Tomorrow (April 15) isn’t just Tax Day, but it’s also the deadline for candidates vying in the pivotal midterms to report their latest fundraising figures — an important marker on the political calendar in determining which candidates are raising enough money to run credible campaigns and which will be left financially behind. 

Historically, having a critical mass of prominent, well-heeled supporters was a prerequisite for a congressional candidate being able to get their message out to the public. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will convene the ambassadors from Israel and Lebanon in Washington on Tuesday for the highest-level direct talks between the countries in over 30 years.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh will represent their countries, with U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa and State Department Counselor Michael Needham also taking part in the meeting.

The Senate campaign of Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) is calling on Minnesota’s Democratic Party to launch a formal investigation into a series of alleged instances of antisemitic activity among delegates in the lead-up to its state convention being held at the end of next month.

In a letter sent last week to Richard Carlbom, chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Craig’s campaign wrote that one of its staffers had received a threatening anonymous phone call last month from a person “believed to be a delegate” who used an ethnic slur for Jews and said that the congresswoman “takes dirty Jewish money.”

The end of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year tenure following his electoral defeat on Sunday to center-right rival Péter Magyar has sparked immediate questions regarding the future of one of Jerusalem’s most reliable, yet complicated, alliances in Europe. 

While Orbán’s departure removes a reliable ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu within the European Union, experts suggest Jerusalem’s standing in Europe and bilateral relationship with Budapest will not be significantly set back. 

A recently conducted survey assessing how Jewish voters view leading Israel advocacy groups finds that public opinion is divided over the effectiveness of outside engagement in American elections. 

The Mellman Group poll, commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI) and released last week, surveyed 800 registered Jewish voters between March 13-23. It found a narrow 39% plurality agreed that it “was more important than ever” for pro-Israel groups to play a leading role in speaking out against candidates who oppose a close U.S.-Israel alliance, while 37% of respondents feared that such advocacy risks making things worse.

Senate Republicans maintained the position on Monday that Iran should never be allowed to possess nuclear enrichment capacity, following reports that the administration had proposed a 20-year pause in enrichment — rather than a permanent end to Iran’s enrichment capacity — as part of peace talks in Islamabad over the weekend.

Last year, during diplomatic talks with the regime prior to the U.S. strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, all but one Senate Republican signed a letter arguing that Iran should never have enrichment capacity, a position echoed by a vast majority of House Republicans. The New York Times reported Monday that Iran agreed to halt enrichment for just five years.

Given the chance to walk back some of his most incendiary commentary on an episode of the “Pod Save America” podcast released Sunday, antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker instead doubled down on his support of Hamas and other inflammatory rhetoric. 

“This [quote] is from January,” host Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter to President Barack Obama, told Piker in a segment looking back on some of Piker’s comments that have been picked up by national media. “‘Hamas is a thousand times better than a fascist settler colonial apartheid state,’” Favreau quoted.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore pledged that his administration “will always support Maryland’s Jewish community” in recorded remarks for an event Monday evening marking Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, at Beth Tfiloh Congregation in Pikesville, Md., a heavily Jewish suburb of Baltimore.

The Maryland governor, a potential Democratic presidential contender, said that it is his and his state’s “governing philosophy” to “unapologetically confront and condemn antisemitism and persecution wherever it arises,” to provide no refuge to hate, denial and conspiracy theories, to ensure that everyone feels safe to worship and to “realize the full promise of tikkun olam.”