Political activist Laura Loomer stands across from the Women’s March 2019 in New York City on January 19, 2019 in New York City.

Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim provocateur notoriously banned from most major social media platforms, announced on Wednesday that she is mounting a primary challenge against six-term Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) in central Florida. Until recently, Loomer, 28, had been poised for a rematch in Florida’s 21st Congressional District, where last cycle she ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), losing by 20 points despite a strong fundraising advantage. But Loomer switched districts this week to take on the 71-year-old Webster, setting up what is likely to be a heated generational showdown with a member of her own party, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

‘District-Shopper’: Loomer may be something of an awkward fit for the 11th district, which is the oldest in the country. While its boundaries could shift with a redrawn congressional map, the district currently stretches from Hernando County northwest to the vast retirement community known as the Villages. Loomer has yet to relocate, though she claims to have found a new residence in Lake County, west of Orlando, where she will be settling later this month. “I do not see how the Republicans there could support someone who moves from South Florida just to run in a primary,” said Steven Tauber, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida. “They will see her as a district-shopper.”

Criticism: Loomer received criticism after picking up endorsements from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), the controversial congressman whose connection with known white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes has recently drawn scrutiny. Loomer, however, dismissed such concerns. “I’ve gone to events with Nick Fuentes and Congressman Gosar before,” she told JI. “Look, I’m Jewish, and do I agree with everything Nick Fuentes has said?” she added. “No. Do I think his comments about the Holocaust in the past or some distasteful comments he’s made are, like I said, distasteful? Yes, absolutely. But just because I don’t agree with everything that he says, doesn’t mean that he should be banned, debanked or deplatformed.”

Follow the Money: In the interview with JI, Loomer railed against the social media platforms whose prohibitions against her she believes hindered her prospects in the last election, particularly as traditional campaigning was upended by the pandemic. Still, in her most recent campaign, Loomer managed to garner nearly $2.3 million with high-profile contributions from the likes of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and former U.S. Ambassador Eric Javits. “I hope that I’ll receive contributions from everybody who donated last time as well, but we’ll see,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll also expand on my donor list given that I’m running in another district, and it’s more favorable this time, so perhaps people will find it to be a better investment donating to me this time to primary a do-nothing Republican.”

Read the full interview here.

Then-Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), speaks about gun safety as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) listens, during news conference on Capitol Hill January 27, 2016 in Washington, DC.

A delegation of four Democratic senators arrived in Israel on Wednesday evening local time, and will meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and President Isaac Herzog, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rodreports.

On the ground: Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) arrived in Lebanon on Tuesday for meetings with Lebanese President Michel Aoun and others. In a joint statement prior to the trip, the senators said they planned to meet with members of the new Israeli government and Palestinian leadership. The Lapid meeting is set for Thursday and the Herzog meeting for Friday. Following meetings in Israel and the West Bank, Murphy and Ossoff will continue to Tunisia and Greece.

Rocky relationship: Murphy and Van Hollen led a letter last year urging Israel not to unilaterally annex parts of the West Bank under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. An early draft of that letter threatened that such a move would end bipartisan congressional support for Israel. Van Hollen told JI in June “the jury’s still out” on whether the new Israeli government would behave differently from that of Netanyahu.

Point of contention: Earlier Wednesday, Lapid addressed U.S. efforts to reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, calling the potential move a “bad idea.” The consulate has historically served as a base from which to conduct outreach to the Palestinians and was closed by the Trump administration in 2019. In May, Van Hollen spearheaded a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to reopen the consulate.

Read more here.

Bonus: The senators condemned Lebanon’s decision to import Iranian fuel and floated alternative proposals to resolve the fledgling country’s energy deficit.

Torah scribe Reuven Yaakobov works on a new Torah scroll in Mühlhausen, Germany, which is being made as a gift from the Protestant and Catholic churches.

The going rate these days for Noah’s Ark is $3,700. No, that’s not the cost of the physical ark Noah used to save Earth’s animals when God flooded the planet. Nor would that money get you a book about the famed boat or a painting depicting the Flood. That amount of money — equal to the current value of one coin of the cryptocurrency Ethereum — would get you a non-fungible token (NFT) of the Torah portion Noach, the section of the Torah where the classic biblical tale appears, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. The parsha NFTs are part of NFTorah, a new project that is using cryptocurrency and digital assets to fund the writing of 18 Torah scrolls.

