From left, Reps. Mikie Sherrill, (D-NJ), Elissa Slotkin, (D-MI)., and Jason Crow, (D-CO), talk before the House Armed Services Committee hearing in Rayburn Building on Wednesday, June 23, 2021.

Michigan’s loss of a congressional seat in this year’s redistricting process has scrambled district lines across the state, promising hotly contested primary races among Democrats in the Detroit area and a range of other close races across the state, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Fight card: Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Peter Meijer (R-MI), who each won swing districts in 2020, are set for another round of tight races in their new districts. In the southwest corner of the state, Michiganders are waiting to find out if they’ll see a member-on-member primary between Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI) and Bill Huizenga (R-MI). And elsewhere in the state, Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) faces strong Republican headwinds.

Defending: Slotkin’s new district, the 7th, shifts further west away from Detroit and includes more rural areas than her previous one, but includes more of the Lansing area, which leans towards the Democrats. Strategists who spoke to JI said she’s still favored to win, despite unfavorable electoral conditions for Democrats in the midterms. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss-up. “[Slotkin] was made for that district,” longtime Michigan strategist Ed Sarpolus told JI, citing her previous victories in a conservative-leaning district and her background as a Defense Department and CIA official. She was endorsed by both J Street and the Jewish Democratic Council of America in 2020, and took a leading role in favor of supplemental funding for Iron Dome last year.

Right flank: Meijer’s district, Michigan’s 3rd, leans slightly to the left — unlike his previous district, which had a GOP advantage — Meijer, who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump last year, is also seen as the current favorite, if he can survive the GOP primary. Trump endorsed his primary opponent, John Gibbs, in November. Cook rates Meijer’s general election race as a toss-up. “He can win a Democratic district because of who he is,” Sarpolus said. “Because the district becomes more moderate — and the other thing is it could be easier because there will be fewer Republicans, fewer conservatives in this district, Meijer can play to his moderate base.” Pro-Israel America endorsed Meijer last summer.

In or out: In the southwest corner of the Wolverine State, Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI) and Bill Huizenga (R-MI) may face off in the new 4th District, which is largely made up of territory currently represented by Upton, who has not yet announced if he will seek reelection. Upton has been ostracized by some in the party for his vote to impeach Trump. Upton’s decision will likely come down to his estimation of his current place within the party. “If he does stay and run, if he wins, will he have a committee chairmanship or a position in leadership? Or because he’s so far more moderate, [will he] basically be a backbencher? And he may not like that,” Sarpolus said. Pro-Israel America endorsed Upton last summer.

Endangered: In the eastern part of the state, Kildee’s new district centers around Flint, as his previous one did, and retains its close balance of Democrats and Republicans. Cook rates the race as a toss-up. “This district is trending the wrong way for Democrats,” Michigan strategist Adrian Hemond said. “A quality Republican candidate could be [a threat]” to Kildee.” Kildee has been endorsed by J Street in previous races and was one of the few Democrats who defended Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from accusations of antisemitism stemming from February 2019 comments that support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins,” saying in an interview at the time, “I wouldn’t take it as antisemitism.”

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Marc Pincus and Strauss Zelnick

Video game company Take-Two Interactive has reached a $12.7 billion deal to acquire rival company Zynga, catapulting the “Grand Theft Auto”creator into one of the industry’s most formidable game publishers, Jacob Miller reports in The Circuit. The deal, one of the largest in video game history, was announced on Monday by Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick and Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau. Expected to be finalized later this year, the merger will unite Take-Two, which specializes in PC and console gaming, with Zynga, a free-to-play mobile-game behemoth.

Company Creation: Zynga was founded by Mark Pincus in 2007 when it piloted an online poker game played on Facebook. Since then, Zynga has grown into a large company with $2.3 billion in sales in FY2020. In a Medium post discussing the deal, Pincus described the “bittersweet moment” and thanked his colleagues over the years for his business’s success. We’re seeing games expand in every direction from hyper casual to entire persistent worlds,” wrote Pincus. “I believe the company will have the franchises and scale to lead in every category.”

On the Phone: With mobile gaming ascendant, Take-Two will benefit from Zynga’s mobile development team, which is expected to develop mobile options for Take-Two’s offerings. Under the planned acquisition, more than half of Take-Two’s projected bookings in Fiscal Year 2023 will come from mobile, diversifying Take-Two’s offerings and making it competitive with other developers as mobile gaming gains traction. Zelnick called rolling out mobile options for Take-Two games a “high-priority initiative,” saying, “We see tremendous untapped potential to bring Take-Two’s renowned console and PC properties to mobile.”

Market Temperature: The deal comes after the gaming industry enjoyed a boom during the pandemic, as social distancing interventions and lockdown restrictions pushed consumers to spend more time gaming, a trend that translated to large share price increases for both Take-Two and Zynga over the past two years. Yet Zynga’s stock tumbled last summer amidst societal reopening following COVID-19 shutdowns and after Apple instituted privacy reforms restricting how advertisers can track consumers on its devices, which made gaming less profitable.

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Russian CSTO peacekeepers patrol a street. Kazakhstan has been gripped by unrest following protests in the towns of Zhanaozen and Aktau in western Kazakhstan which were sparked by rising fuel prices on January 2, 2022. (Photo by Valery Sharifulin\TASS via Getty Images)

Israel is seeking the return of the body of an Israeli man killed last Friday during bloody Israel and the chief rabbi of the Kazakh Jewish community, Rabbi Yeshaya Cohen, are trying arrange a special flight to return the body of an Israeli man killed last Friday during bloody demonstrations in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan. Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai spoke yesterday with Cohen for a briefing on the challenges faced by the community amid political unrest in the country.

Israeli Casualty: Levan Kogeashvili, 22, was killed in Almaty — the country’s largest city —  during a violent protest, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said. According to Israeli news site Walla, he wasn’t involved in the demonstration but was shot while traveling to work in a car. A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry told Jewish Insider he hoped Kogeashvili’s remains would arrive in Israel later this week but that ministry officials first had “some issues to resolve in order to get the body on a plane there,” due to the unfolding situation in Kazakhstan. Cohen explained to JI that they were having difficulty obtaining approval for an airplane to land at the airport in Almaty, which has been closed temporarily after a state of emergency was declared.

Jewish community: According to Shai’s office, Cohen told the minister that the tensions have abated to a great extent in recent days, and that there have been no further casualties among the Jewish community. He said, however, that a great deal of property had been looted during the disturbances. The rabbi noted that the community has been able to maintain internal communications, but that curfews imposed on the country have brought communal life, activities and commercial life to a halt. In conversation with JI, Cohen expressed his support for the Kazakh regime, describing it as a “model of peace and tolerance,” adding that he hoped that the crisis would end soon.

Israeli outreach: Shai said that Israel would provide assistance to the several thousand Jews living in Kazakhstan if needed, and that he and his ministry would keep in close contact with Cohen and the Jewish community. “My ministry and I are available to help with whatever is necessary during this complex period. Israel stands at your side to help at all times,” Shai told the rabbi. “All Jews are responsible for one another,” Cohen said, citing the Talmud, expressing the Kazakh Jewish community’s appreciation for Israel’s support.

Russian withdrawal: Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said today that a Russian-led military bloc will begin withdrawing its troops from Kazakhstan in two days, after fulfilling its main mission of stabilizing the country. Nearly 8,000 people were detained throughout the country during the demonstrations, the Interior Ministry said yesterday, which began over a hike in gas prices and grew to reflect a wider discontent with the government and demands for political change.