U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus speaks during a media briefing at the State Department June 10, 2019 in Washington, D.C.

Just over a year ago, Morgan Ortagus was the voice of former President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. As the State Department’s top spokesperson, she conveyed the Trump administration’s policy to reporters and the public. Now, she’s running for Congress, and although she no longer works for the former president, she wants voters in Tennessee to know she’s with him — on everything. “I obviously hope that President Trump will put his hat in the ring and run again and win in [2024]. But I thought to myself, ‘You know, things have gotten so bad. I can’t sit around and wait,’” Ortagus told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutchin an interview on Wednesday.

New in town: Ortagus, who officially entered the race earlier this week, is running in Tennessee’s newly drawn 5th Congressional District, outside of her home in Nashville. Tennessee’s Republican-controlled redistricting effort redrew retiring Rep. Jim Cooper’s (D-TN) Nashville-area seat to lean heavily Republican. Ortagus and her family have lived in the state for about a year, starting a few weeks after President Joe Biden took office.

Divisive decision: Trump endorsed Ortagus last month, before she entered the race, saying at the time that she “will be tough” and that she “won’t bow to the Woke Mob or the Leftist LameStream Media.” But some of the president’s most strident backers — including Candace Owens and former White House advisor Sebastian Gorka — criticized his endorsement of Ortagus over competitor Robby Starbuck, a conservative activist and music video producer who entered the race in June.

No daylight: Ortagus, an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, is emphasizing her foreign policy chops in her campaign. She said there are no differences between her foreign policy positions and those of her former boss: “I think that we had an incredibly strong foreign policy,” said Ortagus.

Iran action: One goal for Ortagus would be to provide congressional oversight of the Biden administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. “I do think it’s fundamentally important that if you’re going to make these sorts of deals, you have to put them before the Congress,” she said. “I’m going to do everything that I can to hold this administration accountable for what I think will lead to a lot of chaos in the region if the Biden administration does things — not just getting back into a weaker deal than the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], which would be disastrous — but if they actually do things like reversing sanctions on terrorism.”

Threat assessment: Congressional Democrats and some Republicans have described the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a pressing national security matter, but Ortagus disagrees. At a gathering last weekend, members of the Republican National Committee voted to censure Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY) for joining the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks, saying they were participating in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” “I think what the RNC — I think they were right,” said Ortagus. “It’s not a bipartisan investigation. I think it is incredibly political.” Ortagus did not share when asked for her view of the events of Jan. 6.

Read the full story here.

University of Texas Austin campus at sunset-dusk

In the first challenge to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism on an American college campus, a student governing body at the University of Texas at Austin is set to vote on a resolution condemning the definition and “affirming the rights of advocates for Palestine,” Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Free speech: The goal of the resolution is “to affirm the speech, actions, protests, and campaigns of students advocating for Palestine as a protected right at the University of Texas at Austin,” according to its authors. The UT Senate of College Councils, which took up the resolution at a meeting on Thursday night and is expected to vote on it later this month, is an academic body with appointed representatives from each college at Texas’ flagship university.

Dueling resolutions: Student governments at more than two dozen universities have adopted the IHRA definition. The University of Texas is among them: UT’s Undergraduate Student Government — the elected undergraduate governing body — unanimously approved a resolution adopting the IHRA definition last March.

First time: Thursday’s effort is believed to be the first measure at an American university to explicitly condemn and reject the IHRA definition of antisemitism. In a 2019 executive order, former President Donald Trump adopted the definition when adding antisemitism to a list of types of discrimination prohibited by federal law. Secretary of State Tony Blinken said last year that the Biden administration “enthusiastically embraces” the IHRA definition.

Campus voice: “I’m incredibly proud of the UT Jewish community for the fight it has put up,” said Jordan Cope, a UT Austin alum who authored last year’s resolution condemning antisemitism and adopting IHRA. He called the new measure “outrageous in that it seeks to deprive the mainstream Jewish community of its right to define and defend against antisemitism.”

Trendlines: The resolution comes on the heels of a wave of anti-Israel sentiment that hit American campuses last spring during an intense round of fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Universities have considered resolutions in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for years, and in 2015, UT Austin defeated a student bill that would require the university to divest its endowment from several countries that do business in Israel.

Read the full story here.

Adam Fox celebrates his goal in the second period against the Chicago Blackhawks at Madison Square Garden on December 04, 2021 in New York City.

