Today, the Senate begins deliberations over the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Drawing on George Washington’s famous letter to Moses Seixas, leader of the synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, Meir Soloveichik explicates the importance of not allowing religion to determine who is or is not fit for public office:

Much attention has been paid to Judge Barrett’s faith, and to “People of Praise,” a religious community of both Catholics and Protestants to which she belongs. Articles have described the oath, or “covenant,” taken by its members to act in loving service to one another. Another topic raised was a speech delivered by Barrett, describing her ultimate aspiration as serving “the kingdom of God.” These stories insinuate that her religion marks her as out of the mainstream, or unable to serve fairly as a Supreme Court justice.

Traditional Jews in America who read these broadsides against Judge Barrett can easily imagine similar ones about themselves. We might wonder what the reaction would now be were a member of our own religious community appointed to a position of prominence. After all, the Jewish liturgy’s expressed aspiration, in an existence filled with injustice, is “to fix the world through the kingship of God.” We believe ourselves bound by a covenant to other Jews, and many of our observances mark us as different, just as they did in Seixas’s day. Like Muslims, Sikhs, and other minority faith communities, we dream of our daughters and sons experiencing American equality without suffering for their beliefs. We continue to celebrate Seixas’s legacy, and work for an America where what Justice Elena Kagan, [speaking of the correspondence at Seixas’s synagogue] said about her grandparents will be true about our grandchildren: that their Jewishness, “strange as it may seem to some, would prove no barrier to their accomplishments.”

A judge’s jurisprudence—as well as the propriety of such a nomination so close to an election—are worthy matters of debate, and they are appropriate reasons to oppose or support Judge Barrett’s nomination. But her faith is not.

With the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program damaged, and its regional influence diminished, the U.S. must now prevent it from recovering, and, if possible, weaken it further. Benjamin Baird argues that it can do both through economic means—if Congress does its part:

Legislation that codifies President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policies into law, places sanctions on Iran’s energy sales, and designates the regime’s proxy armies as foreign terrorist organizations will go a long way toward containing Iran’s regime and encouraging its downfall. . . . Congress has already introduced much of the legislation needed to bring the ayatollah to his knees, and committee chairmen need only hold markup hearings to advance these bills and send them to the House and Senate floors.

They should start with the HR 2614—the Maximum Support Act. What the Iranian people truly need to overcome the regime is protection from the state security apparatus.

Next, Congress must get to work dismantling Iran’s proxy army in Iraq. By sanctioning and designating a list of 29 Iran-backed Iraqi militias through the Florida representative Greg Steube’s Iranian Terror Prevention Act, the U.S. can shut down . . . groups like the Badr Organization and Kataib Hizballah, which are part of the Iranian-sponsored armed groups responsible for killing hundreds of American service members.

Those same militias are almost certainly responsible for a series of drone attacks on oilfields in Iraq over the past few days