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In two hours, officers learned about common situations that might arise with Shabbat-related interactions.

By JNS

Rabbi Yossi Greenberg, director of Chabad at Miami University in Ohio, said of his 25 police pupils that “when they interact with the Jewish community, they should understand a basic level of knowledge.”

On June 6, alongside police chaplain Mendy Kalmanson, Greenberg taught a course to Ohio’s Oxford Police Department and the Miami University Police Department about the core teachings of Judaism. Instruction also included potential police interactions related to Jewish Sabbath observance, which starts at sundown on Fridays and ends after sundown on Saturdays. That’s when many synagogues hold services and other programs for individuals and families.

“Conversation flowed about what to look out for and how to be the best resource for the Jewish residents and students,” Greenberg said of the class.

Greenberg had previously consulted with the Oxford police when they had questions on Judaism and proposed a course in 2022 in response to rising antisemitism.

One officer, Lt. Lara Fening said of the rabbi: “He understands that we don’t know, and he’s very accommodating to our questions.”

As a takeaway from the session, Fening described learning that she “could see situations on the Sabbath where they [Jews] would have limitations or restrictions.”

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Donald Trump is looking at hundreds of years in prison, while Hunter Biden will likely get two years’ probation. Welcome to the Left’s surreal and twisted world of equal justice.

By Robert Spencer, FrontPage Magazine

The defenders of justice in America have finally gotten around to dealing with America’s first son, Hunter Biden, the crack-addled patron of hookers who became a highly-paid natural gas company executive and then an artist whose paintings sell for more money than Pablo Picasso’s, all because his last name is Biden and he can provide, for the right price, access to his foggy old man, who happens to bear the title of president of the United States.

Hunter is not, however, facing the music for his blatant influence-peddling, or for any of the other crimes that his notorious laptop reveals. Instead, he is getting a slap on the wrist for a few token infractions, so that Gestapo chief Merrick Garland and his henchmen can brush aside charges of a two-tier justice system: “Whaddeya mean, we go after patriots but not Leftists? Look: we prosecuted Hunter Biden!” Sure you did, Merrick. Maybe some rubes will fall for this.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that “President Biden’s son Hunter has reached a tentative agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to two minor tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge under terms that would likely keep him out of jail.” This is not exactly akin to getting Al Capone on tax evasion. This is simply a charade, an empty exercise in charging Hunter with something, anything, in order to take the wind out of the sails of those who claim that the Biden regime is relentlessly persecuting its principal opponent, Donald Trump, while turning a blind eye to actual crimes committed by Leftists such as Hillary Clinton, as well as Old Joe and Hunter himself.

Hunter Biden is looking at “about two years probation” and will be required to “enter a diversion program,” if anyone is actually going to be paying attention to whether or not he does so, but he could have been and should have been facing much worse. Back in Sept. 2020, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Senate Committee on Finance issued a report noting that while his father was vice president, Hunter Biden was “paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch” for his presence on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Hunter’s presence on this board caused a great many problems. The report notes that “the Obama administration knew that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine.” What’s more, “in early 2015 the former Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, George Kent, raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board.

Kent’s concerns went unaddressed, and in September 2016, he emphasized in an email to his colleagues, ‘Furthermore, the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine.’” It was more than just awkward. It was inexcusable, and it was clear evidence of corruption.

No one seems particularly concerned about Hunter’s presence on Burisma’s board now, yet it is a clear red flag. Hunter Biden had no educational background or experience in the natural gas industry. What’s more, he was a dissolute crack addict who consorted with prostitutes. If he had not been the son of the vice president of the United States, does anyone really believe that Burisma would have offered him this lucrative job? Hunter’s very presence on Burisma’s board was prima facie evidence of influence-peddling, as is his new career as an artist.

To be a struggling artist is a cultural cliché going back to Vincent Van Gogh shivering in a garret while producing world-historical masterpieces that the public wouldn’t come to appreciate until after his tragic death. Artist Hunter, however, has paid no such dues. Even though he took up painting late in life and you can find more compelling artworks on sale for a hundred bucks at the local frame store, Hunter’s paintings have commanded eye-watering prices up to $500,000, although the latest batch was positively bargain-basement stuff, going for only $85,000. Could it be that people are snatching up Hunter’s daubings in order to get a few minutes of face time with the alleged president? You bet your life. But no one cares, least of all Merrick Garland.

