
Daily Kickoff: Courtside with Alex Lasry in Wisconsin + Scene at the French ambassador’s
👋 Good Wednesday morning!
The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act compromise between the House and Senate — which the House passed last night — includes a U.S.-Israel cybersecurity grant program and a condemnation of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. The $1 billion in supplemental Iron Dome funding is not included.
Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, brushed off a question from Jewish Insider about the confirmation process for antisemitism envoy nominee Deborah Lipstadt, saying that Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is responsible for scheduling hearings.
While Menendez can schedule a hearing unilaterally, he has said he wants to avoid doing so without Republican consent. Republicans, including Risch, have raised concerns about Lipstadt’s past tweets, some of which have criticized committee members, and have requested more time to review them.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Carson v. Makin, a case involving parochial schools’ ability to receive public funding. JI’s Marc Rod spoke to organizations that filed amicus briefs in the case earlier this fall — read more here.
A Jewish woman was wounded in a stabbing attack at the entrance to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem today. Police arrested a teenage girl on suspicion of carrying out the attack and are treating the incident as a suspected terror attack, the latest in a string of similar attacks over the past few weeks.
Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai is in Washington, D.C., today, continuing his tour of the U.S. He is scheduled to meet with a group of legislators brought together by Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), as well as representatives from AIPAC, The Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, the State Department’s deputy envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, Aaron Keyak, and the White House’s liaison to the Jewish community, Chanan Weissman.
Earlier this week, Shai met with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield in New York. Shai will wrap up his trip at the Israeli-American Council’s annual conference, which is being held from Thursday to Saturday in South Florida.
the buck stops here
The ball’s in Alex Lasry’s court in Wisconsin

Alex Lasry was easy to miss as he hovered near the counter at Colectivo Coffee on a recent afternoon in downtown Madison, Wis. The 34-year-old basketball executive could easily have been mistaken for a professor at the nearby university or a government employee in the Capitol building across the street. It can be difficult standing out as one of a dozen candidates running in Wisconsin’s Democratic Senate primary. But Lasry believes his campaign is catching on. “We feel great about the prospects of the race,” he told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassellast week, slinking into a table near the back of the café. “We’re seeing a ton of momentum and enthusiasm.”
Big bucks: Since launching his campaign, Lasry, a former Obama White House aide on leave from his position as senior vice president of the Milwaukee Bucks — owned by his father, the billionaire hedge fund manager Marc Lasry — has earned endorsements from several statewide labor groups while raising more than $2.3 million, according to the latest FEC filings. He has also loaned himself $800,000, despite a somewhat ambiguous claim, in an interview with JI last March, that he had no plans to “self-fund” but instead would “invest” in his candidacy.
Core issues: Lasry has benefited from relationships within both Democratic politics and professional basketball. But he argues that his candidacy is resonating because he has been speaking directly to voter concerns, at this point, for the better part of a year. “This race is too important to not be talking to voters right now and defining what this race is going to be about,” he told JI, “which is, how do we create jobs, raise wages and bring more investment back to the state?”
China watch: Lasry says he has often heard from voters about China’s increasing prominence on the international stage. Still, he was reticent regarding the NBA’s highly profitable business relationship with China — a subject of renewed controversy since China pulled Boston Celtics games from the internet after the team’s center called out Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “brutal dictator.” Lasry seemed eager to sidestep the matter. “When, I think, we’re talking about how we combat the rise of China, that’s the U.S. government’s role,” he reasoned, adding: “As a senator, you have the ability to influence and make change in how we’re dealing with and working with other countries.”
Eye on Israel: J Street, the left-leaning Israel advocacy group, is supporting Lasry as well as three of his competitors in the race. “I’m proud to have the J Street stamp of approval, and that’s because we agree that a two-state solution is the solution, and I can be very pro-Israel while also saying I believe very much in a Palestinian state,” Lasry, who says he is against Israeli settlement expansion, told JI. “I don’t think those two issues are at odds, and I think that’s where J Street and I both see very much eye to eye.”