Daily Kickoff
Good Friday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the challenges facing LGBTQ Jews during this month’s Pride celebrations, talk to AJC CEO Ted Deutch about next week’s Global Forum in Washington and report on a push by Jewish groups for an increase in funding to the Office of Civil Rights. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, Ashlee Margolis and Rachel Smolkin.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider, eJewishPhilanthropy and The Circuit stories, including: Israeli students in U.S. warn peers against studying at American campuses; In social media war against AIPAC, Rep. Mark Pocan advances antisemitic tropes; Inside the fierce debate over aid to Gaza. Print the latest edition here.
July 24 is the date for the joint session of Congress with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a statement released by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
The previously reported date – June 13 – was one on which President Joe Biden was scheduled to be out of the country. Netanyahu’s office rejected it because American Jews will still be celebrating Shavuot that day; his office has yet to confirm the new date.
Netanyahu now has more than a month to prepare for his speech — likely with assistance from Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, his closest confidant, and diplomatic adviser Ophir Falk — a high-stakes address that “will present the truth about our just war,” as the prime minister said in a statement accepting the invitation to Congress last week.
Democrats in Congress remain split on whether they will attend the speech, while some who plan to attend have suggested they will disrupt portions of the address.
Netanyahu will likely be back to his “fully right-wing” government by the time he’s in D.C., as Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz’s June 8 deadline to leave the government is fast approaching. Gantz previously threatened to leave the war cabinet unless the prime minister outlined a plan for a postwar Gaza. Read more below.
In political news closer to home: An embattled Squad member, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), is facing growing political problems of her own back home. A group of more than 30 St. Louis-area rabbis endorsed St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, Bush’s primary challenger, on Wednesday. The group described Bell as a supportive ally who “immediately reached out to console us following Oct. 7, committed to being a voice for our community and made clear he was our much-needed ally.”
Bush, meanwhile, has a “long track record of anti-Israel votes [and] has continually fanned the flames with the most outrageous smears of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ as it has fought to defeat the terrorists,” the Jewish leaders said, accusing her of ignoring the Jewish community’s outreach.
Bush also faces growing spending from AIPAC’s super PAC on behalf of Bell. The United Democracy Project ad campaign announced hitting the $1 million mark on pro-Bell ads as of yesterday.
The Biden Victory Fund is hosting a reelection fundraiser with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff on Tuesday night in New York City at the new Hudson Yards location of Russ & Daughters, the iconic Jewish appetizing shop and cafe, Jewish Insider has learned. It’s not an explicitly Jewish event, but the host committee includes several well-known Jewish Democrats, among them gun violence prevention advocate Fred Guttenberg and former White House Jewish liaison Jarrod Bernstein. (Plus, one of the hosts pointed out, guests will be enjoying blintzes on the eve of Shavuot, a holiday where dairy is traditionally served.)
The fundraiser is hosted by Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper, cousins and fourth-generation co-owners of the restaurant, and Andrew Weinstein, a prominent Democratic fundraiser and lawyer who also serves as a public delegate to the United Nations, where he has been spearheading programming on antisemitism in recent months.
‘exclusionary inclusion’
‘The call is coming from inside the house’: Why queer Jews fear discrimination at Pride events this year’

As millions of LGBTQ people and their allies make plans to take part in Pride parades around the country this month, many Jewish members of the queer community are skeptical about joining the celebrations, fearful that their Jewish identity will lead them to face exclusion from a community that has for decades argued forcefully about the power of inclusion, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Don’t hide: In recent weeks, Josh Maxey, executive director of Bet Mishpachah, an LGBTQ synagogue in Washington, D.C., has been fielding calls from queer Jews ahead of this weekend’s Capital Pride celebration, asking if they should take off their yarmulkes or their Stars of David, or if they should skip the festivities altogether. “I’ve been telling folks that you do what makes you feel comfortable, but know that the Jewish community is behind you, and we have each other’s backs,” Maxey told JI. “This is not a moment in time where we should feel, as a Jewish community, we need to go into hiding.”
Anti-Israel identity: A strong anti-Zionist bent existed in corners of the LGBTQ community prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, but it has exploded in the months since. Organizations and activist groups that had never or only occasionally weighed in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have now made opposition to the war, and to Israel, a key part of their identity.
Acting out: At the start of Pride month in June, ACT UP NY, an iconic anti-AIDS group, tore down a poster of Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) that was hanging in Trailblazers Park, a public space in Fire Island that opened two years ago to honor LGBTQ heroes. The group called Torres, a vocal supporter of Israel and one of the first two gay Black men to serve in Congress, “anything but a trailblazer.”
Not proud: “I find it truly ironic that there are anti-Israel LGBTQ activists who are essentially telling Jews to be in the closet about their Judaism and Zionism, to be ashamed of their Judaism, and that to me is not pride. That’s a perversion of pride. That’s the antithesis of what the LGBTQ community should stand for,” Torres told JI on Thursday.