Republicans have repeatedly tried — and failed — to win over Jewish Americans, who have historically supported Democrats in overwhelming numbers. One memorable attempt was the campaign by Donald Trump and others on the right to falsely portray Barack Obama as a closeted Muslim who should be feared by those of other faiths. American Jews were not as bigoted as they hoped: Obama won 78% of the Jewish vote in 2008 and 70% in 2012.

This election, however, feels different. Since Oct. 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, was followed by a surge in antisemitic attacks, more Jews have begun to question their safety in this country. With much of the antisemitism emanating from the political left, Republicans seem to think their moment to win the Jewish vote has arrived.

Their argument appears to be simple: You may deplore Trump’s assault on democratic institutions, reproductive rights and the rule of law, but you can’t afford to care about those things anymore — not when the future of Jews in America is being threatened by protesters who praise Hamas and Israel is fighting an existential war against Iranian proxies.

It is no coincidence that in the days after Vice President Kamala Harris became Trump’s presumptive rival for the presidency, Trump began to falsely frame her as an enemy of Israel and Jews. “She’s totally against the Jewish people,” he declared at a rally in North Carolina on July 24. “No. 1, she doesn’t like Israel. No. 2, she doesn’t like Jewish people,” he told a New York radio station on July 30.

Setting aside that Harris is the first vice president in history with a Jewish spouse, Trump has repeatedly and recently shown that he is no true friend of Israel or the Jewish people. Just four days after Oct. 7, he criticized Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to prevent Hamas’ invasion and called Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group that has been firing rockets at Israel since Oct. 8, “smart.” At a rally in Florida the same day, he said the Israeli military had to “step up their game,” referred to Israel’s defense minister as “this jerk” and reiterated that he considers Hezbollah “very smart.”

Imagine the outrage if a Democrat — let alone the party’s leader — had said any of this just after Hamas’ massacre.

Trump was furthermore calling on Israel to “finish up your war” as long ago as March. It was not until two months later that President Biden delivered his first public call for an end to the war in Gaza — one conditioned, unlike Trump’s, on a Hamas release of Israeli hostages. Trump repeated his call during Netanyahu’s July visit to the United States, saying Israel must end the war “and get it done quickly.” Speaking on Fox News, he added that “Israel is not very good at public relations” and was “getting decimated” on that score.

Anyone understandably concerned about the Israeli government’s far-right turn in recent years should keep in mind that the Trump administration empowered the ultranationalist forces responsible for its increasing international isolation.

Trump has also repeatedly insulted Jews in his desperate bid to reimagine Democrats as a party of antisemites, saying Jewish Americans should have their “head examined” and “be ashamed of themselves” for supporting Democrats. He recently called Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), one of the country’s highest-ranking Jewish officials and a staunch supporter of Israel, “a proud member of Hamas.”

It’s Trump’s MAGA camp that is infested with actual antisemites. Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump loyalist who famously blamed California wildfires on Jewish space lasers, opposed a bipartisan bill to address antisemitism on the premise that it rejected “the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.” Greene’s far-right colleague Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) voted against the bill for the same reason. The Holocaust denier Candace Owens was to appear alongside Donald Trump Jr. at a recent campaign event if not for a backlash from the Jewish community. The former president has also fraternized with unabashed antisemites such as Nick Fuentes and Kanye West.

Again, try to imagine if personalities like these were connected to Harris or Biden.

For all the legitimate fears aroused by violent anti-Israel protests over the last 10 months, let’s remember that the bloodiest days for Jews in America were at the hands of the far right, not the far left. The deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history was perpetrated at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 by a white nationalist who believed in the far-right “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Jews are working to flood the country with illegal immigrants. The previous year, neo-Nazi Trump supporters marched through Charlottesville, Va., chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Then-President Trump insisted that some of them were “very fine people.”

Jews have long been overrepresented in social justice movements in this country, which may be one reason for their enduring common cause with Democrats. But Jewish support for the party has never been tested as it has since Oct. 7. Recent surveys showed 89% of American Jews have seen an increase in antisemitism and 60% feel uncomfortable being open about their faith. The backdrop to this sense of insecurity is the extreme rhetoric of some anti-Israel protesters. While most of the protesters have been peaceful, others have called for the deaths of Jews and expressed support for Hamas and Hezbollah.

One stark recent example of the state of the Democratic Party’s relationship with Jews was a conversation on CNN about Kamala Harris’ potential running mates. Regarding Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the network’s John King told Anderson Cooper, “He’s Jewish; there could be some risk in putting him on the ticket,” a reference to the party’s division over the war in Gaza. That Cooper didn’t ask a follow-up or raise an eyebrow at the idea that Shapiro’s faith presented a problem suggested — rightly or not — that King was stating a fact of Democratic politics. Although Harris’ selection of a running mate no doubt depended on a variety of variables, it’s a troubling perception of the party that has been the political home of most Jewish voters for the better part of a century.

