
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is preparing to launch a widely anticipated campaign for New York City mayor by early March, according to two people familiar with his plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to address private deliberations.
His timeline for entering the June primary is materializing as Mayor Eric Adams faces growing calls to resign amid new revelations, which he denies, that his legal team privately brokered a deal for the Justice Department to dismiss federal corruption charges in exchange for a vow to enforce the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

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Deborah Lipstadt, former special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, raised concerns Tuesday about a “double standard” when it came to the State Department’s treatment of Israel under the Biden administration.
Lipstadt shared the anecdote during an interview with historian Niall Ferguson at the Hoover Institution. During her tenure at the State Department, she said, there was “consideration of sanctions on arms going to an unnamed country, which we can all figure out what.”

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Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee appeared to find common ground at a hearing on the future of Syria on Thursday, coalescing around a desire to ensure that the U.S. remains engaged in the country and works with the new Syrian government on developing a relationship based on specific conditions and benchmarks.
“The important thing here, I think, today, something that’s noteworthy, is how unanimous we are in thinking about what should be done and how we ought to go about it,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the committee’s chair, said. “Obviously the devil’s always in the details, but there is really unanimity as far as how to proceed and that’s good. As we go forward, that unanimity will be helpful.”

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As the Chautauqua Institution, an exclusive resort community and cultural center in Western New York, plans its 2025 summer programming, concerns about antisemitism have clouded the otherwise exciting process.
For months, Jewish community members who spend the summer at this picturesque enclave near Buffalo — known to many as the place where author Salman Rushdie was stabbed in 2022 by a man with alleged ties to Iran-backed terrorists — have quietly raised concerns to Chautauqua executives about a staff member who had published antisemitic statements online.

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Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Education, committed to ensuring the safety of Jewish students on college campuses and addressing the backlog of federal civil rights complaints filed since Oct. 7, 2023, during her confirmation hearing on Thursday, though she did not offer specifics on how she would implement her plans.
The subject of campus antisemitism came up repeatedly at Thursday’s hearing, with Democrats and Republicans of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee pressing McMahon for specifics on how her department could meaningfully tackle the issue. McMahon, the billionaire World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder, vowed in her opening statement and in response to senators’ questions to, if confirmed, use all tools at her disposal to address the crisis, but cautioned that she first needed to assess what resources were available.

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Congressional Democrats are raising concerns that widespread layoffs at the Department of Education made at the direction of the White House will hobble the department’s ability to combat antisemitism.
Politico reported on Wednesday that an unspecified number of employees at the department’s Office for Civil Rights had been fired. The office is responsible for investigating complaints of discrimination, including antisemitism, which have skyrocketed since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

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The nomination of Elbridge Colby to be the next undersecretary of defense for policy is causing concerns among some Republicans over his accommodationist approach to a nuclear Iran and his ties to other isolationist figures recently installed at the Pentagon, many of whom have links to Charles Koch and his network of organizations.
Colby has said in the past that the U.S. should pull back militarily from the Middle East and do less to counter Iran and its proxies. He’s also suggested that he doesn’t see an Iranian nuclear weapon as a red line, which has been long-standing U.S. policy, saying instead that it is “eminently plausible and practical” to contain a nuclearized Iranian regime. He has opposed U.S. strikes to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program.

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The Trump administration nominated Joel Rayburn, a former diplomat and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, to serve as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, a role overseeing key Middle East policy issues.
Rayburn held various diplomatic and national security positions in the first Trump administration, including special envoy for Syria and deputy assistant secretary for Levant affairs. He also served on the White House National Security Council as senior director for Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
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