Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) dismissed the notion on Wednesday that campaign spending in her favor by AIPAC’s super PAC  backfired in her failed bid for U.S. Senate, and defended the pro-Israel group as “Jewish Americans” participating in the democratic process.

Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed last week, has faced scrutiny from progressive Democrats over her support for Israel and the role of AIPAC in supporting her campaign. Following her primary loss, Stevens endorsed El-Sayed, who is now facing former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) in the November general election.

The publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times penned an open letter to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) on Wednesday pressing the senator over his repeated votes to block U.S. military sales to Israel, accusing Ossoff of failing to support Israel and of misrepresenting his positions to his Jewish constituents.

“I apologize for being blunt, but please, stop lying to me and your constituents. I hear you claim, over and over again, that you support Israel — that your support is ‘ironclad,’” Michael Morris wrote in the letter. “It is not. You vote against Israel on the Senate floor in Washington, then come home to Georgia and make this untruthful claim.”

Josh Kushner, managing partner of the venture capital firm Thrive Capital, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger have agreed tp purchase a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Lakers for a record-breaking price of $12.5 billion. 

“As lifelong NBA fans, we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world. We have immense respect for the leadership and vision of Jerry and Jeanie Buss,” Kushner and Iger said in a statement, referring to Jeanie Buss, CEO and minority owner of the Lakers, and her late father, longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss. “Our long-term commitment is to build on that foundation, compete at the highest level, and serve this extraordinary team, its fans, and the city of Los Angeles.”

Even as student-driven protests against Israel and the war in Gaza have quieted down on college campuses, two new Anti-Defamation League reports reveal rising levels of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in university classrooms nationwide driven by faculty, noting that some instructors are still presenting one-sided views on Israel as fact, assigning readings by terrorist groups and offering extra credit for attending anti-Israel protests.

“The Faculty Factor: Inside the Networks Driving Anti-Israel and Anti-Zionist Activism on Campus,” published on Wednesday, documents how faculty groups, unions and networks drive anti-Israel and anti-Zionist actions at universities. The report claims that faculty networks such as Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine and the American Association of University Professors have shielded anti-Israel student groups from discipline since the 2024 campus anti-Israel encampments, detailing methods used by influential organizations to provide institutional cover.

In Tuesday’s newsletter, we wrote that four major Democratic primary races — in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Connecticut — would be key tests of the depth of the anti-establishment, anti-Israel left’s staying power.

So far, the left of the party won three of the four contests, with the notable exception of Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, who fell short against Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley — in the night’s most high-profile race testing whether a socialist can win the Democratic nomination for an executive role in a pivotal battleground state.

Talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz appear unlikely to produce an agreement, analysts told Jewish Insider this week, with little sign that Washington and Tehran can bridge their competing demands over the waterway. The Trump administration is more likely to pursue continued economic pressure than return to military confrontation, the experts suggested — but that strategy may not be enough to force Tehran to back down.

Reports indicate that an agreement between Iran and Oman on managing traffic through the strait is imminent, but a final deal has failed to materialize despite days of negotiations. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, insisted on Tuesday that any agreement reached between the two countries is separate from Tehran’s broader closure of the waterway, which will only be lifted once the U.S. accedes to Tehran’s demands, including full compensation for its war costs.

Ambassador Yehuda Kaploun, the State Department’s antisemitism envoy, said last month that he would be able to resolve all remaining Holocaust restitution issues within the next two and a half years, before the end of the Trump administration, two sources with knowledge of the remarks told Jewish Insider.

The assertion — made during the July annual meeting of the board of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, better known as the Claims Conference, in New York last month — has left experts in the field skeptical. The U.S. has been pursuing Holocaust restitution issues for decades.

A roundtable with New York City rabbis held at City Hall on Monday gave participants a chance to voice growing concerns about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Israel rhetoric they felt had before gone unheard — with several attendees telling Jewish Insider the strong collective message, and Mamdani’s reaction, gave them hope he would change tack.

Multiple attendees of the meeting told JI that they had been in contact with Mamdani’s Office to Combat Antisemitism for months about his “single fixation” on Israel and his characterization of the Jewish state’s most politically active supporters as “monsters,” only to see the mayor dismiss such criticism. They said they viewed the gathering as an opportunity to bring their fears directly to him and to demonstrate communal unity amid a period of spiking antisemitic hate crimes.