Nevertheless, especially after the powerful expressions of support for Israel and the Jewish people at last week’s Democratic National Convention, Trump’s quest to paint Harris as their enemy looks absurd. American Jews’ relationship with Democrats has certainly been complicated, but — particularly in light of the alternative — it’s likely to remain strong.

Yardena Schwartz is a journalist and the author of “Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict.”

Pennsylvania election officials – in a bid to avoid controversy in November – are telling voters ahead of time not to expect the results of the high-stakes presidential race to be ready by Election Night.

The battleground state is of such significant importance this election cycle that Vice President Harris visited Pennsylvania on Aug. 18, ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and former President Trump made back-to-back visits both on Aug. 17, when he returned to Wilkes Barre for the first time since facing an assassination attempt in that town, and again on Aug. 19 in York. 

To avoid repeated controversy from four years ago, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt – a Republican appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2023 – is explaining to voters that state law prohibits county boards of elections from beginning to process mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. 

“The terminology is normally called pre-canvasing,” Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner who clashed with Trump online after the 2020 election, explained to Fox News Digital. “Plenty of other states allow the county boards to begin that process in advance of Election Day, whether it’s three days or seven days or however long. But in Pennsylvania, counties can only begin that process at 7 a.m. on election morning.” 

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By contrast, states like Florida, with nearly double the population size of Pennsylvania’s approximately 13 million residents, report their preliminary election results on Election Night. 

“It is bologna that Florida, which has more citizens, Texas, which has more citizens and more voters by millions, are able to have their elections counted all in one day. But Pennsylvania is not,” Scott Pressler, a conservative activist leading a grassroots effort to get Republicans to register and vote early in Pennsylvania this election cycle, told Fox News Digital. 

Pennsylvania is among seven states, including the fellow battleground of Wisconsin, where pre-canvassing is prohibited under state law. 

It never posed a major issue until 2020, Dr. Dan Mallinson, a political science professor at Pennsylvania State University, explained to Fox News Digital. 

Mail-in ballots used to be granted only under special circumstances, such as when a voter is sick or traveling around the time of the election. But in October 2019, former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed what he championed as a “historic election reform bill” known as Act 77 into law, allowing most voters to apply for a mail-in ballot and vote by mail without needing to provide a reason or excuse. 

The coronavirus pandemic saw a drastic surge in mail-in ballot use, and four years later, Mallinson said voting still looks similar in the Keystone State. 

“There was a huge inflow of mail-in ballots in both the primary and the general in 2020,” Mallinson said. “Mail-in balloting has kept up in the 2022 cycle. I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s going to really slow down.” 

More than 1.2 million Pennsylvanians voted by mail in the 2022 governor’s election. 

Shapiro’s administration announced in June that mail-in ballot applications would be available two months earlier than in 2020, allowing voters more than eight weeks of additional time to apply for their ballot.

For the commonwealth to begin processing mail-in ballots before 7 a.m. on Nov. 5, Schmidt said the state legislature would need to send pre-canvassing legislation to the governor’s desk. 

PRE-CANVASSING BILL ‘IMPASSE’

Schmidt said he has testified in front of the Pennsylvania state House and state Senate advocating for mail-in ballot pre-canvassing, and it is frequently added to election reform bills. Most recently, the Democratic-controlled state House passed an election reform bill that includes a pre-canvassing measure, but the bill so far has not been taken up by the state’s Republican-controlled Senate. 

“We knew this was an issue in 2020. It was on display for anyone paying attention to election results in Pennsylvania in 2020 and puts Pennsylvania at a unique disadvantage,” Schmidt told Fox News Digital. “It’s a technical problem with a technical solution that does not benefit any candidate. It does not benefit any party. It just allows counties to begin processing mail-in ballot envelopes prior to Election Day.” 

“This is a fixable problem that we’ve just been unable to fix, you know, as a way to head off the rhetoric about, ‘there’s something shifty going on with these mail-in votes,’” Mallinson added. “The option is either the Republican-controlled Senate passes the clean bill and the governor signs it, or the Republican-controlled Senate does what has happened in the past, and they add things that they want to it, and then it probably gets rejected in the House. So we’re still kind of stuck in this impasse…. These, sort of, poison pills that get added, have got attached to the bill in the past, and that’s made it impossible to pass.” 

