Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Monday morning!
Vice President Kamala Harris pledged that the Biden administration will “fight antisemitism and hate of all kinds, and call it out wherever it exists,” at the Anti-Defamation League’s virtual Never Is Now conference, which began last night.
“I want to be very clear about this,” Harris continued. “When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity, when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred: that is antisemitism, and that is unacceptable.” Read more here.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid addressed the gathering by prerecorded video, directly addressing misinformation and incitement on social media. “We must fight back against the world in which the antisemites of the extreme right say, ‘Jews are guilty of causing [COVID-19]’ and the antisemites of the extreme left say, ‘The Jews are guilty of ethnic cleansing,’” Lapid said. “We must fight back against the world in which the algorithm doesn’t care about truth, but about what’s exciting, what shocks.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Mike Herzog is set to arrive in Washington later this week. Read JI’s interview with Herzog from September.
weekend in vegas
At RJC, a glimpse of a party trying to capitalize on recent gains

Buoyed by GOP victories last Tuesday, the Republican Jewish Coalition leadership conference — a key stop for potential 2024 presidential candidates and other party luminaries — over the weekend offered a model for the party’s midterm strategy, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports from Las Vegas. The conference showed a Republican Party that is embracing the policies of the former president, but which is trying to move past Trump as the party’s singular center of gravity.
Trump factor: Trump largely took a back seat during the weekend’s events as speakers talked up their own records on issues like foreign policy and education and bashed President Joe Biden and Democrats. But nearly every speaker, even those most critical of him, was sure to mention and praise the former president, at least in passing. And his aggressive style of politics was clearly on display in some of their remarks. Frequent attacks on Democrats, particularly the far-left “Squad,” consistently garnered cheers from the audience. And chants of “let’s go Brandon” — a shorthand insult to Biden — started by a contingent of college students in attendance interrupted speeches throughout the weekend.
Taking credit: Among the popular speakers at the conference — garnering the loudest applause — were former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley. Cruz praised Trump but emphasized his own role in some of the former president’s signature foreign policy moves. “I engaged actively, directly and repeatedly with the president,” Cruz said of his advocacy for moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. “I urged the president, I said, ‘Look, if we want to see peace, nothing produces peace more than clarity, than absolute clarity.’”
What happens in Vegas: Haley turned heads with a broadside against pro-Israel lobbying powerhouse AIPAC. “Why do they invite politicians to their conference who strongly support the Iran nuclear deal? Stop rewarding bad behavior. It only gets you more bad behavior,” Haley said. “If you make bipartisanship your whole reason for existence, then you lose sight of the policies you’re fighting for in the first place.”
New playbook: Other speeches from rising stars offered a clearer picture of the party’s likely playbook for 2022 following Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race last week. They focused their speeches on issues such as education and pandemic-related restrictions, more briefly noting traditional Jewish community issues like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and concerns over left-wing antisemitism.
Changing tone: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who gained national attention last year for her fierce opposition to pandemic-related restrictions, exemplified this trend, appearing to have dialed back her rhetoric. “We live in a country that is addicted to being offended… I’m going to ask you to get over yourself,” she said. “There are people in your life that you have quit talking to. You think they are so far gone… I need you to get over yourself and start talking to people again.”