Donald Trump is looking at hundreds of years in prison, essentially for the crime of bucking the Leftist establishment. Hunter Biden, on the other hand, is a protected member of that establishment. And so there is one system of justice for Trump and quite another for Hunter. Blind justice? Not in America. Not anymore.

The post Hunter’s Sweet Plea Deal – opinion appeared first on World Israel News.

If the Supreme Court strikes down Joe Biden’s proposed student debt cancellation plan tomorrow, the president has other, smarter options to relieve student debtors.

President Joe Biden meets with AI experts and researchers at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, California, on June 20, 2023. (Jane Tyska / Digital First Media / East Bay Times via Getty Images)

This Thursday, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness program. Announced last August, Biden’s plan proposed relief of $10–20,000 for people below a certain income threshold. Soon met with a barrage of lawsuits, however, an injunction was placed on the program and its future remains uncertain.

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Eleni Schirmer and her colleague Louise Seamster detailed their recent investigation of the remarkably flimsy legal case being mounted against student debt relief. Schirmer, a postdoctoral fellow at the Concordia University Social Justice Centre in Montreal and an organizer for the Debt Collective, spoke to Jacobin’s Luke Savage about that investigation, the Biden administration’s handling of the student debt file, and the ways America’s legal system continues to show deference to corporate interests while hanging ordinary people out to dry.

Luke Savage

Before we get into the specific details of the lawsuit brought against the Biden administration’s student debt forgiveness plan, lay out the basic timeline for us a bit. What exactly is at stake here, and what has brought things to the point where the Supreme Court is going to make this ruling?

Eleni Schirmer

The fact that Biden was the president who canceled debt is in and of itself significant. That’s the result of a decade-old movement. Biden was not at all a champion of debt abolition of any kind; he came on board in the primaries, pushing for a $10,000 cancellation when Elizabeth Warren was for $50,000 and Bernie Sanders was for canceling everything. Biden was not a champion of this policy, yet pulled the trigger on it.

That’s important context when we think about what has been achieved in this moment: the movement made Biden do something he really didn’t want to do, and his hesitation and lack of resolve on the issue showed in how he implemented the program.

On August 24, 2022, Biden announced his plan to cancel $10–20,000 of student debt for eligible borrowers who earned under $125,000 a year annually. This was after weeks of advocates and experts and leaders of all kinds of organizations — from the AFL-CIO to the NAACP — calling on Biden to cancel debt automatically with no application. People were very clear that if the policy was to stick, it needed to be implemented without an application, for the relief to be automatically delivered to people’s accounts. Biden chose not to create the program that way. So on August 24, he announced cancellation and also that people would be able to apply for it.

The movement made Biden do something he really didn’t want to do, and his hesitation and lack of resolve on the issue showed in how he implemented the program.

It took fifty-two days for the application to be available. When it came out, it was basically like a spiffy Google Form that asked for people’s names, Social Security numbers, and birthdays. That was basically it. But what was crucial about those fifty-two days was that half a dozen lawsuits from Republican-controlled states were filed against the Biden administration over the program.

Most of the suits were dismissed, but two of them stuck. In these two suits, the plaintiffs were able to find sympathetic judges in right-wing courts in Texas and Missouri. Those judges sustained the plaintiff’s challenges and imposed a national injunction on Biden’s policy.

That brings us to where we’re at now. Actually, it was in November that Biden himself requested that SCOTUS intervene on this policy, which is interesting, because the normal course of action is that when a lower court makes a ruling on something like this, it takes weeks (if not months to years) for the Supreme Court to get involved. But Biden wanted to accelerate this process, probably because of the millions of households that are waiting for the relief. Because he didn’t, I suspect, think that the case would get a fair ruling in the lower courts. All but one of the judges on the Eighth Circuit Court of Missouri are Republican-appointed judges, and it’s really saying something that the case was going to have a better shot at getting a fair hearing from this Supreme Court than from these crackpot, conservative, lower-district courts.

That brings us to where we are now. On the one hand, we’re waiting on the Supreme Court to decide on the legality of Biden’s relief plan. But on the other hand, it never should have come to the Supreme Court to begin with. Had Biden actually canceled debt and then told America afterward, “Hey guys, check your accounts. You’ll see you’ve been credited $10–20,000,” there no doubt would’ve been lawsuits, but the legal challenge of trying to reimpose a debt that’s already been canceled is more significant than one trying to stop it from happening in the first place.

