Mike Pence To Keynote AIPAC Conference

WASHINGTON – Vice President Mike Pence and a bipartisan slate of top members of Congress are scheduled to address AIPAC’s upcoming annual conference. An American Israel Public Affairs Committee official confirmed to JTA that Pence will keynote the conference scheduled for March 26-28 in Washington, D.C. Pence, who enjoyed a long relationship with the pro-Israel lobby as a congressman and later as Indiana governor – but as a local congressman in 2009, told AIPAC that he didn’t know of the three synagogues in his district – spoke last month at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual confab and has taken a lead in condemning recent anti-Semitic incidents.

Hoyer, who spoke with a statue last week, calls Trump ‘detached from reality’

The second-ranking House Democrat charged that President Trump’s unproven accusation former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign shows that the president is divorced from reality. The allegations outlined in a Trump tweet on Saturday “paint a picture of someone obsessed with conspiracy theories and detached from reality,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the House Minority Whip, in a statement Sunday.

Tense call between Trump and Australian leader strains longtime ties

U.S. ties with staunch ally Australia became strained on Thursday after details about an acrimonious phone call between its leaders emerged and U.S. President Donald Trump said a deal between the two nations on refugee resettlement was “dumb.” During a 25-minute phone call last Saturday with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump accused Australia of trying to export the “next Boston bombers” under the agreement, the Washington Post reported.

Democrats extol health care law in bid to derail GOP repeal

Senior House Democrats on Monday extolled the benefits of President Barack Obama’s health care law in hopes of derailing Republican plans to gut the statute and over time replace it. In a conference call with reporters, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the GOP will begin its “assault” on the health care law when the 115th Congress convenes Tuesday.