Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Thursday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we interview Maryland Gov. Wes Moore about the state of the Old Line State, and chat with “Ginny & Georgia” creator Sarah Lampert. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: former Rep. Elaine Luria, Dan Loeb and Sander Gerber.
A delegation from USAID’s Partnership for Peace Fund Advisory Board was in Israel last week for meetings with partners on the ground, a USAID spokesperson confirmed to Jewish Insider. The delegation, which included George R. Salem, Farah Bdour, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, Rabbi Michael M. Cohen, Sander Gerber, Hiba Husseini, Heather Johnston, Harley Lippman, Nikolay Mladenov and Robert Wexler, met with the USAID staff who manage the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA) projects, as well as Israelis and Palestinians who are involved in the programming.
The group was in Israel to see the first 10 activities implemented through MEPPA, including a nursing hub that brings together Palestinian and Jewish nurses and TechSeeds for Peace, which engages Israelis and Palestinians from underserved communities to help them break into the region’s growing tech scene.
“Being on the ground, interfacing with NGO programs to help the Palestinian people, reinforced my conviction that U.S. support should bypass the PA [Palestinian Authority] and directly support municipalities in continued compliance with the Taylor Force Act,” Gerber told JI.
The delegation occurred at the same time as leaders of the Abraham Accords Caucus — Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) and Reps. David Trone (D-MD) and Brad Schneider (D-IL) — were meeting in Washington with officials from Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, including Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayeh Al Nahyan, along with other officials from the U.S. and abroad.
Trone said in a statement that “History makes clear that we must work together to ensure security and peace in the Middle East,” adding, “As challenges in the Middle East continue to jeopardize these goals, we will equally continue to protect our good-faith collaboration and open lines of communication. Our meeting last week focused on how we, as Members of Congress, can further these efforts at the federal level and increase participation in these productive dialogues across the region.”
Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), who is visiting the Middle East this week on a trip led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), told Jewish Insider that the group’s visit to the Abrahamic Family House interfaith complex in Abu Dhabi was “powerful.” “The complex is stunning, and the project is a strong embodiment of religious liberty, cultural coexistence and interfaith harmony,” Britt continued. “I pray that the Abrahamic Family House will help advance these cherished ideals in the region and in hearts across the globe.”
meet the gov
Wes Moore: Maryland should adopt Israel’s public-service ethos

In his first-ever “State of the State” address earlier this month, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore pledged to create a service-year program for recent high school graduates to work in public-service jobs. “These aren’t pie-in-the-sky ideas. These are evidence-based concepts, and you look at how there are best practices around not just the country, but around the globe,” Moore told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in a recent interview. “Israel has long had a well-planned model for youth engagement.”
Training teens: Moore, a Democrat, made the service-year program — which would offer job training and mentorship to participants — a keystone of his gubernatorial campaign. He told JI that seeing the success of a similar service ethos in Israel, where young people are required to either serve in the military or do a year or two of national service, proved to him that it could be done.
Leadership model: “It’s also how so much of [Israel’s] national leadership, whether it’s political leadership, business leadership, philanthropic leadership, community leadership, comes from that training and comes from that background,” Moore explained. “The thing I’m hoping to also model is the success that we’ve seen for so many people in Israel who have had a chance to participate from their military service.” A military veteran himself, Moore served as a paratrooper in Afghanistan from 2005-2006.
Hate crime spending: Moore’s proposed budget for the 2024 fiscal year includes $5 million in additional funding to law enforcement to combat hate crimes, and $1 million available to public and private schools to address and prevent hate crimes. The proposals come as Maryland’s Jewish community, particularly the heavily Jewish Montgomery County outside of Washington, D.C., has faced a recent surge in antisemitic incidents.
No home for hate: “We’re watching not just a higher frequency of attacks, and when I say attacks, I mean both these physical and also these psychological, these attacks of intimidation that we’ve seen against the Jewish community,” Moore said. “We’ve seen not just a higher level of propensity but also the intensity, they’re more brazen. And I think that the thing that we have to be able to show is that hate does not and will not have a home in our Maryland.”