Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) and Nate Morris, two of the leading Republican candidates for Kentucky’s Senate seat, on Thursday endorsed Ed Gallrein, the GOP challenger to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), one of the leading GOP critics of Israel in Congress. 

Gallrein’s primary candidacy has also been championed by President Donald Trump, who has been infuriated by Massie’s frequent votes against party leadership; Massie particularly rankled the White House as a leading advocate for releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

News that employees in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene had launched an anti-Israel “working group” inside the agency’s headquarters provoked outrage among both progressive and conservative leaders in the New York City Council.

The New York Post first reported on Wednesday that employees of the mayorally controlled agency — which oversees restaurant inspections, disease control, vital statistics and addiction services — held the inaugural meeting of its “Global Oppression and Public Health Working Group” inside its main office in Queens during the workday on Tuesday. A presenter acknowledged that the working group “really developed in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” according to materials the Post obtained. 

A bipartisan group of 82 House lawmakers wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday urging her to roll back new conditions placed on applications for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program amid rising antisemitic attacks.

The bipartisan support for the letter is particularly notable given that, while Democrats have been raising concerns about the conditions for months, Republicans have, publicly, been comparatively quiet.

For a brief moment on Wednesday, it looked like Iran talks were off. Tehran wanted to move their location from Turkey to Oman and narrow the scope of the negotiations to its nuclear program. The Trump administration saw this as a bad sign, and anonymous American officials began leaking to the media that Iran wasn’t taking the negotiations seriously.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that the negotiations were uncertain in remarks to the press at the Critical Minerals Ministerial, a conference of 43 foreign and other ministers: “As far as the talks are concerned, I think the Iranians had agreed to a certain format. For whatever reason, it changed … We’ll see if we can get back to the right place. The U.S. is prepared to meet them,” he said.

Less than half of Israelis support joining an American strike on Iran if Israel is not directly attacked, a poll from the Israel Democracy Institute found this week.

Half of the Israelis polled supported a military response only if Israel is directly attacked by Iran, while 44% backed joining an American strike on Iran even before a potential attack on Israel.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced on Tuesday that he had drafted legislation designating the Polisario Front, the militant group that claims sovereignty over parts of the Western Sahara, as a foreign terrorist organization and will formally introduce it “if there’s no change in their behavior.”

Cruz made the comments at a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing focused on U.S. counterterrorism efforts in North Africa, after the hearing’s witnesses — the State Department’s Robert Palladino and Joel Borkert — both declined to agree with his statement that “the terrorist activity in the Sahel [region in Africa] is coming from the Polisario Front.”

A recently announced AI partnership between Google and Al Jazeera, the Qatar-backed media network, is raising concerns among some national security experts who say the arrangement helps to legitimize a state-controlled news organization long criticized for its sympathetic coverage of Hamas and hostility to Israel.

The agreement, announced in December, allows Al Jazeera to use Google Cloud as its main technology provider powering the network’s newly launched AI initiative, known internally as “The Core,” according to a press release. 

A major infusion of pro-Israel funding into attack ads on former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) has complicated Malinowski’s path to victory in the Thursday special election primary for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District — though political analysts and members of the local Jewish community still see Malinowski as the likely favorite and say the precise impact of the anti-Malinowski attacks remains to be seen.

Malinowski has been the target of over $2.3 million in ads funded by the AIPAC-linked United Democracy Project, which have hit Malinowski for a 2019 vote for Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding and stock trading while in office.