President Barack Obama will nominate Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen to be the next head of the U.S. central bank on Wednesday, a White House official said on Tuesday. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Yellen would replace Ben Bernanke, whose current term as head of the Fed ends in January. Obama is due…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Vice President Joe Biden hosted Jewish leaders at a sukkah set up at his residence. The sukkah, provided by American Friends of Lubavitch and decorated by children with special needs, drew dozens of guests to the residence at Washington’s Naval Observatory on Tuesday evening, including leaders of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox…
Close to 700 rabbis and other Jewish communal officials were briefed by a top White House aide on President Obama’s Syria plans. The call Tuesday with Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, was organized by the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly and attracted 691 callers from all religious…
The U.S. administration has launched an outreach campaign to convince American Jewish leaders and their organizations to support President Obama’s efforts to win Congressional support for a military operation in Syria – but the leaders are wary of joining the fray. Despite the Labor Day weekend, senior White House and administration officials have initiated phone…
The United States moved several steps closer Friday to attacking Syria. President Obama strategized by phone with the British and French leaders, and briefly addressed reporters (video here, transcript here), just before a meeting with Baltic leaders, about the options he’s considering for responding to Syria’s reported use of chemical weapons. French president Francois Hollande…
The Daily Beast just posted a magazine-length article by yours truly looking back at the Chuck Hagel confirmation battle and the role (or lack thereof) of the Jewish community and the notorious “Israel lobby” in the affair. What’s surprising about the whole affair, on close reexamination, is how absent the Jewish advocacy community was from…
ISTANBUL – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan angered Ankara’s U.S. ally, as well as regional leaders in Egypt and Israel, by accusing Israel on Tuesday of helping overthrow Cairo’s Islamist president. The White House called the remarks “offensive”. Erdogan, who has become one of the fiercest critics of the Egyptian army’s removal of Mohamed Mursi,…
Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas, a trailblazing journalist who reported on every U.S. president from John Kennedy to Barack Obama, died on Saturday at the age of 92, The Gridiron Club and Foundation said. Thomas, who worked the White House beat for 49 years for United Press International and Hearst newspapers, died after a…
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