Al Schmidt, then a former Philadelphia city commissioner, testified during the House Select Jan. 6 Committee on June 13, 2022, in Washington, DC.  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

There was a brief period in September 2020 when it appeared the state legislature, controlled by Republicans in both chambers at the time, was going to be able to a pass a clean pre-canvassing bill before going out of session and lawmakers went home to campaign, but Mallinson said a measure to ban drop-boxes was tacked on, which the Democratic Wolf administration would not agree to, so the legislation failed. 

“They were close in 2020 at a much later point than right now,” Mallinson said. “There’s time, but I don’t know if there’s the political will or push.” 

A margin of tens of thousands of votes handed a win to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016 in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State has 19 electoral votes, tied with Illinois for the fifth most. 

FORMER VP SHORTLISTER JOSH SHAPIRO STOPS SHORT OF SAYING DEMS HAVE AN ANTISEMITISM PROBLEM

GOP STRATEGY SHIFT 

Republicans, Mallinson noted, have shifted their strategy from emphasizing voter fraud concerns with mail-in ballots after the 2020 election to now encouraging their party to vote by mail. 

Pressler, the founder of Early Vote Action, is leading those efforts in vying to get former President Trump elected in 2024. 

Pressler told Fox News Digital he has been going county-to-county in Pennsylvania delivering letters asking board of election offices what officials are doing to ensure non-citizens are not registered to vote and that paper ballots do not run out on Nov. 5. Pike County officials have been responsive, he said, and Pressler wants to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2022 in Luzerne County, where they ran out of paper ballots during the midterm elections. 

Ballots are dropped off at the Bureau of Elections in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on May 16, 2023. Primary elections were cast on write-in-paper ballots in Luzerne County after a paper shortage caused havoc during the elections in November.  (Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Since the 2020 election, the state has seen “significant turnover of election administrators,” Schmidt said when asked if paper ballots were stocked this time around. 

“In Pennsylvania, we’ve lost more than 80 senior election directors or administrators since 2020. We only have 67 counties,” Schmidt told Fox News Digital. “But many counties, including Luzerne, have had the election director replaced election after election after election. That issue, with not having enough ballots ready in advance of Election Day, it was one that’s obviously a great cause for concern.”

“We work closely with our counties to make sure that they’re prepared for Election Day,” the secretary added. “We provide guidance to them. We provide directives to them to make sure that they have an ample supply of ballots, whether they’re mail-in ballots or ballots cast at the polling place on Election Day, so that anyone can make their voice heard if they’re a registered voter.” 

In Pennsylvania, every county has three commissioners, two are the majority party, one is the minority. 

Schmidt was the only Republican of three Philadelphia city commissioners overseeing the 2020 election. 

In June 2022, Schmidt testified before the Jan. 6 House Committee that he investigated and found no evidence of claims brought by Trump’s former adviser Rudy Giuliani that more than 8,000 mail-in ballots were submitted on behalf of dead people in 2020 in Philadelphia. Schmidt also told the Democratic-controlled committee that death threats against him and his family worsened after Trump tweeted his name. 

An election worker flattens ballots during the 2024 Pennsylvania primary election at the City of Philadelphia’s Election Warehouse on Tuesday, April 23, 2024.  (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

NON-CITIZEN VOTER CONCERNS 

Pressler has implored Shapiro, who was briefly considered as Vice President Harris’ running mate, to enact an election integrity executive order to ensure non-citizens aren’t on Pennsylvania’s voter rolls. 

In Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin said his administration had uncovered more than 6,000 non-citizens on the state voter rolls since he took office.

In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose last week announced that nearly 600 non-citizens were found to be registered to vote, including about 100 who actually voted. He, therefore, ordered an annual audit of the state voter rolls to scan for and remove anyone found to be unlawfully registered to vote. 

Mallinson, meanwhile, said officials are wary of cleaning the rolls during an election year to avoid disenfranchising eligible voters. 

Schmidt said that non-citizens on the voter rolls shouldn’t be a cause of concern in Pennsylvania, stressing that voter registration in the commonwealth requires a Social Security number.

Asked directly if he could guarantee there are no non-citizens currently on the voter rolls, Schmidt said it was “encouraging to see states like Virginia and Ohio catch up with Pennsylvania,” crediting himself for bringing the issue of non-citizens registering to vote in Philadelphia to the attention of then-Pensylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortés in 2016, and the “Motor Voter” program loophole was “resolved a few years ago.” 

City Commissioners Lisa Deeley and Al Schmidt speak to the media about the vote counting process on Nov. 4, 2020, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“When you register to vote in Pennsylvania, you have to provide a Social Security number, and you have to prove or provide a driver’s license number along with your name and the address where you reside,” Schmidt said. “So, any vulnerability in the system that I’ve encountered as a Republican election commissioner in Philadelphia for ten years is not one where non-citizens would be able to register to vote, especially ones that are here in a sort of undocumented status.” 

