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Behind the scenes of Justin Jones’ viral ‘tikkun olam’ encounter with Jewish teens in DC
(JTA) — Sam Rosen and Noah Segal were sitting with their friends on the steps of the Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Monday when they spotted one of America’s most talked-about politicians.
Justin Jones, a Democratic lawmaker in Tennessee whom Republicans kicked out of the state’s legislature in retaliation for a gun-violence protest, was walking by in his signature white suit.
“I remember me and my friend looking at him and being like, ‘Is that him? Is that really one of the Tennessee Three?’” Rosen recalled on Wednesday from his home in Dallas. “To me, he’s kind of the face of upholding democracy right now, so it was very cool to see that.”
Jones waved at their group, this year’s crop of Bronfman Fellows, a prestigious leadership program that aims to empower Jewish teens. That initiated an encounter steeped in Jewish lingo that went viral after a liberal news outlet in Tennessee shared a video on social media.
“Can I shake your hand?” Segal, a high school senior from Ardsley, New York, asked Jones. Several of the other teens introduced themselves, too, and one explained that they were all Jewish teens from across North America.
“This is a Jewish program?” Jones asked after giving a brief pep talk about getting more young people involved in politics, drawing an affirmative response.
“Tikkun olam,” Jones ventured, seemingly testing whether he had correctly named the Hebrew term meaning “repair the world” that has come to signify social justice in progressive circles.
“Yes,” the teens replied in unison, many of their faces lighting up with excitement. “We just talked about that!” Rosen said, with apparent delight. After chatting with the group for a few more minutes, Jones said he had to head off for a White House meeting with President Joe Biden — but he took the time first to pose for a picture with the group.
For many of the people who saw and shared the video, produced and posted Tuesday by the Tennessee Holler news site, the exchange offered an example of cross-cultural solidarity at a time of polarization. The video has been seen well over 2 million times on Twitter and more on other platforms.
“It seems like it resonated because it was a genuine, uplifting moment that showed how impactful it can be to have young leaders showing other young people the way forward — and because it crossed lines. Racial lines. Religious lines. Geographic lines. It shows how essential it is to come together,” Justin Kanew, Tennessee Holler’s founder and editor, told JTA. (The site was the first to report that a Tennessee school board had banned the Holocaust novel “Maus” last year.)
Kanew added: “Also: Justin Jones is the real deal. Sincere, and inspirational. So that helps.”
Jones burst onto the national scene last month when he and another Tennessee lawmaker were ejected from the state legislature after staging a protest over the Republican-led body’s inaction after a school shooting in Nashville. Both men are Black; a third lawmaker who protested is a white woman and she was not ejected. The racial disparity in the lawmakers’ treatment drew widespread criticism, even after local elected officials in Nashville and Memphis reversed the ejections.
The saga has made Jones into a folk hero among progressives, as well as an inspiration to those who want to see young adults — he is 27 – play an active role in shaping the country.
“Thank you for being a role model for the young,” Dan Libenson, the head of a Jewish education philanthropy who teaches in the Bronfman program, tells Jones in the video.
WATCH: “Thank you for being a role model for the young.”
As the #TennesseeThree arrived at the White House a group of Jewish students from across were there on a tour, and they were thrilled to meet @brotherjones_. #TikkunOlam pic.twitter.com/vii89sTsIp
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) April 25, 2023
Libenson told JTA that it had taken the group a moment to realize that the man in the white suit was in fact Jones, as the group had been sequestered at a Jewish retreat center in Maryland and had not heard about Jones’ visit, or about the backlash from some conservatives against it.
“As you can see from the video, as soon as it registered, we all rushed down to greet him,” Libenson told JTA in an email. “It’s clear that Gen Z has been traumatized by the mass shootings that seem to happen every day, and I think many of the fellows see Justin Jones as a hero for not taking no for an answer with regard to the safety of young people like them.”
Said Segal, “The whole seminar theme was vision and the future, so it was random and funky and cool to see someone who is right there making a change.” About Jones’ invocation of tikkun olam, he said, “I was impressed with him before that and impressed with him after that.”
The Bronfman Fellows program is not partisan, and participants hold a wide range of political views, according to Becky Voorwinde, the group’s CEO. But she noted that applicants for the fellowship must write about a contemporary issue that matters to them, and many choose gun violence. “It cuts across political viewpoints,” she said. “They grew up after Sandy Hook. This is their reality.”
Asked whether the issue was one he thought a lot about, Rosen answered, “How can it not be?”
He went on, “It’s not like it’s one awful shooting a year. It’s every day. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before it’s me. It’s not something that controls my entire life, but it’s always in the back of my mind.”
What the Bronfman Youth Fellows’ group photo with Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones looked like from the vantage point of where they’d been sitting before they spotted the prominent lawmaker. (Courtesy of Becky Voorwinde)
Segal said that he, too, viewed the threat of gun violence, alongside climate change, as one of the widest problems facing young people. In fact, he said, for part of a final project in the fellowship, he’d facilitated a discussion about what it means to fight antisemitism for a generation surrounded by mass shootings.