In a city whose seemingly never-ending sports devotion defies the unfulfilled dreams and spells of mediocrity that have come to characterize the last two decades, New York City fans nevertheless possess the stamina and market-share ability to turn any star player of talent into a national sports celebrity in a way no other fan base can.

By this criteria, Adam Fox should soon become a household name. The 23-year-old New York Rangers defenseman starts the halfway point of his third season as a star on the rise. After a promising rookie campaign, Fox surprised the hockey world by winning the Norris Trophy in his sophomore season as the league’s top defenseman — a feat previously only accomplished by Boston Bruins great Bobby Orr. The win also made Fox the first Jewish player in NHL history to receive a major individual award. Now in his third season, the Long Island native’s continued improvement has played a significant role in the Rangers’ surprise success this season.

Growing up in Jericho, a town on Nassau County’s North Shore, Fox took to hockey early, first learning to play as a 4-year-old. For many years, despite living deep in New York Islander’s territory, his father, Bruce, owned Rangers season tickets, affording Adam and his brother the frequent opportunity to attend games. The exposure also turned the brothers into committed Rangers fans.

Like much of the surrounding Nassau County, Jericho includes a sizable population of Jewish residents.

“I grew up in a pretty good Jewish community. I didn’t feel like an outsider at all for being Jewish,” Fox recalled in an interview with Jewish Insider’s Sam Zieve Cohen.

For his bar mitzvah, Fox chose, perhaps not surprisingly, a hockey-themed party. “I had these T-shirts with [hockey] sticks on them and everything.” Fox described. “I didn’t want to have any adults there. I know people like to do that.”

Off the ice, Fox sounds exactly like the nice Jewish boy his background suggests. He speaks in a thoughtful, calm and thoroughly polite manner. He describes a Jewish upbringing that included attending services and gathering for holiday meals.

“The Jewish holidays are especially big on just bringing family together and spending time,” Fox remarked. “When it comes to food, I know my family loves some brisket and some latkes. So I think those are a staple in my house.”

Read the full profile here.

Mansour Abbas, head of Israel’s conservative Islamic Raam party, speaks in his capacity as Knesset deputy speaker during a plenum session on the state budget on September 2, 2021. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP) (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)

Mansour Abbas, leader of Israel’s conservative Islamist Ra’am party, declined to call Israel an apartheid state during a virtual event with a Washington, D.C., think tank on Thursday, reports eJewishPhilanthropy‘s Ben Sales. He also voiced support for the Abraham Accords and affirmed that Israel was created as a Jewish state.

Strategic sidestepping: Abbas made history last year when his party joined Israel’s governing coalition — the first independent Arab party to do so in Israel’s history. In his talk Thursday with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Abbas at times sidestepped contentious questions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, instead emphasizing his vision of Arab-Jewish partnership within Israel based on the shared experience of citizenship.

Avoiding ‘apartheid’: “If you’re talking about the state of relations within the State of Israel, I don’t use the word ‘apartheid,’” he said, referencing a recent report by Amnesty International that accused Israel of apartheid. Critics of the report have pointed to Abbas as an example of minority rights in Israel, which he echoed. “In practice, I’m inside the coalition, and if I wanted to be in the government [as a minister], I could have been in the government… I don’t say, ‘You’re a racist,’ or ‘The state is racist,’ or ‘This is an apartheid state,’ or not apartheid.”

Community concerns: Last year, Abbas’ Ra’am split from the Arab-Israeli Joint List after failing to bridge divides with the other factions who preferred to remain in the opposition. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, “We want peace to dwell in the Holy Land between Jews and Arabs, and that the Palestinian issue will be addressed.” But he added that his top priority was the welfare of Israel’s Arab citizens, and said “we failed” because the government “did not pay attention to the situation in the mixed cities,” Arab-Jewish cities where riots erupted last May. He added, “You can’t always aspire to change the world when you can’t protect your own private world, your community.”

Disagree from within: Abbas did say that he supports the Abraham Accords, Israel’s recent normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, and added, “If there are other agreements, we will definitely support them.” More broadly, Abbas said his goal is to forge compromise from within Israel’s ideologically disparate governing coalition, which came together last year to unseat former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In that sense, he said, he’s departing from the Arab-Israeli political tradition. “The discourse of Arab parties was a discourse of opposition,” he said. “We saw ourselves always as an opposition to whatever existed — it didn’t matter who was in the government, left or right… Ra’am is coming to say, despite the disagreements, some of which are difficult, first of all, we want to create a certain partnership, and have the disagreements within the partnership.” He added, “The magic word is ‘compromise.’”

Watch the full conversation here.