Luke Savage

And that could have been done by executive order, presumably.

Eleni Schirmer

Exactly right — in a bunch of different ways. What Biden ended up using to cancel the debt was a provision called the HEROES Act, which is actually a George W. Bush–era provision that gives the president the authority to cancel, waive, or modify debts because of national emergencies (like, for example, a pandemic). That was the tool that he used to cancel debt. If the Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s plan, there are several other legal pathways that Biden could choose to try to cancel debt again.

Luke Savage

Let’s get into the lawsuit a bit. As you and your colleague Louise Seamster explained in a recent New York Times piece, the Supreme Court is actually hearing the case before any judgments on it have been made by lower courts — meaning that its core claims haven’t really gotten the kind of scrutiny they might have if they had wended their way through those lower courts.

You, however, have looked into those claims in detail. I understand much of the case has to do with the alleged injury caused to a Missouri-based loan authority. Can you unpack that for us?

Eleni Schirmer

This is where it gets complicated.

There are actually two cases that are in front of the Supreme Court. One was brought by two students who feel like they were either excluded from relief because they had private loans and not federal loans, or they didn’t get the maximum amount of relief because they’re only getting $10,000 instead of the $20,000 that some people are getting. That’s the basis of their suit — not that cancellation shouldn’t happen, just that they have been denied. My understanding is that legal experts generally think that is somewhat frivolous.

The one that’s considered the more serious threat is the case you’re mentioning that was brought forward by six Republican attorneys general who claim that various entities in their states will lose money from cancellation. One of the more interesting ones, though it got dismissed, was from the Nebraska attorney general, who claimed that public pensions in the state of Nebraska are invested in student loans. Should student loans be canceled, these student loan–backed assets would lose value, such that schoolteachers would have less money to retire on. Which is a really wild way to think about what student debt is: i.e., one person’s debt is another person’s ability to stop working.

Anyway, that got chucked out. But the real sticking point comes down to the State of Missouri, which basically claims that an entity in its state — the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA), which is the servicer in charge of public sector loan forgiveness applications — will lose money if the debt is forgiven.

But it’s weird, because it’s not the servicer bringing the suit: it’s the State of Missouri. And it’s pretty widely acknowledged that you can’t do that. You can’t sue on behalf of somebody else. If my roommate gets laid off, for example, I can’t sue their employer for endangering their half of the rent.

But somehow Missouri has brought this suit on behalf of MOHELA. Its claim to standing is that there’s an old debt from 2008, around $105 million that MOHELA owes the State of Missouri. At no point since 2008 has the State of Missouri tried to collect on this debt, and the company in its own financial statements has basically said they don’t intend to pay that back. It’s been going on like that for the last fifteen years. Now, the State of Missouri is saying that, should MOHELA lose accounts from cancellation of student debt, revenue might become so low that they wouldn’t be able to pay back this other debt.

So, that’s where we started digging and looked at MOHELA’s revenue and found that, even in spite of cancellation, they’re set to have an absolute gangbuster year when it comes to profit and revenues — higher than at any other point in its history. And at no point did the justices in the lower courts or in the Supreme Court probe the question of whether MOHELA is actually going to lose money in a way that would threaten the State of Missouri’s finances. They simply believed the claims.

Luke Savage

Which is, as you and Seamster pointed out in the piece, decidedly not how the state treats individual debtors.

Eleni Schirmer

That’s right. The irony here is that one of the reasons why MOHELA is set to have such a great year is because it became the designated servicer for a relief program for public servants. But to get access to that relief program — if, for example, you’re a schoolteacher and you had to borrow to get a master’s degree to be licensed as a teacher — you have to go back and get ten years’ worth of paperwork with signatures from your last decade of employment.

The fine-tooth comb that debtors have to employ! They’re scrutinized from all angles to make sure that they’re deserving of relief and actually credible. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs in these cases really offered little more than their word, some kind of generic financial statements about MOHELA, and a transcript from a press conference of Biden’s. And that was basically it.

The fine-tooth comb that debtors have to employ! Meanwhile, the plaintiffs in these cases really offered little more than their word.

Luke Savage

If the Supreme Court does in fact throw out the debt forgiveness plan, what are the options available to the Biden administration if it’s actually serious about taking this forward? Whenever Democratic presidents don’t do things they’ve promised, there’s often a kind of deference to institutions that happens. During the Barack Obama era, for example, it was always “Well, of course they wanted to do X or Y but couldn’t because of the courts, the Senate, the Republican Party,” and so on.

