Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on President-elect Donald Trump’s meeting with freed hostage Judith Raanan and cover yesterday’s House Committee on Natural Resources hearing focused on the pro-Hamas rally outside Washington’s Union Station over the summer. We talk to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey about how his Jewish identity has been impacted by the Oct. 7 terror attacks and ensuing increase in antisemitism and cover Linda McMahon’s Capitol Hill meetings as she looks to shore up support for her nomination to be secretary of education. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Yardena Schwartz, Max Fried and Jake Sullivan.
What We’re Watching
- National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is heading to the Middle East today for a three-country trip to Israel, Qatar and Egypt to continue talks aimed at securing a cease-fire and a hostage-release deal.
- Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) are among the legislators slated to speak later this morning at a Capitol Hill event focused on Iran policy in the new administration.
- FIFA is expected to confirm the hosts for the 2030 and 2034 World Cup games, with Saudi Arabia likely to nab the 2034 bid.
What You Should Know
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), having fallen short in his effort to add the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, says he has a backup plan. He is now targeting the upcoming stopgap government funding bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), as an alternative vehicle for the AAA, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
“Putting AAA in the defense bill was the best and easiest way to pass it. But [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson refused to do that,” Schumer spokesperson Angelo Roefaro said in a statement to JI. “Passing the bill is very important and so the senator will continue the fight to pass AAA, including pushing to get it in the [continuing resolution].”
Talks are in motion about possible dealmaking, according to a source familiar with the situation, who mentioned International Criminal Court sanctions legislation — which has passed the House but is opposed by Senate Democrats and the White House — as a potential concession to the House speaker.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) told JI in a brief interview on Tuesday that he’s trying to jump-start talks on the ICC legislation, which have also been at an impasse, though he didn’t mention any linkage to the AAA.
Johnson’s position has been consistent since Schumer first asked to put the AAA into the National Defense Authorization Act: that Schumer needs to call a stand-alone vote on the bill, as the House already has.
Many in the Jewish community see Schumer as primarily responsible for the bill’s stalemate, after it passed the House by a bipartisan vote months ago. Sources have told JI that Schumer has rejected a stand-alone Senate vote out of concern that it would further publicize and exacerbate deep divisions in the Democratic caucus over Israel and antisemitism.
“Senator Schumer has promised many in the Jewish community he would get the legislation passed. It is fair to say the pressure is on him, and the expectation is he will do what he said he would do,” a source familiar with the situation told JI.
Johnson, for his part, also faces some internal pressure against the bill — House members aligned with the right-wing Freedom Caucus voted against it and would likely take poorly to him adding it to the funding package (though some are likely to oppose the funding bill under any circumstances).
Adding any legislation to the CR is a risky prospect as a general matter — once any new legislation is attached, it would open the door for more lawmakers to demand that their priority legislation be added as well.
“Both parties — Johnson and Schumer — are doing everything they can do to put this in the bill,” uberlobbyist Norman Brownstein, who has been working on the legislation, told JI.
In sum: There’s a chance the bill passes this year, but it won’t be easy.
And even with a Republican trifecta next year, the bill’s passage is not guaranteed.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the incoming Senate majority leader,told JI earlier this year that the Senate should take up the AAA and said Republicans would take a more aggressive approach to campus antisemitism and pass legislation.
But opposition to the AAA from some conservatives and, in particular, right-wing influencers has grown since the bill first passed the House, and it could be more difficult to pass now than it was earlier this year.
It’s also unclear how the incoming Trump administration will view the bill. While it’s based on an executive order from the first Trump administration, Trump’s nominee for the top civil rights spot at the Department of Justice has called the bill “knee-jerk anti-constitutional dreck.”
Tee time
How Trump met a released American-Israeli hostage on his Florida golf course
When Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., invited Judith Raanan, a dual Israeli-American citizen who, with her daughter, became the first hostages freed by Hamas after the Oct. 7 attacks, to be the guest of honor at their annual golf fundraiser, the organization’s leaders did so with the hope that she would get to meet President-elect Donald Trump, on whose golf course the fundraiser would take place. It would be Trump’s first meeting with a freed hostage or a hostage family member after the election, and since he met Ronen and Orna Neutra at the Republican National Convention in July. But when the fundraiser was organized, it was not a sure thing that Trump would make an appearance, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
What they said: Behind the scenes, Rabbi Dovid and Chana Vigler, the directors of Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens, were working to get Trump to stop by their fundraiser on the links. After he finished a round of golf, Trump came to visit the nearly 100 Chabad golfers, according to the Viglers. Raanan presented him with a painting of the biblical King David’s mother that she created after returning from Gaza, and shared the story of her time in captivity. “They’re monsters, aren’t they?” Trump said of Hamas, according to Chana Vigler. After Raanan spoke, Chana Vigler presented Trump with an award for him to give to Raanan. “In recognition of her strength, resilience and faith, and in gratitude to God Almighty, for protecting and rescuing her along with her beautiful daughter,” Trump read from the inscription prepared by Chana Vigler. “We’re working very hard to get the hostages back,” he said, “and as you know, Jan. 20 is a very big day.”
protest problems
Federal officials say government has little ability to block anti-Israel protest groups with history of violence
Federal officials from the Department of Interior told lawmakers that they have limited powers to block applications for permits regarding protests on public land — even if the people applying for such permits, such as pro-Hamas protest groups, have histories of violent activity, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Hands tied: The testimony came at a hearing on the pro-Hamas protestthat defacedWashington, D.C.’s Union Station during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. The associate director of the National Parks Service said that the agency is not allowed to reject protest permit applications based on past conduct and is not allowed to collect or maintain intelligence files about groups, their organizers or including whether their past protests have resulted in violence, destruction of property or other issues.