The Shapiro administration in December canceled a $10.7 million contract to update the Pennsylvania voter roll system to avoid making the change during a presidential election year. The current system, known as the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE), is two decades old and described as outdated by election administrators who use it to check voter registration and track mail-in ballots. 

More than a year ago, however, Schmidt said his department began providing new hardware and software upgrades to counties, insisting that the SURE system is reliable for getting through the presidential race. 

“It’s very dangerous to change an election system in a presidential election cycle with heavy turnout and all the rest,” Schmidt said. 

The state has an open request for bids out to build a replacement system, which Schmidt hopes will be “more user-friendly for our county partners.” 

He stressed that the SURE system is essentially “the database of all registered voters in Pennsylvania” and is “unrelated to voter tabulation.”

“The Shapiro administration has taken many steps to prepare for this election – from setting up a training team to train new election directors to setting up an election threat task force in the event that we encounter any of the ugliness that we encountered in 2020 with threats of violence or intimidation targeting our election officials or our voters,” Schmidt said. “It’s important to be prepared for the coming election. It’s a presidential election. Everyone is going into it with eyes wide open and, working closely with our county partners, I’m confident that we will have a free and fair and safe and secure election in Pennsylvania in 2024.” 

I’m heartbroken over my brother Bobby’s endorsement of Donald Trump.

I think often about my father and how he might have viewed the politics of our time. I’m not sure what he would have thought about TikTok or AI, but this much I know for sure: He would have despised Donald Trump.

Trump was exactly the kind of arrogant, entitled bully my father used to prosecute. Robert F. Kennedy’s life was dedicated to promoting the safety, security and happiness of the American people. That is why he would have so admired another former prosecutor, Kamala Harris. Her career, like his, has been all about decency, dignity, equality, democracy and justice for all.

Trump is the enemy of all that. The only thing he seems to be for is himself and, disturbingly, autocrats such as Vladimir Putin, whom my father would have regarded as an existential threat to our country.

Yet my brother now endorses Trump. To pledge allegiance to Trump, a man who demonstrates no adherence to our family’s values, is inconceivable to me.

Worse, it is sordid. Earlier this month, as Harris surged in the polls, my brother offered her his endorsement in exchange for a position in her coming administration. He got no response.

Now he has offered that same deal to Trump. His is a hollow grab for power, a strategic attempt at relevance. It is the opposite of what my father admired: “the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America.”

It is all the more tragic because of our brother’s name. To carry the name Robert F. Kennedy Jr. means a special legacy within a legacy. It would strongly imply a desire to carry on our father’s work. But Bobby’s alliance with Trump puts this in jeopardy.

Let me go through the record.

My father was an anti-racist who joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in common cause, and forged a powerful bond with African Americans everywhere he went in 1968.

Donald Trump is a lifelong racist whose entire career has been shaped by his dislike of people with a different skin color.

My father believed in expanding legal immigration because he came from an immigrant family and knew how much talent and drive hard-working families bring if we open our doors to them.

Donald Trump stirs up hatred of immigrants, whom he mischaracterizes as criminals and drug addicts.

My father believed in the rule of law, as a prosecutor, and as the attorney general of the United States.

Donald Trump has contempt for the law, as evidenced by his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and his ongoing legal struggles. He is the first felon to run as a serious candidate for the presidency.

My father believed in bringing Americans together. He said, “I don’t think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country.”

Donald Trump’s entire campaign is about stoking division.

My father loved the priceless inheritance of our land and water and surely was an environmentalist in his way, even if the term did not catch on until later.

It feels especially hypocritical that Bobby, a genuine environmentalist, has thrown in with the most anti-environmental president in our history, who promises to “drill, baby, drill” if elected.

My father was against the “mindless menace” of gun violence. Donald Trump is against any meaningful form of regulating guns.

My father believed in democracy. Donald Trump does not.

My father believed in the truth. Donald Trump does not.

At the University of Kansas, on March 18, 1968, my father said, “[W]e as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand. This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the president of the United States.”

The truth is essential to democracy. And truth is essential inside a family, too. For all of these reasons, the truth requires me to set the record clear. I love Bobby. But I hate what he is doing to our country. It is worse than disappointment. We are in mourning.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be motivated to write something of this nature. With a heavy heart, I am today asking my fellow Americans to do what will honor our father the most: Ignore Bobby and support Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic platform. It’s what is best for our country.

As my father said, in a campaign of his own, “I want all of us, young and old, to have a chance to build a better country and change the direction of the United States of America.”

Max Kennedy is an author, an attorney and the ninth child of Ethel and Robert Kennedy. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Vicki.