Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Monday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy about his foreign policy positions, and interview filmmaker Ari Folman about his newest work at Jerusalem’s Tower of David Museum. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Spencer Horwitz, Ambassador Amir Hayek and Geri Mack.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf is in Israel today to kick off a visit that will include additional stops in Jordan and the West Bank. Leaf is slated to meet with a range of Israeli and Palestinian government and civil society leaders.
Leaf’s visit comes as discussions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition and the opposition, led by former Prime Minister Yair Lapid and former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, are on the verge of collapse after the parties came to an impasse last week over the appointment of judges as part of the country’s judicial reform.
Netanyahu told his cabinet yesterday that he intends to proceed with the judicial reforms “in a measured way,” a move that Lapid cautioned “will critically harm the economy, endanger security and rip the Israeli people to shreds.” The New Israeli Shekel dropped 1.6% following Netanyahu’s announcement, reaching 3.61 NIS per dollar after a brief rebound last week.
The effort comes as Netanyahu’s cabinet approved a measure to alleviate the red tape on the construction of new settlements, prompting a statement of opposition from the State Department in Washington that pushed back against “unilateral actions that make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve and are an obstacle to peace.” The cabinet measure also shifted housing approval to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who holds a position in the Defense Ministry and whose participation in the current government was contingent upon assuming control of West Bank settlement planning.
While the latest Israeli moves are expected to be broached in Leaf’s meetings, her time in the Middle East is expected to focus more broadly on Israel’s regional standing and efforts to expand the Abraham Accords, following recent trips to Saudi Arabia by Secretary of State Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, the White House’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. A notice from the State Department announcing Leaf’s trip notes that discussions will include “expanding and deepening Israel’s integration into the Middle East and constraining Iran’s destabilizing behavior.”
Over the weekend, The New York Times looked at what it describes as a “long-shot bid” to broker relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, with several American officials telling the Times that “they believe a confluence of factors have created a window of time — perhaps before next year when the American election cycle intensifies — to pull together a possible accord.”
on the trail
Ramaswamy alleges ‘open questions’ over Zelensky’s ‘treatment of religious minorities,’ including Jews

Vivek Ramaswamy, a long-shot Republican presidential candidate whose unorthodox views have drawn headlines, suggested without evidence on Thursday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had mistreated Jews and other religious minorities amid Russia’s invasion. “I’m going to say some things that maybe are outside of the establishment-approved Overton Window here, but I think we have gotten into this weird habit of holding out Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky as some paragon of democratic ideals,” he told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel in an interview. “I would just say that there are open questions about his treatment of religious minorities, including but not limited to Jews in Ukraine, that I think should be among the reasons we should stop short of holding him out as some sort of hero.”
No examples: The 37-year-old “anti-woke” crusader was, however, unable to cite any specific examples to support his claim. Instead, Ramaswamy criticized Zelensky for dissolving Ukrainian political parties with ties to Russia and combining national TV channels into one state platform under martial law. “That much I’m on firm factual footing on,” he said, insisting that such measures alone “create the risks for” anti-Jewish bigotry.
Ukraine position: Attention-grabbing assertions are typical of the voluble Republican candidate now seeking the nomination in an increasingly crowded field. In recent weeks, Ramaswamy, an author and entrepreneur currently polling in the low single digits, has positioned himself among just a few primary rivals to have expressed skepticism of supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. He has pledged to cease U.S. funding for Ukraine and proposed a deal in which Russia would agree to end its military alliance with China and withdraw its nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad, among other concessions. Meanwhile, the agreement would “cede most of” the occupied Donbas region in eastern Ukraine to Russia and impose “a permanent moratorium on Ukraine joining NATO.”
Read the full interview with Ramaswamy here.
Elsewhere: Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, said, “I have a lot of Jewish friends. They say that Zelensky is not Jewish, that he is a disgrace to the Jewish people.”