urge passage of the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which has stalled in the House due to opposition from both Republicans and far-left Democrats; support increasing Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding to $360 million and supporting its reform; and press legislators on backing social media regulation to combat extremism and improve transparency.

JDCA CEO Halie Soifer said the group is not set to meet with any of the Democrats, including Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) — currently holding up the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, but said that the group suggested that activists emphasize that the legislation would not target Muslims, as some opponents have claimed.

“Last year, our Week of Action was instrumental in getting quite a few additional co-sponsors for the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act,” Soifer said. “So we’re confident that again this year it will make a difference in generating a better understanding [and] interest in the legislation that matters most to Jewish voters.”

On voting rights, JDCA plans to lobby for the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, as well as the Election Worker and Polling Place Protection Act, which enhances protections for election workers. The group also plans to urge senators to push to reform or eliminate the filibuster.

On abortion rights, the group will push for the passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which has also stalled in the Senate, to codify the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide. Soifer said the issue became an elevated priority following last week’s leak indicating that the Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe.

JDCA will also push for continued aid to Ukraine, as well as continued support for Israel, aid to the Palestinians and a return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Pressed on how the group plans to approach U.S. foreign policy on Iran with the senators who voted last week in favor of pursuing a more comprehensive agreement with Tehran and the House Democrats who have expressed opposition to the deal, Soifer said that the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action is “not one of our focal points for this week of action” given that “negotiations are stalled” and the group is “not expressing a position with regard to any final deal because it’s not yet been finalized.”

More than 160 House members came together on Tuesday to call for $360 million in funding next fiscal year for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, the largest bipartisan coalition to support this funding level to date.

Advocates for the program won a victory this year when the White House included a $360 million request for the NSGP in its budget proposal — the funding target that has been supported by nonprofit activists, including Jewish groups, for years. Legislators secured $250 million for the program in the 2022 budget, up from $180 million the year prior. 

A year ago, 145 House members signed a similar letter supporting the $360 million funding level.

Reps. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), who has organized a series of letters on the subject, and Michael McCaul (R-TX) led a letter with 161 members to leaders of the House Appropriations Committee calling for “no less than” $360 million in funding for 2023.

“With over one-third of our chamber committed, I hope appropriators will provide the full request in line with the president’s budget, and we won’t stop asking until we can get it,” Pascrell told JI.

The letter acknowledges that the 2022 increase was a “critical step” but “the increasing and extraordinary needs of at-risk populations continues to grow exponentially.”

The letter cites the January attack on Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, to demonstrate what they say is the necessity of such grants, arguing, “the Nonprofit Security Grant Program is perhaps our greatest weapon to meeting this threat,” and noting DHS statistics that show the program has been consistently underfunded.

“The United States remains in the midst of a dangerous rise in domestic extremism. As we saw in Colleyville, Texas, that extremism tragically is aimed at synagogues and other houses of worship. Many Americans do not realize that our faith-based communities do not often have enough resources to provide security to their members,” Pascrell added. “This is where government must step in: to protect people who just want to practice their faith without threat of a bomb or a gunman. If one synagogue is not safe, then no churches, mosques or temples anywhere in America are fully safe.”

Elana Broitman, The Jewish Federations of North America’s senior vice president for public affairs, told JI, “The groundswell of support for increased Nonprofit Security Grant funding reflects a deep understanding that our communities and houses of worship need protection, especially given the terrifying rise in antisemitic incidents. We are very grateful to Reps. Pascrell and McCaul for being true champions of this important, life-saving program.”

Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JI he’s hopeful Congress will provide $360 million for NSGP this year and that “OU is very grateful for the leadership of Reps. Pascrell and McCall and the broad and deep support for robustly funding NSGP at $360 [million].”

Abba Cohen, Agudath Israel of America’s vice president for government affairs, said he is “optimistic” about the final decision.

Cohen told JI that the letter is important both “because of the significant boost in funding and the large number of signatories” and because it “represents Congress’s continued commitment to protecting our nation from terror and its deepening understanding that the program must adequately and realistically meet the dangerous challenges confronting its citizens.”