Transcendent technology: “We want to try and give a deeper, lasting, eternal value to the technology itself, that it can be used for something truly transcendent,” said Mordechai Lightstone, a Chabad-trained rabbi who co-founded NFTorah and also runs Tech Tribe, an organization for Jews who work in tech. “I want tech people to see that what they’re doing is something that has value to their Jewish selves as well.”

Big year: The buying and selling of NFTs exploded earlier this year, particularly after the $69 million sale of an NFT from the digital artist Beeple went viral in March 2021. “The idea is that scarcity creates value,” NPR explained at the time. NFTs are purchased with cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, which saw their value skyrocket during the pandemic.

How it works: NFTs are unique digital assets, and the transfer of NFTs is recorded on the blockchain, meaning that there is a digital ledger of all purchases of the assets. This generally allows for an artist to get paid every time their work is sold, and it also allows people to see who the original purchaser was. So the original buyer of, say, the Parshat Noach NFT could then transfer ownership to her son for his bar mitzvah, and that transfer will be recorded in the blockchain.

Mitzvah motivation: The idea to fund the writing of a Torah by selling NFTs has its roots in a long-running practice first promoted by Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. “In the ‘80s, the Lubavitcher Rebbe launched a campaign that every Jewish man, woman and child should get a letter in a Torah, meaning they would pay a small amount of money — really talking about a dollar, whatever it is — to pay towards the writing of an entire scroll,” said Lightstone.

Generation to generation: NFTorah goes beyond simply touting the potential spiritual benefits of NFTs and blockchain. The project’s mission is rooted in the notion that the Torah is actually a form of the technology itself. “Judaism is the original blockchain,” argued Jonathan Caras, the Israeli-based chief technology officer of crypto hedge fund Lionschain Capital and a co-founder of NFTorah. “It’s expressed by handing down the Torah from one generation to the other.”

Read more here.

The House Armed Services Committee markup hearing of the National Defense Authorization Act begins on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021.

The House Armed Services Committee voted nearly unanimously in the early hours of Thursday morning to approve an amended version of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act after a daylong meeting revising the bill, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Only two members, Reps. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) voted against approving the bill, which includes $500 million in aid to Israel for missile defense programs.

Topline increase: Fourteen Democrats voted with the committee’s Republicans to increase the total defense budget by $25 billion. Committee Vice Chair Elaine Luria (D-VA) said the spending boost would send a strong message to allies and enemies, including Israel and the “malign actors” that attack it. “I have been saying ever since [the president’s budget] was released, that it does not do enough,” she added. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WA) subsequently warned that the increase could endanger the bill’s full-House passage; progressives have been opposed to increasing the topline.

Countering extremism: The committee voted 31 to 28 in favor of Rep. Anthony Brown’s (D-MD) amendment explicitly granting military commanders the authority to bar or expel individuals who are part of extremist groups or espouse extremist beliefs, including on social media The amendment would also create a Pentagon Office of Countering Extremism. The legislation requires the Secretary of Defense to provide a definition of extremism within 60 days, in an attempt to address one concern from critics of such measures. Republicans opposed to the measure argued that Democrats are overstating the extent of the extremism issue and that military leaders could use the initiatives to target political opponents.

Iran agenda: Other successful amendments to the defense bill banned the use of military resources to transfer pallets of currency or other items of value to Iran and requested reports on Iranian support for the Syrian Assad regime, Iranian-Chinese military ties and Iranian military capabilities and the potential impact of sanctions relief on those capabilities.

Blocked: Reps. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) introduced an amendment that would have required the Department of Defense to work with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to establish a joint U.S.-Israel Operations-Technology Working Group to develop and acquire weapons and other capabilities. Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) introduced an amendment that would have repealed previous provisions creating a carveout to Iran sanctions for Afghanistan reconstruction given the Taliban takeover. However, neither amendment had obtained necessary House Foreign Affairs Committee waivers to allow the issues to be considered by Armed Services and were therefore withdrawn.

Boycott: While advocating for two amendments to limit U.S. support for the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, in protest of the Chinese government’s alleged human rights abuses, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) argued the U.S. “probably should have” boycotted the 1936 Berlin Games to protest the Nazi regime. Both of Waltz’s amendments on the issue failed.

Read more here.