The Washington trip was a closing activity for the cohort of Bronfman Fellows, who first spent five weeks together last summer before getting together throughout the year virtually and in person. Before running into Jones, the group had been meeting with four Jewish White House staffers; afterward, they broke into small teams to meet with past fellows working in a wide array of jobs in the area.
The day before the viral encounter, the group visited a haredi Orthodox yeshiva in Baltimore. There, too, tikkun olam came up in discussion — but the head of the yeshiva seemed to dismiss it as a meaningful framework for Jewish life compared to the commandments of traditional Jewish law.
Rosen, who belongs to a Reform synagogue in Dallas and is headed to Brandeis University in the fall, pushed back.
“I said, ‘Rabbi, this is an obligation that we all uphold in our community. It’s a core value of Judaism and who I am,’” he recounted. “To me, that’s why it was so cool that Justin Jones said that.”
The entire encounter with Jones, Rosen said, felt authentic and empowering. And that feeling, Kanew said, could be contagious.
“Everything we need to save this country from descending into a dark place was right there in that exchange,” Kanew said. “And the beauty of it is everything that moment represents will inevitably come to fruition if people stay engaged and keep fighting for it. So it’s an incredibly hopeful moment, and hope is what people are looking for right now.”
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Xi Tells Trump That Mishandling of Taiwan Could Lead to ‘Dangerous’ Place
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects an honor guard with US President Donald Trump during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, China, May 14, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/Pool
China’s President Xi Jinping warned US President Donald Trump on Thursday that mishandling the countries’ disagreements over Taiwan could push China-US relations to a “dangerous place,” as the two leaders met for a closely watched summit.
Xi‘s remarks on Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by Beijing, came in a closed-door meeting of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies that ran more than two hours, China’s foreign ministry said.
They represented a stark – if not unprecedented – warning during a pomp-filled occasion that was otherwise friendly and relaxed, although the US summary of the talks made no mention of Taiwan.
According to Chinese state media Xinhua, Xi, referring to Taiwan, told Trump: “If handled poorly, the two countries could collide or even enter into conflict, pushing the entire China-US relationship into an extremely dangerous place.”
Taiwan has long been a flashpoint in the US-China relationship, with Beijing refusing to rule out the use of military force to gain control of the island and the United States bound by law to provide Taipei with the means to defend itself.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is with Trump in China, confirmed to NBC News that the issue of Taiwan was discussed, saying the Chinese “always raise it on their side, we always make clear our position and we move on to the other topics.”
The US summary of the talks focused on the leaders’ shared desire to reopen the key waterway of the Strait of Hormuz, effectively closed due to the Iran war, and Xi‘s apparent interest in buying American oil to reduce China’s dependence on Middle East supplies.
With Trump‘s approval ratings dented by a war with Iran that shows no signs of abating, the first visit by a US president to China in nearly a decade has taken on added significance as he searches for economic wins.
“There are those who say this may be the biggest summit ever,” Trump told Xi in brief opening remarks, after a ceremony that featured an honor guard and throngs of children waving flowers and flags at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Xi told Trump that preparatory negotiations between US and Chinese economic and trade teams in South Korea on Wednesday had reached “balanced and positive outcomes,” China’s foreign ministry said in a summary.
The talks aimed to maintain a fragile trade truce struck when the leaders last met in October, where Trump suspended triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods and Xi backed away from choking global supplies of vital rare earths.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who led Wednesday’s talks, said he expected progress on establishing mechanisms to support future bilateral trade and investment, and an announcement about large Chinese orders for Boeing aircraft.
CHINA’S RED LINES
Trump expected Xi to raise the thorny issue of US arms sales to Taiwan, he said earlier this week. With the status of a $14 billion package awaiting Trump‘s approval still unclear, China has reiterated its strong opposition to the sales.
“US policy on the issue of Taiwan is unchanged as of today,” Rubio told NBC.
Trump did not respond to a reporter’s shouted question whether the leaders had discussed Taiwan as he posed with Xi later for photos at the Temple of Heaven, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where emperors once prayed for good harvests.
Taipei said there was nothing surprising from the summit and that China’s military pressure is the real threat to peace.
Underscoring its outsized importance to the US economy, Taiwan, an island of 23 million people, is the United States’ fourth-largest trading partner, behind China, which has about 1.4 billion people.
LOBSTER SOUP AND BEIJING DUCK
At a lavish state banquet attended by senior officials and business executives, Xi told the audience that the China-US relationship was the most important in the world.
“We must make it work and never mess it up,” Xi said, before guests tucked into a 10-course dinner that included lobster soup, Beijing roast duck and tiramisu.
The leaders will take tea and lunch together on Friday before Trump departs.
Joining Trump on his visit are a group of CEOs looking to resolve issues with China, from Elon Musk, viewed in China as a visionary and occasional villain, to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, a late addition to the delegation.
The United States has cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s powerful H200 AI chip, but not a single delivery has been made so far, Reuters exclusively reported.
TRUMP INVITES XI TO WASHINGTON
Trump entered the talks with a weakened hand.