Eleni Schirmer

The public needs to be aware that part of the reason why debt relief is vulnerable in the first place is that Biden left it wide open. By not automatically canceling debt, by making people have to apply for debt relief, he rendered it vulnerable. If Biden wants to take a second shot at cancellation, he cannot make that same mistake again. The application process has to be ditched, and he has to be ready to automatically discharge debts. Something else to remember is that, while he used this HEROES provision in the first draft of the policy, there are other provisions available.

There’s the very plain, bread-and-butter authority called the Higher Education Act, which gives the Department of Education the authority to compromise and settle its debts — which it does somewhat regularly. Cancellation of debt for the Department of Education is like a Tuesday: they just do it. So it’s just a question of them being willing to use it and of the president being willing to be bold and unwavering in his execution of relief.

The Biden administration fundamentally doesn’t care about debtors.

Luke Savage

What do you think accounts for the particular course that the Biden administration pursued here? One possible interpretation is that they didn’t particularly want to relieve student debt. Another might be that the program’s convoluted design, with cumbersome applications and such, simply comes down to the strange obsession some liberals have with paperwork. One can’t help but think, for example, of the Affordable Care Act and how some seemed to fetishize the program’s complexity, as if being bureaucratically complicated was somehow synonymous with good and smart design.

Where do you come down on this question?

Eleni Schirmer

There are some people who have taken the cynical perspective that this was Biden’s plan all along — that he wanted to set it up in this kind-of flimsy way that was going to topple over and combust. I don’t think that they’re that smart.

I think the real reason is that the Biden administration fundamentally doesn’t care about debtors. It’s just an abject lack of concern and attention to thinking about what it means to relieve people of debts and how serious that is for people. It’s a matter of being able to feed your kids or not feed your kids. We’re currently bracing at the Debt Collective for a wave of folks in mental-health crises when payments turn back on. We’re already getting notes from people who are on the edge and not sure if they can make it if payments start up again.

I think there’s just a callousness about how serious a burden this is for people and how getting it right is a difference between life and death. There’s a fundamental lack of care about how badly people need this relief — and also maybe a sort-of naive assessment of just how determined Republicans are to stop it.

…

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The delay was made at the request of several lawmakers. A new hearing date has not yet been scheduled.

By TPS

A debate over the latest Israeli judicial reform legislation due to be held on Wednesday was postponed due to Tuesday’s deadly Palestinian terror attack in Samaria.

The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee announced the postponement on Tuesday. The delay was made at the request of several lawmakers. A new hearing date has not yet been scheduled.

Four Israelis were killed and four others were injured when two Palestinian terrorists opened fire at a gas station near the community of Eli. One of the victims was laid to rest on Wednesday morning, while another funeral was due to begin at noon. Two others were buried on Tuesday night.

The bill seeks to prevent the Supreme Court from using the legal justification of “reasonableness” in certain cases. Those include ruling on government and ministerial committee decisions, and on the appointment of senior officials.

Under the bill the court can still apply the reasonableness criteria to other, lesser decisions of a clerical nature, and to appointments of officials at the level of local authorities.

According to the text of the draft bill published on Monday: “Those who have the authority to adjudicate according to law, including the Supreme Court, will not judge or issue an order against the government, the prime minister, a minister or another elected official as determined by law regarding the reasonableness of their decision.”

Critics of the “reasonableness” standard say it has substituted the court’s judgment for that of the Knesset. The court can simply overturn any parliamentary decision on the vague basis that it’s “unreasonable” in its view, they say.

The criteria also opens up all Knesset actions and decisions to judicial review, as the court can weigh in on any subject on the grounds of whether or not it’s “reasonable,” critics argue.

Religious Zionism Party Knesset member Simcha Rothman, chairman of the committee, said that the proposal was in line with those of Supreme Court Judge Noam Solberg, who supports eliminating the “reasonableness” standard, and with the election platform of many opposition politicians.

“I call on the members of the committee to conduct a respectful and serious discussion, in order to advance the amendment that we all believe is necessary,” he said.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid attacked the plan.

“This is a full-on coup d’état: crushing democracy, crushing the Supreme Court, and this time they are also going after the legal adviser to the government. All this will lead to fatal damage to the economy, endangering Israeli security, destroying our foreign relations. We will be there in the plenum, in the Knesset, on the streets of the country,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu froze the legislative process for judicial reform in March to give time for negotiations with the opposition to work.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog hosted talks involving various Knesset factions with the aim of forging a compromise. However, talks broke down last week.

