Daily Kickoff
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the broader regional implications of the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, report on a last-ditch appeal by anti-Israel activists removed from protesting outside Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s home and have the exclusive on a GOP House threat to revoke federal funding for the University of California San Francisco’s health facilities. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. Lindsey Graham, Bill Ackman and Jessica Dean.
What We’re Watching
- The Senate Appropriations Committee is holding its markup this morning on defense, education and homeland security. We expect funding for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights as well as the National Security Grant Program to be discussed in the hearing.
- A recount is underway today in the GOP primary in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, where Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) trails state Sen. John McGuire by less than 1% of the votes.
What You Should Know
Arizona officials are still counting ballots from Tuesday’s primaries — and many key races haven’t yet been officially called — but the trajectory of the contests is becoming clear, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
Kari Lake prevailed in the Senate GOP primary, but her underwhelming 55% showing against Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is a sign she’s failed to unite the Republican Party behind her candidacy. She’ll be facing off in a hotly contested general election against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
Pro-Israel voters have reason to be optimistic about the returns in Gallego’s now-open 3rd Congressional District House seat, where former Phoenix Council Member Yassamin Ansari is narrowly leading Raquel Terán, a former state legislator. With 86% of estimated votes in, Ansari leads Terán by three points, 46-43%.
Both Democrats boast progressive records, but Ansari campaigned as a supporter of Israel, while Terán held a critical stance towards the Jewish state. The pro-Israel group Democratic Majority For Israel (DMFI) endorsed Ansari, and spent over $250,000 on ads boosting her candidacy.
In Arizona’s 8th District, centered in suburban Phoenix, attorney and former state attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh was declared the winner over Blake Masters. With most of the vote counted, Hamadeh leads Masters, 30-25%. The race, one of the nastiest primaries in the country, featured scathing attacks against Hamadeh’s Muslim faith from the Masters campaign. Hamadeh, the child of Syrian immigrants, campaigned as a strong supporter of Israel and the Jewish community, with 30% to Masters’ 25%.
And in Arizona’s 1st District Democratic primary race, where the winner will face swing-district Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), physician and state Rep. Amish Shah narrowly leads former state party chairman Andrei Cherny, 24-21%, with about one-quarter of the vote yet to be counted. Former broadcast journalist Marlene Galán-Woods is within striking distance in third place.
Meanwhile, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) also faced a setback in his effort to defeat the eight House Republicans who backed his ouster. Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), one of the eight GOP insurgents, comfortably prevailed in his primary with about 80% of the primary vote.
Tennessee is holding its primaries today, and one congressional primary, in the state’s Nashville-area 5th District, is worth watching. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), a Freedom Caucus-aligned lawmaker, is facing a well-funded primary challenge from Nashville Metro Councilwoman Courtney Johnston, a more moderate candidate with close ties to the city’s business community.
legal battle
Anti-Israel demonstrators challenge removal of encampment outside Blinken’s home
The recent removal of a sprawling protest encampment situated for six months outside Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s home in Northern Virginia is facing a last-ditch legal challenge from some organizers of the anti-Israel demonstration, which was cleared by state authorities on Friday, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Reversal request: A group of leading protesters on Tuesday filed a motion in Arlington Circuit Court to schedule an “expedited hearing” on a request for an injunction to block the removal of the encampment, even as it had already been dismantled. The organizers — Hazami Barmada, Michael A. Beer, Corey Walden and Nadia McGeough — are alleging “ongoing violations of their constitutional rights” and claim that the encampment was cleared before an effort to seek injunctive relief was heard by a judge, according to the new motion shared with JI by their attorney, Sam Burgan, on Wednesday.
assassinations analysis
Killing top Hamas, Hezbollah terrorists unlikely to have major impact on wider war – experts
The assassinations of Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut and Hamas’ political bureau leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran showed Israel’s long arm extending across the Middle East, but they are unlikely to change the status quo in the Gaza war and the risk of escalation across the Lebanon border is likely minimal, experts told Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov today. The experts also predicted minimal ramifications to the ongoing talks for the release of over 100 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, which Israeli and American officials said they plan to continue despite the assassination of Haniyeh, who was the terror group’s lead negotiator. Israel has not taken responsibility for killing Haniyeh.