US courts have hemmed in his ability to levy tariffs at will on exports from China and other countries, while the Iran war has boosted inflation at home and elevated the risk that Trump‘s Republican Party will lose control of one or both legislative branches in November’s midterm elections.
Though the Chinese economy has faltered, Xi does not face comparable economic or political pressure inside China, where he rules an authoritarian regime that, unlike the US, has little tolerance for dissent.
As well as Boeing jets, Washington is looking to sell farm goods and energy to China to cut a trade deficit that has long irked Trump. Beijing, for its part, wants US curbs eased on exports of chip-making equipment and advanced semiconductors, officials involved in the planning said.
Trump is expected to encourage China to convince Iran to make a deal with Washington to end the conflict, as a fifth of global supplies of oil and natural gas travel through the Strait of Hormuz in normal times.
But analysts doubt Xi will be willing to push Tehran hard or end support for its military, given Iran’s value to Beijing as a strategic counterweight to the United States.
Rubio told Fox News that it was in China’s interest to help resolve the crisis as many of its ships are stuck in the Gulf and a slowdown in the global economy would hurt its exporters.
Iran’s Fars news agency reported on Thursday that an agreement had been reached to let some Chinese ships pass.
Trump on Thursday invited Xi for a reciprocal trip to the White House on Sept. 24, in what would be his first visit to Washington since 2015 and his first to the United States in the US president’s second term.
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US Senate Blocks Latest Bid to Rein in Trump Iran War Powers, Support Grows
An American flag flies outside the US Capitol building at sunset, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Jan. 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
US Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked the latest Democratic-led effort to end the Iran war until it is authorized by Congress, but the measure edged closer to passage as a third Republican voted to advance the bill.
The Senate voted 50-49 not to advance the war powers resolution, nearly along party lines. Three Republicans joined every Democrat but one in backing the measure sponsored by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
It was the seventh time this year that President Donald Trump‘s fellow Republicans in the Senate had blocked similar resolutions.
Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted in favor of moving ahead, while Democrat John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted with Republicans to block it.
The vote was the first in the Senate since the conflict hit a 60-day deadline on May 1 for Trump to come to Congress about the war. Trump declared then that a ceasefire had “terminated” hostilities against Iran.
Under a 1973 US war powers law passed in response to the Vietnam War, a US president can wage military action for only 60 days before ending it, asking Congress for authorization or seeking a 30-day extension due to “unavoidable military necessity regarding the safety of United States Armed Forces” while withdrawing forces.
Democrats disputed Trump‘s assertion that the deadline did not apply because of a ceasefire, saying the conflict is ongoing.
“There’s not a cessation of war hostilities,” Merkley told reporters before the vote, citing the US blockade of Iranian ports and strikes on Iranian ships and Iran‘s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on US ships and tankers.
“Both sides are still engaged in hostilities, and so I don’t accept that the 60-day clock is suspended,” he said.
Merkley and other Senate Democrats said they planned to bring up another war powers resolution next week, and every week until the war ends or Trump comes to lawmakers for authorization.
Democrats in the House have also introduced war powers resolutions, also blocked by Republicans.
Democrats have called on Trump to come to Congress for authorization to use military force, noting that the US Constitution says that Congress, not the president, can declare war. They have warned that Trump may have pulled the country into a long conflict without setting out a clear strategy.
Republicans – and the White House – say Trump‘s actions are legal and within his rights as commander-in-chief to protect the US by ordering limited military operations.
Some congressional Republicans have accused Democrats of filing the war powers resolutions only because of their partisan opposition to Trump.
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King Charles Visits Jewish Area of London Hit by Antisemitic Attacks
Britain’s King Charles III greets residents in Golders Green in North London following the attack on Jewish residents, Britain, May 14, 2026. Photo: Richard Pohle/Pool via REUTERS
King Charles was greeted by cheering crowds on Thursday when he visited an area of London which has suffered a spate of antisemitic attacks in recent weeks, in a show of support for Britain’s fearful Jewish communities.
The monarch met two victims of a recent stabbing attack when he made the unannounced visit to Golders Green, which is home to a sizeable Jewish population and has borne the brunt of the recent antisemitic incidents across the British capital.
“Thank you, your majesty, for coming today to Golders Green to bring comfort and encouragement to our Jewish community!” Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who was there to greet the king, said on X.
Last month, two Jewish men were stabbed in the area in an attack being treated by police as terrorism, while in other incidents in Golders Green, four Jewish community ambulances were torched and a memorial wall targeted.
During his trip, Charles met the two stabbing victims at a Jewish Care charity center as well as other religious and civic leaders.
The visit was Charles‘ latest demonstration of backing for the Jewish community, after he visited a synagogue in northern England following an attack last year that left two worshippers dead and agreeing in March to become the patron of a charity that provides security for Britain’s estimated 290,000 Jews.
The recent attacks have led Mirvis to say the Jewish community was facing a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation.
The government has also raised its national terrorism threat level to “severe” from “substantial” with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying Jewish people were living in fear.
The king‘s visit comes on the same day that an article written by his younger son Prince Harry was published in which he said a rise in antisemitism in Britain was deeply troubling, and that any anger over events in the Middle East should not spill over into hatred.