“What has been proven is that [National Unity Party leader Benny] Gantz and Lapid were playing a game. It was a misrepresentation of so-called negotiations,” said Netanyahu following the breakdown.

“We gave [them] three months; their representatives did not agree to the most minimal understanding. They tried to kill every amendment. We will take the steps in a measured manner according to the mandate we received [from the voters],” he added.

The governing coalition’s judicial reforms are deeply controversial. Other bills in the legislative pipeline would alter the way judges are appointed and removed, give the Knesset the ability to override certain High Court rulings, and change the way legal advisors are appointed to government ministries.

Supporters of the legal overhaul say they want to end years of judicial overreach while opponents describe the proposals as anti-democratic.

The post Knesset delays debate on judicial reform bill due to terror attack appeared first on World Israel News.

Eliana Passenteen, director of the International Desk for the Binyamin Regional Council Director and a former resident of Eli, discusses with ILTV the aftermath of Tuesday’s massacre and demands that the international community condemn the attack as a brutal act of terror.

The post WATCH: Aftermath of deadly terror attack in Eli – community ‘will fight and build’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Across Washington DC, Pride flags are being displaced by the Chakra of the flag of India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a state visit to the U.S. and is being given high honors, including a welcome on the south lawn of the White House, a state dinner, and an address to a joint session of Congress—something rarely granted to visiting foreign leaders. President Biden has given such honor to only two other world leaders: France’s Emmanuel Macron and South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol.

It is no secret why Modi and, through him, India, is being given such a welcome. The country is now the world’s most populous, is expected to be the fastest-growing G20 economy over the next few years, and is becoming increasingly important to the U.S. strategically, militarily, technologically, and economically. To this may be added India’s increasingly influential diaspora.

Strategically, the U.S. hopes that India can be a counterweight to its massive neighbor, China. India will of course pursue its own interests, not America’s, and seek to avoid excessive entanglement with the U.S. But there is much mutuality of interest. China and India have fought each other in one major war, the Sino-Indian War of 1962, and have had several other large military conflicts over their disputed Himalayan border. China lays claim to the entire Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it includes on maps as part of China, and which it calls “South Tibet.”

India is also, along with Japan, Australia. and America, a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, usually called simply “the Quad.” This informal strategic forum has become more active in seeking to achieve its goals of maintaining regional security, ensuring freedom of navigation, and fostering economic development. It has conducted joint military exercises and is developing critical technology standards.

India is also rapidly developing its infrastructure and technology, particularly IT, and perhaps aerospace, and is becoming a sought-after market. As one example, at the Paris airshow this last weekend, Indian carrier IndiGo made an order for 500 Airbus A320 aircraft – at $55bn the largest single purchase by any airline in the history of commercial aviation. IndiGo’s orders from Airbus now total 1,330 aircraft. In February 2023, Air India, IndiGo’s rival, placed an order for 470 aircraft from both Boeing and Airbus. During the Washington visit, Biden and Modi are likely to approve a major contract for General Electric to produce hitherto-restricted fighter jet engines in India itself.

Then there is India’s diaspora. Ethnic Indians are likely the wealthiest ethnic group in the United States and Merrill Lynch categorizes more than 200,000 Indian-Americans as millionaires.1 They are becoming increasingly influential not only in business but as donors and politicians. Unfortunately for President Biden, they tend to be more active in Republican politics (a similar phenomenon is occurring in conservative UK politics, with ethnic Indians in high positions, including the Prime Minister).

Hence, laying out the red carpet for India’s leader while celebrating India’s real achievements would be a plus for both leaders. In fact, it is rumored that such political considerations have on occasion influenced Washington’s doings, perhaps even extending to foreign affairs.

So, what’s to lose?

Quite a lot, actually, owing to the ideological movement of which Modi is the titular head.

The Prime Minister probably owes much of his electoral success not to a particular ideology but to his comparatively strong economic record. James Carville’s asseveration that “It’s the economy, stupid” also shapes Indian voters. But there are deeper and darker currents.

India’s Constitution enshrines secularity, but leaders in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) espouse an ideology of Hindutva (loosely ”Hinduness”).2 The Party is linked to groups such as the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bajrang Dal, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, often collectively referred to as the Sangh Parivar. The RSS can be among the first to offer help after natural disasters, but its militants can also show extreme intolerance, including violence against religious minorities, and maligning writers and artists. Many senior officials, including current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are or have been RSS associates.

