The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee will hold a vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act and another piece of antisemitism legislation next Wednesday, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) announced.

Cassidy, the HELP Committee’s chairman, posted a notice on the panel’s website on Wednesday announcing plans to vote on AAA and the Protecting Students on Campus Act next Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. Should the pieces of legislation pass through committee, both will advance to the full Senate for floor consideration on final passage. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested he was open to Iran maintaining a civil nuclear program and did not explicitly rule out allowing the Islamic Republic to enrich uranium itself, even as he expressed concern about such activity in an interview with The Free Press’ Bari Weiss on Wednesday.

“If Iran wants a civil nuclear program, they can have one just like many other countries in the world have one, meaning they can import enriched material,” Rubio told Weiss on the Free Press’ “Honestly” podcast. “But if they insist on enriching uranium themselves, then they will be the only country in the world that ‘doesn’t have a weapons program’ but is enriching,” he added. “I think that’s problematic.”

Abe Foxman, the former Anti-Defamation League national director, offered pointed criticism of the Trump administration in a Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration at the Capitol on Wednesday.

“As a [Holocaust] survivor, my antenna quivers when I see books being banned, when I see people being abducted in the streets, when I see government trying to dictate what universities should teach and whom they should teach. As a survivor who came to this country as an immigrant, I’m troubled when I hear immigrants and immigration being demonized,” Foxman said, to sustained applause from the audience.  

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Senate Democratic whip, announced on Wednesday that he will not seek reelection to a sixth term, setting up a competitive primary contest to fill his seat and his leadership role. 

Durbin, 80, the second highest ranking member of his conference and the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is the fifth Senate Democrat to retire this year, joining Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Michael Bennet (D-CO).

Michigan state Senate president pro tempore Jeremy Moss and former Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) are publicly floating runs for the House seat held by Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who announced on Tuesday that she’s making a bid for Michigan’s open Senate seat — a primary battle that could rehash the bitter Israel policy divisions that characterized the 2022 race when Stevens defeated Levin.

Dave Woodward, the chair of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners and a former state lawmaker, is also considering a run.

Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this week urged the Trump administration in a letter to consider expanded sanctions relief for Syria.

Their letter, addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, marked a notable new push from two of Congress’ most senior foreign policy leaders for targeted and conditional sanctions relief for the new Syrian government, an effort that has seen broad bipartisan support in Washington, but which is opposed by the Israeli government.

Democratic Majority for Israel’s founder and president, Mark Mellman, a pollster and decades-long fixture of Democratic politics who sought to counter a rising generation of Democratic politicians critical of Israel, is stepping down from his leadership of the pro-Israel organization six years after its founding. The organization did not give a reason for his departure, which will come at the end of this week.

Mellman launched the organization in early 2019, soon after the first members of the Squad — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — took office, with the stated goal of fighting anti-Israel forces in the party and maintaining the Democratic Party’s historic support for Israel. 

A new organizational chart released by the State Department on Tuesday shows major changes to the department’s structure, including the elimination of the office where the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism’s team is located. Despite this, internal department communications affirmed that the office of the special envoy is still a department priority and will continue to exist.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the major shake-up of the department’s organizational structure as seeking to counter what he described as left-wing orthodoxy in the department and “drain[ing] the bloated, bureaucratic swamp.”