Sinwar’s say: Yoni Ben-Menachem, senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and a veteran Arab affairs reporter, argued that Haniyeh’s death would not make a major difference in the war’s outcome because the Qatar-based Hamas official “doesn’t have any say. The one leading the war and the one controlling the hostages, holding them and deciding what will happen to them is [Hamas Gaza leader] Yahya Sinwar.”
Deal or no deal: Pushing back on critics who allege that Israel is dragging out cease-fire talks, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said on Wednesday that he continues to doubt that Hamas is actually interested in a deal and sees the terror group as the primary obstacle. He also said that a U.S.-Saudi agreement and Saudi-Israel normalization deal could be finalized quickly, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
on the hill
U.S. lawmakers wary of regional unrest after Haniyeh assassination
The strike that killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader, in Tehran on Wednesday morning sparked mixed reactions on Capitol Hill, with legislators supportive of efforts to remove Hamas leadership while expressing concern about regional tensions escalating into a broader war, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report. Haniyeh, who had traveled to Iran for the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian, was killed in a strike on the building in which he was staying. Hamas blamed Israel for the pinpoint attack, while Israeli officials have not acknowledged involvement.
War worries: Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told JI that he was among those who worried about what the strike would mean for efforts to turn down the temperature in the region. “I’m worried about expanding this war,” Durbin said. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, felt similarly. “It increases, dramatically, the pressure in the region. I think we’re doing all we can to try to mitigate an escalation, and that’s the key thing we have to worry about now,” Reed said.
Read the full story herewith additional comments from Sens. Peter Welch (D-VT), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), James Lankford (R-OK), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Ted Budd (R-NC) and Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL).
Prime-time message: In an address to Israeli citizens last night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that there are “challenging days ahead of us,” as the country faces threats on multiple fronts, Jewish Insider’s Tamara Zieve reports.
ad blitz
New ad campaign accuses Schumer of obstructing antisemitism bill
A multimillion-dollar ad campaign that kicked off this week is targeting Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) over the delay in moving to advance a major bill aimed at addressing a recent surge in campus antisemitism. In a series of hard-hitting digital video ads that began airing on Monday in multiple media markets, Schumer is accused of obstructing the bill, called the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which passed the House in May but has since remained stalled in the upper chamber, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
The message: “The U.S. House has already passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act with overwhelming bipartisan support,” the narrator of a 30-second spot intones over footage of protesters chanting anti-Israel slogans. “Sen. Chuck Schumer proclaims he stands tall against antisemitism, while in reality, Schumer alone blocks it from coming to a vote.” The ads are funded by a political advocacy group called the Florence Avenue Initiative, according to a disclaimer listed at the end of the videos. The group could not be reached for comment and additional details did not appear to be publicly available this week.
Read the full story here.
exclusive
House Republicans question UC San Francisco over ‘antisemitic harassment and intimidation’
Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised concerns on Wednesday about “antisemitic harassment and intimidation” at the University of California San Francisco and its health facilities, threatening to revoke federal funding from the institution, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What they said: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Reps. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who chair subcommittees, highlighted encampments, graffiti and other antisemitic activity they said have created a hostile environment for Jewish healthcare workers and patients and the school’s alleged failure to respond adequately to antisemitism complaints.
tackling tehran
Graham introduces war powers bill to strike Iran’s nuclear program
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced a war powers resolution on Wednesday aimed at pushing the U.S. to take action to curb Iran’s expanding nuclear program. Graham said that the Authorization for Use of Military Force would “be triggered if the president determines that Iran possesses uranium [that is] enriched to the weapons-grade level, a nuclear warhead or were to possess a delivery vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear device against Israel or other allies or the United States,” Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report.
Red lines: He unveiled the resolution just ahead of the Senate’s August recess, with plans to attempt to force Senate floor consideration when lawmakers return in September. “Iran will keep going until somebody tells them to stop. It’s time to put red lines on their nuclear program and enforce them,” Graham said during a press conference at the Capitol.