Hindutva ideology can be distinguished from Hinduism itself. It demands neither a theocratic state nor Hinduism as a state religion. It is national-cultural rather than religious, and self-identifies as the soul of India itself. Sangh Parivar militants maintain that religious minorities, including Muslims and secularists could support Hindutva and if they do not, they are betraying the nation.3

With rising intolerance, there have been attacks on Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs. The most horrific instance was the 2002 killing of some two thousand Muslims in Gujarat after Muslim mobs were accused of having set fire to a train carrying Hindu nationalists, killing 58 people. Modi was chief Minister in Gujarat and, whether he actively encouraged violence or was merely a passive observer, he was barred from entering the United States for 10 years over his governance.

Attacks against Christians are widespread and escalating. Most recently, in the last two months, there have been savage attacks on Christians in the state of Manipur. The roots of this violence are complex, involving different scheduled and non-scheduled castes (very loosely, groups to which different affirmative-action rules apply), hill tribes and lowland peoples, and different ethnic groups. But these ethnic groups also have differing majority religious adherents and, as in much such violence, the religious dynamics radicalize. One report from the site states:

“There are clear indications that it is an anti-Christian pogrom. More than 200 churches have been destroyed. Churches belonging to the Meiteis in Imphal have also been destroyed. Meitei Christians have also been attacked. It is politically convenient to call it an ethnic cleansing but the fact is that it is aimed at destroying, if not eliminating, the Christian community in the state. Let there be no mistake about it. We visited St. Paul’s Church where every inch of the structure had been destroyed. They systematically used gas cylinders to destroy churches and homes of Christians.”

As of last week,

“More than 130 people have died in the state, and another 60,000 displaced from their homes. People have ransacked 4,573 weapons from police armories and destroyed 250 churches. So grave is the situation that many residents have chosen to escape to neighboring Myanmar, where the ruling military junta is conducting aerial bombing campaigns against its own citizens.”

Modi’s visit comes in the midst of this violence.

Is this then simply a conflict between human rights concerns and realpolitik, idealists vs realists? Must American national interest require turning a blind eye to the dangers of Hindutva?

In reality, the either-or framing of these two concerns is simplistic since they are overlapping. As we have learned from the Middle East and elsewhere, radical religious ideologies shape political regimes, and in turn these regimes shape foreign policy. America has made necessary alliances with many regimes much worse than the BJP’s, most notably and importantly Stalin’s Soviet Union. But such arrangements have been short-term, not long-term foundations for alliances such as those needed for balancing China.

India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers, have already engaged in several wars and if India follows a religious ideology comparable to and opposed to the radical Islamist currents in Pakistan, that situation could worsen.

The potential impact of Hindutva does not necessarily end at India’s borders. Some Hindu nationalists believe that an accurate map of India should include Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and have campaigned to rewrite Indian textbooks to reflect this. If this sentiment grows and results in an expansionist foreign policy, India will be more likely to clash again with Pakistan and other neighbors, including China.

Raising religious freedom and human rights matters with India is not only a humanitarian concern but is also rooted in the question of whether a potentially important ally will become increasingly intolerant and thus volatile.

Endnotes:

Christopher Hancock and Rahil Patel, ”‘Fighting for India’s soul’: hope, hate and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 (CAA)” Oxford House Paper, June 2020; Jasa Macher, “Hindu Nationalist Influence in the United States, 2014-2021: The Infrastructure of Hindutva Mobilizing,” May 2022, released via sacw.net. This latter report is essentially anonymous but its sources are public and accessible.

Here I am drawing on my “The Hindutva Threat Outside India,” European Eye on Radicalization, University of Leiden, December 5, 2022, https://eeradicalization.com/hindutva-outside-india/.

For background, see my The Rise of Hindu Extremism (Washington: Freedom House, 2003).

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In an effort to expand the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which gave corporations personhood and free speech rights, Delaware’s Democratic-controlled legislature is considering a Republican bill that would give corporations the right to vote.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden delivers remarks after attending a virtual coronavirus briefing with medical experts on October 28, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Democratic president Joe Biden has called his home “the corporate state of Delaware,” and Republican senator Mitt Romney has insisted that “corporations are people, my friend.” Embodying that bipartisan spirit in post–Citizens United America, Delaware Democrats are now advancing a Republican bill that would allow corporations to directly vote in a municipal election.

