Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, which comes a day after President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will not seek reelection. We look at Vice President Kamala Harris’ record on Israel, talk to Jewish leaders about Biden’s legacy and report on a Capitol Hill push to redesignate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization following Friday’s attack on Tel Aviv. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Safra Catz and Albert Allaham.
What We’re Watching
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on his way to Washington today ahead of his address on Wednesday to a joint session of Congress. His meeting with President Joe Biden, originally slated for Monday, was moved to Tuesday. More below on Netanyahu’s trip from Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov.
- National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is slated to meet today with some of the hostage families who are in town ahead of Netanyahu’s address later this week.
- Vice President Kamala Harris will make her first public appearance since Biden’s announcement that he was ending his reelection campaign. Harris is set to speak this morning at a White House event honoring NCAA championship teams.
- Elsewhere in Washington, State Department Senior Advisor Ludo Hood is speaking at a Vandenberg Coalition event titled “A Weapon Against the West: Antisemitism and its anti-American Objectives.”
- U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle will appear at a House Oversight Committee hearing today on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump earlier this month.
What You Should Know
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress was expected to be the talk of the town — both in Washington and Jerusalem, Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss reports.
Instead, it’s been overshadowed by a series of events in the U.S. and the broader Middle East, following President Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he will not seek reelection and a major Israeli strike on the Red Sea port of Hodeidah in Yemen on Saturday. Netanyahu said on Saturday that the strike targeted a facility that “was used for military purposes, it was used as an entry point for deadly weapons supplied to the Houthis by Iran.”
The strike on the Hodeidah port was in retaliation for the Houthi drone strike that killed an Israeli civilian, a recent immigrant from Belarus, in Tel Aviv a day prior.
The Tel Aviv attack, which occurred several hundred yards from the U.S. Embassy Branch Office, prompted calls from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill for the White House to redesignate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Read more on Capitol Hill’s response here.
The attack is likely to prompt a renewed conversation over the designation. The Biden administration had revoked the designation, first assigned by former President Donald Trump, shortly after Biden took office.
An Israeli defense official told JI that the reprisal strike on the Hodeidah port was “completely an Israel strike,” but “because of the location and nature of the targets, we did update our U.S. counterparts.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin both Friday and Saturday.
No further UAVs from Yemen have entered Israeli airspace since Friday, but the IDF remains on alert and on Sunday intercepted a surface-to-surface missile that approached Israeli territory from Yemen. A Houthi spokesperson described the situation as “open war” with Israel. The Israeli defense official, meanwhile, asserted to us that “We are capable of defending ourselves against anyone who decides to attack us.”
leftward lean
Kamala Harris’ record on Israel to the left of President Biden

While Vice President Kamala Harris has not yet earned the backing of Democratic leadership in Congress, now that President Joe Biden has stepped aside she looks like the presidential candidate to beat ahead of the party’s convention next month — bringing renewed attention to her record on issues of concern to the Jewish community, including her views on Israel and her record on speaking out against antisemitism. In recent months, Harris has been a tougher critic of Israel than President Joe Biden, who frequently describes himself as a Zionist, and as a voice more sympathetic to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Where she stands: Three days after the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, she sat with Biden as he spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She was also present — virtually — for a meeting with the White House national security team after Israel responded to a barrage of missiles fired from Iran in April. But Harris is the only senior member of the Biden administration’s foreign policy not to have traveled to Israel after Oct. 7, making her an outlier alongside Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Backing Kamala: As endorsements poured in for Harris from Capitol Hill on Sunday, prominent pro-Israel lawmakers supporting Harris defended her record on Israel and antisemitism, amid questions about whether she would take a more critical stance than Biden, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.