Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how Qatar’s approach to talks over the release of the hostages is complicating diplomatic efforts to secure the remaining hostages’ freedom, and report from yesterday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on UNRWA. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Larry Summers, Bill Maher, Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield and reported new owner of the Baltimore Orioles David Rubenstein.
It’s all too easy to conclude that, in our age of political extremes, no amount of outlandish rhetoric or political scandal can sink a politician’s career. But even as the public’s acceptance of bad behavior has grown, there are still some lines that are hard to cross and survive — criminal investigations, antisemitic associations and 9/11 denial among them.
This week, two of the most prominent members of the hard-left Squad are testing that proposition, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) is now under criminal investigation over her alleged misspending of federal security money. The far-left lawmaker who has led the charge to “defund the police” is now under scrutiny over allegations that she profited over her own extensive personal security arrangements.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), already facing political heat for pleading guilty to a misdemeanor for pulling a fire alarm in a House office building, is now revealed to have published poems and writings featuring disturbing conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks on his personal blog before being elected to Congress. (Bowman, in responding to the reporting, said he regretted his years-old posts.)
Bowman alsorecently lauded anti-Israel activist Norman Finkelstein, who praised the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, before apologizing and claiming he was unaware of Finkelstein’s background.
Both Bush and Bowmanare facing formidable primary challengers, an early sign of their vulnerability given the power of incumbency.
Bush is running against Wesley Bell, a progressive Black prosecutor in St. Louis County with close ties to racial justice reformers. Bell is well-positioned to run as a progressive without the ethical and ideological baggage that Bush represents. He already raised nearly $500,000 at the end of 2023 for his campaign, a sign he’ll have significant resources and local support.
Bowman is facing popular Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who already announced raising a whopping $1.4 million for his campaign against Bowman. The big wild card in the primary is the likelihood that redistricting tweaks the current congressional lines of the New York map. Bowman’s current district is in the Bronx and Westchester; his scandals threaten to cost him particularly in the suburban part of the district.
In recent elections, many of the anti-Israel candidates sharing the hard-left views of the Squad faced political problems on other issues that underscored their extremism. Many candidates’ anti-Israel activism proved to be a signal of other radical or outlandish views and behavior that proved toxic in a primary.
That’s shaping up to be the case with Bush and Bowman. Denying key parts of the 9/11 terror attacks is politically poisonous in New York City and its suburbs, an area filled with survivors and families of victims. Facing criminal charges is usually a political death knell (unless you’re former President Donald Trump). Antisemitism is still politically toxic, especially in districts with significant Jewish constituencies.
There’s still a long way to go until the primaries take place: New York’s primaries are scheduled for June, while Missouri is holding them in August. But if political history is any guide, it’s likely the Squad’s representation will be on the decline this year — a result of their own self-inflicted scandals and ideological extremism. Read more here on the challenges facing Bush and Bowman.
unrwa’s undoing
Across a broad spectrum, lawmakers open to replacing UNRWA

A broad spectrum of lawmakers indicated at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday that they’re open to pursuing plans to dissolve and replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the wake of revelations that the organization’s employees were involved in the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, likely foreshadowing further efforts in the House to wind down the scandal-plagued U.N. agency, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Resumption: But some Democrats argued that humanitarian funding for Gaza needs to be continued through UNRWA or some other mechanism in the near term, before a full-scale overhaul. The comments could preview expanded pressure that the Biden administration might face to move quickly to reinstate aid to the troubled U.N. agency.
What they’re saying: Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), the ranking member of the Oversight and Accountability subcommittee, which co-hosted the hearing, said he has “real concerns” about UNRWA, acknowledging that there is a “need for substantial reform, or to find a successor organization to fulfill the functions” that UNRWA performs. But Crow insisted that the U.S. must find a channel to swiftly resume the flow of humanitarian goods to Gaza — whether through UNRWA itself or an alternative organization. He also said that the actions of the dozen UNRWA employees implicated in the Oct. 7 attack shouldn’t reflect on the entire organization. A Wall Street Journal report published Monday cited Israeli intelligence suggesting that 10% of UNRWA employees in Gaza were members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Wide-reaching: Republicans favored a more aggressive approach to the U.N. agency, pushing legislation to cut off UNRWA permanently, and highlighting widespread, long-standing issues inside the agency, which they argued shows that the rot inside UNRWA goes far deeper than the dozen employees who directly participated in the Oct. 7 attack. “Going far beyond the revelations of the last week, there has long been massive and irrefutable evidence of UNRWA’s extensive connivance, complicity and cooperation in Hamas’ antisemitic genocidal hate campaign,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the chair of the International Organizations subcommittee, argued.
Read the full story here.
Foggy Bottom report: The State Department yesterday offered the clearest answer yet as to how U.S. assistance to UNRWA will be affected by the pause in funding announced last week. While $300,000 that the U.S. had been set to donate has been suspended, the U.S. has already given UNRWA $121 million since the start of the fiscal year in October. The $300,000 was all that remained of U.S. funds allocated to the agency in the short-term budget bill passed by Congress in the fall. Any further funds would have to be approved in the supplemental appropriations bill President Joe Biden has been urging Congress to pass since October, or in a full appropriations package.
Pink slip: Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Claudia Tenney (R-NY) joined Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) as original co-signers of a letter calling for the U.N. secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, and the head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, to resign. The letter is now circulating on the Hill for additional signatories.