Worthy Reads
Nothing to Josh About: The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg spotlights the outsized criticism that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — who is Jewish — has faced for his comments about Israel and campus protests, which fall in line with comments made by others under consideration for the VP nomination who are not Jewish and have not faced the same scrutiny. “There are no viral memes against ‘Killer Kelly’ or ‘War-Crimes Walz.’ Either the activists involved are extraordinarily lazy and never thought to investigate the other VP possibilities, or they think that Jews are uniquely untrustworthy. Seen in context, the ‘Genocide Josh’ campaign and its tendentious reading of Shapiro’s record look less like a legitimate political critique than a rigged litmus test imposed on the Jewish lawmaker alone. … It has become hard to escape the conclusion that some of the activists imposing this inquisition have a problem not just with Israel or Zionism but with Jews, who they assume are serving a foreign power, no matter what they’ve actually said or done. Historically, this is nothing new. The white-nationalist right has long sought to stigmatize American Jews as subversive and exclude them from political life, arguing that Jews are loyal only to their own kind. In this case, however, some on the progressive left are the ones treating Jewish identity as inherently suspect and holding Jewish political actors to a different standard than their non-Jewish counterparts.” [TheAtlantic]
Show of Force: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius considers how the assassinations of top Hamas officials could affect U.S. mediation efforts. “The American-Israeli alliance has often been strained over peace issues, but rarely more than now. The day before the Haniyeh killing, Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr was slain in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut carried out in response to the attack Saturday that killed 12 children on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The message was that Israel can strike anyone, anywhere — but will this show of force intimidate Israel’s allies into quiescence? I doubt it. Will it draw the United States into a catastrophic war? Maybe. But for diplomats engaged in shuttle diplomacy, the only gear is ‘forward.’” [WashPost]
New Phase: The Times of Israel’s David Horovitz suggests that with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Israel’s war with Iran and its proxies has entered a new dimension. “The Hamas of a few months ago, needless to say, would have been firing barrages at Tel Aviv for the past few hours. That danger may not have entirely passed, but Hamas’s rocket potency has immensely receded. As was the case at the very start of the war, when US President Joe Biden warned Iran and Israel’s other enemies against getting involved and dispatched aircraft carriers to underline his intent — with partial success — the stance and actions of the United States will likely be crucial as Iran weighs its options. As things stand, Israel is already a near-pariah. … As Israel belatedly moves to break the stranglehold Iran has been gradually building and tightening around us, the only path out of this uncharted territory requires not only peerless strategic wisdom and military tenacity, but also the kind of internal cohesion that has been so dangerously absent here.” [TOI]
Word on the Street
A new poll from Public Opinion Strategies, first reported by Politico, found Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump running neck-and-neck in five swing states…
Trump questioned Harris’ Black identity in a combative and chaotic interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference on Wednesday in Chicago. “She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went, she became a Black person,” Trump said. In the Q&A, Trump also compared law enforcement’s treatment of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill rioters to the pro-Hamas supporters during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last week. “You saw the people who were protesting and spraying these incredible monuments … with red spray paint that will never come off. They viciously attacked our government, attacked our police… What’s going to happen to those people?” Trump said…
The Harris presidential campaign is pushing Wall Street donors to give to the campaign in the coming days before Harris selects a running mate, citing a Securities and Exchange Commission rule regarding donations to state officeholders; the behind-the-scenes chatter is being seen as an indication that Harris intends to select a governor to join her on the ticket…
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro met with representatives from the Harris campaign as part of the vice presidential vetting process…
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)are launching a probe into ties between Phil Gordon, Harris’ national security advisor, and a State Department official who had been part of an alleged Iranian-influence network…
There are some small signs that new leadership at the Washington Post is becoming more responsive to concerns about its Middle East coverage. After the Israeli Embassy reached out to senior Washington Post management in response to a misleading front-page juxtaposition of a Druze funeral photo next to a story about Israeli air strikes against Hezbollah, the paper’s new CEO, Will Lewis, responded within hours, acknowledged the error, and pledged to publish an editor’s note acknowledging the mistake, according to a source familiar with the conversation. (The editor’s note appeared inside the next day’s print edition.)…
Bill Ackman is pausing the planned IPO of his Pershing Square USA, days after dropping the target amount to raise from $25 billion to $2 billion…
A federal court dismissed a suit filed by Jewish students against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, finding that the students were unable to demonstrate violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act…
The Department of Defense reached a plea deal with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and two accomplices that will spare the Sept. 11 architect the death penalty but will keep him in prison for life…
The U.S. levied sanctions against two people and four companies tied to the Houthis’ procurement of weapons for use against commercial shipping vessels…
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for a direct strike on Israel in response to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran this week…
Israel confirmed that Hamas leader Mohammed Deif was killed in an IDF strike in Gaza last month…
Hezbollah confirmed that military commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut earlier this week…
United Airlines and Deltasuspended daily flights to and from Israel amid the latest escalation between Israel and Iranian proxy groups in the region…
The mayor of Nagasaki, Japan, said Israel is not invited to a peace ceremony commemorating the atomic bomb attack on the Japanese city during WWII…
CNN’s Jessica Dean was named to a new role as an anchor and correspondent for the network…
Hollywood talent agent Don Buchwald died at 88…
Pic of the Day
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was photographed in front of a poster of top Hamas officials in his office in Tel Aviv, crossing off a photograph of senior Hamas official Mohammed Deif, shortly after confirming Deif’s death in a strike last month.
