Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Thursday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the fallout from last week’s Ukraine letter from progressives in the House, and we get the details on the conversation between Elon Musk and top anti-hate groups. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Axios’ Josh Kraushaar, Dan Snyder and Amb. Ron Prosor.
Nearly 20 House lawmakers are urging the Biden administration to support calling a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate Iran’s human rights abuses, including its crackdown on nationwide protests and broader violations of women’s rights, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod has learned.
Reps. Kathy Manning (D-NC) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) led 15 colleagues on a communique, which will be sent to Secretary of State Tony Blinken and U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Thursday, calling on the “U.S., the UN, and the international community” “to work together to shine a light on serious human rights violations in Iran.”
Vice President Kamala Harrisannounced yesterday that the U.S. intends to have Iran removed from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. “Given Iran’s brutal crackdown on women and girls protesting peacefully for their rights, Iran is unfit to serve on this Commission,” Harris tweeted. “To the protestors: we see you and we hear you.”
With 93% of the votes counted in Israel’s general election, there is little change to the distribution of mandates. According to the current count, Likud will receive 31 seats, Yesh Atid 24 and Religious Zionism 14 — though the far-right party has been further strengthened by soldiers’ votes and could gain an extra seat. And on the left, the Meretz party has dropped further below the electoral threshold, weakening hopes that it will make it into the Knesset.
The Biden administration is unlikely to engage with Itamar Ben-Gvir, an outspoken and controversial leader of the Religious Zionism faction, two officials toldAxios.
State Department spokesperson Ned Pricesaid yesterday that while it was too early to speculate about the composition of the coalition, “What I would say is that what makes this relationship so strong and what has made it so strong since Israel’s independence to the present day is that this is a relationship that has always been based on our shared interests, but importantly our shared values. And we hope that all Israeli government officials will continue to share the values of an open, democratic society, including tolerance and respect for all in civil society, particularly for minority groups.”
“I don’t think a formal decision is made because governments never decide unless they need to, as [the] coalition has not yet been formed [in Israel],” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s David Makovsky emailed us last night. “Yet I do believe [the U.S.] will not sit with him as he was convicted by an Israeli court for incitement. One shouldn’t forget the U.S. didn’t sit for 15 years with Ariel Sharon after the Lebanon War even though he was a cabinet minister for part of that time.”
A wave of terror attacks against Israelis continued today, as three police officers were wounded in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem, prompting Ben-Gvir to tweet, “the time has come to restore security to the streets, the time has come to make order here, the time has come for a landlord here, the time has come that a terrorist who goes out to carry out an attack is eliminated!”
Happening tonight: Peter Thiel, who has put millions behind Blake Masters’ Arizona Senate campaign, is hosting a fundraiser for the Republican candidate tonight in Phoenix.
podcast playback
Josh Kraushaar previews the midterms on Jewish Insider’s ‘Limited Liability Podcast’

Josh Kraushaar
With Congress set for a shakeup in next week’s midterm elections, experts are predicting a “red wave” that could see Republicans winning office across the board, including in historically blue states. Axios senior political correspondent Josh Kraushaar, joins Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” this week to analyze the many uncertainties on the ballot.
Toss-up territory: “The Senate is a toss-up with, I think it’s no worse than 50/50 for Republicans, but the trend lines and the wind and the momentum is certainly at the Republican Party’s back right now. Now, the problem for Republicans in the Senate is that they nominated some pretty extreme out-of-the-mainstream characters, whether you’re talking about Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, Blake Masters in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia. So those are tests of whether the environment matters more, whether people just want to check, they don’t care about the candidates, they’re voting like this is a parliamentary system and they want Republicans to be in charge of the Senate, or whether these not-ready-for-primetime candidates will truly cost the Republicans either the Senate or at the very least some valuable seats in expanding their majority.”
On the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race: “Extremism does not sell politically in a general election. And whether you’re a far-right Republican like [Doug] Mastriano, or you’re a far-left candidate like Tina Kotek in Oregon or Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin, you are paying a big political price — you’re not winning swing voters, you’re not winning people in the middle. So yeah, I mean, look, Mastriano has got the Republican right-wing base really excited, but he’s not spending much money, he’s not getting help from outside Republican groups. He’s said a whole bunch of antisemitic [things], or has been at least tied to a lot of antisemitic organizations, or Gab and other groups that are very extreme, and that is unacceptable for a lot of swing voters of the Philly suburbs [and] across the state of Pennsylvania… I expect a whole lot of people who vote for [Josh] Shapiro for governor and vote for Dr. [Mehmet] Oz for the [Pennsylvania] Senate race.”
Zeldin’s odds: “Look, I think [Lee] Zeldin is the underdog [in the New York governor’s race]. I’d be surprised if he wins. Yes, he’s a Trump Republican, but he doesn’t necessarily come across that way to your average New Yorker. He is one of the few Jewish Republicans in Congress, lives in the Long Island suburbs — he certainly was a leading advocate for Trump during, I guess it was the first impeachment, where he was front and center defending the president — but he doesn’t come across like [Ohio Rep.] Jim Jordan, he doesn’t come across like [Georgia Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene, and that’s part of his political appeal, that he’s not alienating the base, but he’s running on the issues that a lot of New Yorkers care about. And one of the interesting things about this campaign, guys, is that he is spending more time in New York City than any other Republican maybe since [former New York Mayor Rudy] Giuliani.”