A man’s daughter has to use the bathroom in New York City. The man ducks into a coffee shop, asks the barista if his daughter can use the restroom, and when she says yes, he orders coffee as a thank you and leaves her a big tip.
Hours later, the man’s photo, taken by the store’s security camera, is all over Instagram. “We see that you stopped by our shop today for a coffee,” the caption reads. “Do you see how it doesn’t taste like genocide juice? Or are you still having a hard time telling the difference? We don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers or anyone in between. Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.”
The man in this case is Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who was facing a primary in his nearby Lower Manhattan-West Brooklyn congressional district. Goldman, who is Jewish, does not take money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and he recently voted against a $14.3 billion military aid bill for Israel. But that is not enough for the rising socialist Muslim wing of the Democratic Party. It wanted him defeated, and they succeeded. And it also thinks it is OK to deny him service in a public accommodation.
on May 31, 2026. (Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon thinks otherwise. She saw the coffee shop’s Instagram post and announced on X that her office was opening an investigation into the coffee chain. “Federal law prohibits public accommodations such as coffee shops from discriminating against patrons based on their race, religion, or national origin,” Dhillon wrote.
Dhillon’s post rankled many Democrats, including anti-Israel activist Glenn Greenwald, who accused Dhillon of hypocrisy. “In the case of the Colorado small bakery that refused to sell same-sex wedding cakes, the core conservative defense was that small businesses shouldn’t be forced to provide services that violate their core beliefs,” Greenwald wrote in reference to the Supreme Court’s 2017 case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
“Why doesn’t that principle apply to a coffee shop that doesn’t want to serve a Congressman who supports US financing and arming of Israeli aggression?” Greenwald continued.
Greenwald may want to read the facts of Masterpiece again. In Masterpiece, owner Jack Phillips refused to bake a specialty wedding cake with a message celebrating a gay wedding on it. But he also explicitly offered to sell the plaintiffs any premade cake in the store, or any brownie, cookie, or cupcake they wanted. The refusal was not based on the identity of the customer, but on the message the plaintiffs demanded that the baker write.
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If Goldman had asked the barista to write on his cup, “Stand with Israel,” or “Hamas must go,” then by all means, the coffee shop has every right to refuse to endorse that message. But that is not what happened.
A father just wanted to help his daughter find a safe place to use that bathroom. Apparently, for Jews, that safe place can no longer be found in the Democratic Party.