Gallant called Deif’s assassination a “significant milestone in the process of dismantling Hamas as a military and governing authority in Gaza” as well as “in the achievement of the goals of this war.”
Birthdays
Cross-country skier who competed for the U.S. at the Winter Olympics in 2014 (Sochi) and 2018 (Pyeongchang), Noah Hoffman turns 35…
Culver City, Calif., resident, Allene Prince… Formerly CEO of Cendant Corporation and 54 Madison Partners, Henry R. Silverman turns 84… Israeli film director and screenwriter, winner of the Israel Prize and professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, Ram Loevy turns 84… Founder and chairman of NYC-based Midtown Equities, Joseph Cayre turns 83… U.S. district court judge for the Southern District of New York, now on senior status, Judge Jed S. Rakoff turns 81… Former president of Brandeis University, now president of the Cleveland-based Mandel Foundation, Jehuda Reinharz turns 80… British businessman, he has been described as “the father of British venture capital,” Sir Ronald Mourad Cohen turns 79… Israeli-born businessman and film producer, later CEO of Marvel Studios, he won the 2018 Academy Award for best animated feature, Avi Arad turns 76… Second-generation owner of a Los Angeles flooring business, Eric Kalman Biren… Immediate past president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Rhoda Smolow… Media analyst and host of “MediaBuzz” at Fox News, Howard Kurtz turns 71… Director of New York government relations at Agudath Israel of America, Yeruchim Silber… U.S. career diplomat now serving as ambassador to South Korea, Philip Seth Goldberg turns 68… Governor of North Dakota since 2016, during 2023 he was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Douglas James Burgum turns 68… CEO of Atlanta’s Jewish Family & Career Services, she served for 12 years in the Minnesota Senate, Terri E. Bonoff turns 67… Professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D. turns 65… Policy director in the D.C. office of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Andrew C. (“Drew”) Littman… Former senior rabbi of the British movement for Reform Judaism, now a rabbi at London’s Bromley Reform Synagogue, Laura Naomi Janner-Klausner turns 61… U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, now the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, Daniel B. “Dan” Shapiro turns 55… Producer for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Shachar Bar-On… Professor of mathematics at Princeton and Hebrew U, he was the winner of the 2010 Fields Medal, Elon Lindenstrauss turns 54… CEO of Goliath Records and former president of Def Jam Recordings, Paul D. Rosenberg turns 53… CEO of NYC’s Quantum Media Group, Ari Zoldan… Israeli film director, writer and producer, Asaf Epstein turns 46… Venture partner in Leap Forward Ventures, Jessica Alter… Founder and CEO of Moishe House, David Cygielman… Chief communications officer at The Center for Strategic and International Studies, H. Andrew Schwartz… CEO of National Council of Jewish Women, Sheila Katz… Chief operating officer at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Noam Gilboord… VP of public relations at Burford Capital, David Helfenbein… Board certified family physician, Mor Toledano Shapiro, M.D…. Senior program officer, Schusterman Fellowship at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Roey Kruvi… Former director of operations at Elmwood Capital Group, Yael Rabin… Miami-based attorney, Asher Perez… Actor Benjamin “Ben” Rosenfield turns 32…Founder and president of Greystone Hotels, Eric Horodas… Lawyer, political strategist and former president of the American Jewish Congress, Richard Gordon…
Recent Daily Kickoff Newsletters