As GOP states across the country aim to limit voter participation, Delaware’s Democratic-controlled legislature has been considering a bill to allow the expansion of the franchise to businesses. The Republican legislation would explicitly permit the city of Seaford, Delaware, “to authorize artificial entities, limited liability corporations’ partnerships and trusts to vote in municipal elections.”

The legislature has until June 30, when the legislative session ends, to vote on the bill.

With hundreds of thousands of corporations officially headquartered in a small Wilmington warehouse, Delaware has long been known for its business fealty. The state’s new legislation would allow corporations to upend the balance of power in Seaford, a small eight thousand–person city twenty miles north of Salisbury, Maryland. Just 340 people voted in the most recent election on April 15 — and the bill would potentially provide as many as 234 votes to businesses in the community.

Two years ago, lawmakers in Nevada — known as “the Delaware of the West” — considered legislation from its then Democratic governor to allow corporations to create their own governments. Now, Delaware could go even further than that failed legislation, giving limited liability companies, or LLCs, the right to vote not only in referenda, but also in regular municipal elections.

Critics say the move is an outgrowth of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, which allowed an unprecedented flow of corporate money into elections and asserted that corporations have both personhood and free speech rights.

“After Citizens United, this is another step down the road to corporate tyranny,” Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of the progressive watchdog group Common Cause Delaware, told the Lever, “It’s bad enough that Citizens United gives corporations free speech rights. Now Seaford wants to give voting rights to corporations.”

On April 11, the Seaford City Council voted 3-2 to pass a charter change that would allow them to put corporations on the voter rolls of the city. According to former city council member Jose Santos, who opposed the change, the process felt “rushed” and the deciding vote came from the city’s mayor, David Genshaw, who also sponsored the charter change.

“It didn’t come out of the people, it came out of the mayor,” said Santos. “I didn’t feel like the people were supporting it. In my eyes, that was not a good thing.”

Genshaw attracted controversy in late 2021 when he oversaw the passage of a local ordinance mandating cremation or burial of fetal remains, an ordinance which triggered a costly lawsuit against the city from the state attorney general. Another city council member said of the matter, “This, in my opinion, is more of a personal agenda, and it’s unfortunate we’re using the people of Seaford, and the resources, to drive this agenda.”

During the April election, Santos lost his seat by fifty-four votes.

The charter change must be approved by the Delaware state legislature. The Democratic-controlled legislature appears to be poised to do so with the potential passage of HB 121. The party has not expressed plans to oppose the legislation, despite the fact that the bill’s sponsors are Seaford’s Republican state representative and senator.

State House speaker Peter Schwartzkopf (D) said in a committee hearing in May that he is “kind of caught in a pickle here.” He said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea. But I don’t think I want to vote to stop it.”

Schwartzkopf did not respond to a request for comment from the Lever.

Delaware has long been a testing ground for corporate control of democracy. The state is one of just a few that do not charge corporations income tax and allow corporation officers to hide themselves behind a vast web of secrecy.

Delaware is also home to the two-hundred-year-old Chancery Court, which presides over corporate disputes and helps give the state its pro-business reputation. Its business court has been a model for twenty-five other states, often delivering more favorable outcomes to corporations than regular district courts would.

This is not the first time that corporate voting has been raised in the state. In 2018, a single person voted thirty-one times in a referendum using his web of LLCs in Newark, Delaware. The resulting uproar led the thirty-thousand-person city to change its voting rules to prohibit the practice from occurring again.

The prior year, in 2017, the city of Rehoboth Beach, which is also in Schwartzkopf’s district, shot down a proposal from that city to allow LLCs to vote in local elections. The city had previously allowed trusts and nonresident property owners the right to vote and already allowed LLCs to vote in referendums.

Seaford also allows local property owners to vote in local elections, even if they live elsewhere. Snyder-Hall at Common Cause Delaware voiced concern about the repercussions of the legislature allowing Seaford corporations the right to vote.

“It gives wealthier people the right to vote twice — once in Seaford, and once in the city where they live,” she said. “I consider it another form of voter suppression, except with HB 121 they’re not trying to block voting, but dilute voting in the town.”

Earlier this month, progressive state legislators introduced a bill that would issue a blanket ban on corporate voting in Delaware.

You can subscribe to David Sirota’s investigative journalism project, the Lever, here.