Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Wednesday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on upcoming high-stakes Senate primaries and cover a Holocaust remembrance event held on Capitol Hill. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Kathy Manning, Bernie Moreno and Sen. Mitt Romney.
The biggest ideological divides in our politics are increasingly taking place within the Democratic and Republican parties as much as between them.
Early developments in several of the most closely watched Senate races only underscore the gulf between mainstream Republicans and Democrats and populist progressives and right-wingers — and what that means for key issues facing the Jewish community.
In Pennsylvania, GOP state Sen. Doug Mastriano is seriously considering running for the Senate, just months after losing the governor’s race by 15 points in a swing state. Mastriano faced bipartisan criticism for his ties to the founder of the social media platform Gab, widely seen as a cesspool of bigotry and antisemitism.
As Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel has reported, Mastriano has misappropriated Jewish iconography to advance his political aims. At his campaign launch event last year, Mastriano appeared with a pastor dressed in a tallit who blew the shofar. He also has a history of invoking the Holocaust when talking about his political opponents and policies with which he disagrees.
Republican leaders are already rallying around the potential candidacy of businessman David McCormick, a mainstream Republican who narrowly lost last year’s Senate primary to Dr. Mehmet Oz.
In Montana, there’s a growing possibility of a primary clash between GOP Rep. Matt Rosendale, who introduced legislation barring American support for Ukraine until the U.S.-Mexico border is secure, and a candidate preferred by the party establishment (likely businessman and military veteran Tim Sheehy).
Rosendale recently was roundly criticized for posing for a photo with neo-Nazis outside the Capitol — a move for which he quickly apologized.
He raised just $127,000 for his reelection campaign, a sign that he’s not generating much enthusiasm either from grassroots donors or big donors alike. Rosendale was one of the final GOP holdouts against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
But Rosendale has been a longtime ally of the well-funded anti-tax group Club for Growth, which has signaled it would support him if he runs for Senate.
And on the Democratic side, in California’s high-stakes Senate primary, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) has been an occasional antagonist to pro-Israel groups — in contrast to the more-supportive records of Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Katie Porter (D-CA).
As the lone lawmaker to oppose military intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11, Lee has been a long-standing critic of American foreign policy from the left.
She has signed on to legislation that would place restrictions on U.S. aid to Israel and was among a small group of House members who voted against a resolution condemning the BDS movement.
In Washington, USAID Administrator Samantha Power and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are back on the Hill today for budget hearings with the Senate Appropriations Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, respectively.
Over in Israel, the three-day Extraordinary World Zionist Congress (yes, that’s what it’s really called) begins today at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, with more than 2,000 Jewish leaders and youths from Israel and around the world set to attend to mark the 75th anniversary of the State of Israel and the 125th anniversary of the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.
Topics to be discussed at the event include strengthening the relationship between the various segments of the Jewish people, and the challenges of Zionism today, the World Zionist Organization said. Israeli President Isaac Herzog is scheduled to attend.
CALLING OUT
Manning: ‘Double standard’ involved in some colleagues’ criticisms of Israel’s judicial reform

Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) said on Tuesday evening that double standards may be involved in some of her colleagues’ criticisms of Israel’s judicial reform efforts, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Letter writing: Manning, speaking at a Zoom event with Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania last night, told audience members that she’d been asked to sign onto several of the letters criticizing the judicial reform effort. “One of the things that I think to myself is… [Indian] Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi is taking actions that I think are antidemocratic in his country; nobody’s asked me to sign on[to] a letter [telling] him what to do. There’s a lot of activity going on in France, [President Emmanuel] Macron is very unpopular right now for what he’s doing for social security; nobody’s asked me to sign on[to] a letter telling Emmanuel Macron what he should be doing in his country,” Manning said.
Double standard: “So I think that the double standard is something that we have to be thinking about on a regular basis,” she continued.
Israeli democracy: Manning added that the protests against the judicial overhaul in Israel, rather than validating criticisms of the Jewish state, demonstrate it is a “remarkably thriving democracy.” “We’ve seen, what, eight weeks of protest now? Hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets to maintain a democracy,” she noted. “No one has been killed. No one has been significantly injured. There is an incredible democracy in Israel, and anybody who’s calling it out — using this as an excuse to demonize Israel is using a double standard.”