SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — The Biden administration is having internal discussions led by White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and legal counsel Ed Siskel about issuing preemptive pardons for political figures presumed to be on FBI Director-designate Kash Patel’s enemy list, according to Politico and The Washington Post.
They include U.S. Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-California), who led the House of Representatives’ first impeachment of Trump; Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been criticized for his handling of the COVID pandemic; Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who called Trump a “fascist;” and former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), a vocal critic of Trump.
Schiff, asked if he wants such a pardon, said “I have more confidence in our system able to withstand potential abuses of power by the President. And I don’t think a preemptive pardon makes sense.”
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Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) will succeed Congressman Jerrold Nadler as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. In response to Raskin’s challenge, Nadler withdrew from the race on Wednesday. He wrote, “As our country faces the return of Donald Trump, and the renewed threats to our democracy and our way of life that he represents, I am very confident that Jamie would ably lead the Judiciary Committee as we confront this growing danger. Therefore, I have decided not to run for ranking member of the Judiciary Committee in the 119th Congress.”
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Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, notes that the Antisemitism Awareness Act is stalled in Congress as leaders in both houses debate whether it should be passed as a stand-alone bill or as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. “Frankly, we who have worked on the AAA bill from its inception don’t care one bit how it passes Congress—so long as it passes and is signed into law. Now,” Diament wrote in an OpEd for the New York Post.
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Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, cancelled a Dec. 8 lecture in San Diego “due to needing a stent for a heart condition,” it was announced by local ZOA activist Howard L. Dyckman. “He is recovering, and we hope to reschedule.”
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U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, denounced “junk fees” on airlines and suggested the U.S. government should consider fining those airlines that cannot justify such fees.
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Former Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota), chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, has been accompanying Pete Hegseth on his visits to Senate Republicans ahead of an expected battle to be confirmed as President-elect Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Jewish Insider reports. .. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut says he knows of five to ten Republican senators who privately have expressed opposition to Hegseth.
ISRAEL
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz met with senior officials of the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday to discuss the capture of Aleppo and Hama by Syrian rebels and the possibility that the government of Bashar al-Assad, headquartered in Damascus, will fall, Axios reports.
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon criticized a report by Amnesty International accusing Israel of waging a genocidal war in Gaza. In an interview with Fox News Digital, he said, “The only group to have ever shown bloodthirsty genocidal intent in this war is Hamas. With the support of Tehran, Hamas terrorists filmed themselves on October 7th [2013] executing, raping, pillaging, and kidnapping their way through southern Israel.”
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Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s Foreign Minister, told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of an international meeting in Malta that Israel seriously desires to advance a deal for the release of the hostages in Gaza and end the war there, according to Arutz Sheva, Israel’s Channel 7 TV station. Blinken told Sa’ar that another urgent goal should be to establish a path for lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike … Meanwhile in Turkey, Hamas spokesperson Bassem Naim said he was hopeful negotiators were nearing a deal to end the 14-month long war between Hamas and Israel.
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U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew said that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public insistence that Israel be permitted to remain in the Philadelphi corridor, which runs along Gaza’s border with Egypt, distracted world attention from Hamas’ intransigence last summer. In an interview with Kan public broadcaster, Lew commented, “The resistance has come from Hamas in large part, but some of the actions taken by the government of Israel have shifted the focus from Hamas in away that’s not helpful.”
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Rabbi Ben-Zion Kravitz, founder of Jews for Judaism, is making Aliyah to Israel from Los Angeles, leaving Rabbi Zalman Kravitz in charge of the organization in the United States. He said he is moving to Israel to counter Jews for Jesus, who “tragically, together with dozens of other missionary groups, such as oneforisrael.org, they have converted more than 25,000 Israelis to ‘messianic’ Christianity.”
DIASPORA
Dr. Albert Bourla, CEP Pfizer pharmaceutical company, has donated $1 million towards the construction of a Jewish museum in Thessaloniki, Greece, where his parents, both Holocaust survivors, had lived. Israfan quoted Bourla as saying in 2022 that “my parents turned their experience surviving the Holocaust into something positive and life-affirming. This clearly shaped my worldview.”
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Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum at a news conference Wednesday announced “the largest mass seizure of fentanyl pills ever made,” approximately 20 million doses of fentanyl pills worth nearly $400 million, according to a New York Times report. The illicit drugs were seized in the state of Sinaloa, where rival drug cartels have been fighting bloody battles. U.S. President-elect Trump has threatened a 25 percent tariff on Mexican goods unless steps are taken to curb illegal drugs and undocumented migrants crossing the Mexico-U.S. border.
CALIFORNIA
State Sen Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has reintroduced legislation to cap co-pays for insulin at $35 per month and to require health insurance companies to publicly disclose prices they’ve negotiated with pharmaceutical companies, CalMatters reports. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed similar bills last legislative session.
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Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-San Ramon) has introduced a bill to prohibit local governments from blocking abortion clinics, CalMatters reports. She also has introduced a bill prohibiting health care providers from releasing information about patients seeking abortions to states where the procedure is banned or severely limited.
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Nathan Hochman, sworn-in Tuesday as Los Angeles County’s district attorney, said prosecutors in his office can again seek death penalties in appropriate cases and also can make the case in court for sentence enhancements for lesser crimes, LAist has reported. Among the crowd of 300 witnessing Hochman’s inauguration was actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who administered the oath, and said “The city of Los Angeles is now going to be back.”
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San Diego Jewish World staff report.