McMahon
Linda McMahon meets with senators, addresses approach to fighting antisemitism
Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Education, began making the rounds on Capitol Hill this week for meetings with senators as part of her confirmation process, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports. McMahon, the billionaire World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder, oversaw the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term before leaving to co-chair America First Action, a Trump-aligned super PAC, and the America First Policy Institute. She went on to serve alongside Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, as co-chairs of the president-elect’s second transition team, overseeing policy.
Who she met: Among the senators McMahon had met with as of Tuesday evening were incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), incoming Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) and Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Budd (R-NC) and Roger Marshall (R-KS). She also briefly spoke by phone with Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) about her plans for the department, though House lawmakers do not vote on Cabinet nominees.
Antisemitism approach: How McMahon plans to approach the issue of antisemitism on college campuses in her role remains to be seen. Asked in the Capitol on Tuesday if she planned to make the issue a priority if confirmed as education secretary, McMahon replied affirmatively. “Certainly. I don’t think we should have any kind of discrimination anywhere, and I absolutely abhor any kind of violence that we have seen on campus. It should not be allowed,” McMahon told JI. “We have lots of priorities that I’m going to be dealing with, and certainly anything that is against the safety and welfare of any of our students will be a priority.”
the frey that binds
Minneapolis mayor drew closer to his Jewish identity after Oct. 7, rise in antisemitism; ‘I have to be more out front’
Before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks last year, Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, had never identified first and foremost as a Jew, even as he had always been mindful of his heritage. But in the wake of the attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, Frey’s personal investment in confronting a surge in antisemitic activity, he said, has forced him to reconsider how he has connected to his Judaism. “My ethnicity has risen greatly over the last year in the way that I think of myself and how others think of me,” he said in an interview with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel on Monday, echoing many Jews who have also felt a deeper attachment to their faith amid the ongoing conflict.
Meaningful moment: “There was a moment where I thought to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, there are all these people coming out against Jews, should I not be as out in front? Should I not be as vocal about my identity as a Jew?’” Frey, a two-term Democrat, explained. “And as soon as I thought that, it was almost a slap in the face: ‘No, I have to be more out front. I have to be more vocal.’”
exclusive
House Republicans urge leaders to ensure prohibition on UNRWA funding in 2025
As lawmakers work to finalize a stopgap spending package before a funding deadline later this month, a group of House Republicans is urging congressional leaders to ensure that U.S. funding to U.N. Relief and Works Agency remains banned in the upcoming bill and that the U.S. works to begin to dismantle the agency, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Quotable: “Terror is woven into the fabric of UNRWA, and there is no hope for peace in the Middle East if UNRWA is allowed to continue to operate, which is why we call for a continued prohibition on providing federal funding for UNWA,” the lawmakers said in a letter to the top four congressional leaders.
book shelf
In debut book, Yardena Schwartz links past and present horrors in Hebron and the Gaza envelope
Journalist Yardena Schwartz had nearly finished the manuscript for her first book, focused on the 1929 Hebron pogrom in which dozens of Jews were killed and a community was destroyed, on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023. As reports emerged in the following days of the atrocities that took place across southern Israeli communities and the Nova music festival, “it I felt as if I was living the pages of testimony that I had spent years reading and researching for this book,” Schwartz told Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss in a recent interview about Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict. “It felt like they were coming to life. I felt like it was exactly what happened in Hebron occurring today. And it was so chilling.”
Denying the deniers: Schwartz intended to write a book based on the letters and diaries written by a young Jewish American man named David Shainberg, who, inspired by his faith, moved to Hebron to study at a renowned yeshiva, when he was killed on Aug. 24, 1929. What Schwartz found was extensive, if scattered, documentation of the 1929 pogrom and its aftermath. There was no English-language compendium focused on the massacre that killed nearly 70 Jews and left more than 100 wounded. “I felt that if I’m going to write the first book in English that really goes into detail about the massacre and its causes and its aftermath,” Schwartz, a former NBC News journalist, told JI, “I need to do justice to those victims by detailing in as much detail as I can what happened to them, not only for future generations to know about it, but so that it can’t be denied.”
Worthy Reads
No Quick Fixes: In The Wall Street Journal, the Modern War Institute’s John Spencer considers the challenges that President-elect Donald Trump might face in his quest to end global conflicts. “Wars are rarely resolved on convenient timelines or with numerical or technological superiority alone. As 19th-century Prussian general and military strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously warned, the first act of a statesman is to recognize the type of war he is in. Clausewitz described war as a contest of wills in which human determination outweighs material advantages. Misunderstanding the character of a conflict can lead to unintended consequences. … Mr. Trump’s desire to simplify U.S. foreign policy and focus on achieving clear goals is admirable. But the complexity of war demands a careful and nuanced approach. Clausewitz’s reminder to recognize the type of war being waged remains vital. Wars are not contests of spreadsheets but struggles of will, shaped by leadership, morale and adaptability. To be successful, Mr. Trump must resist the allure of quick fixes and instead embrace strategies that reflect the unique nature of each conflict.” [WSJ]
Keep the Pressure On: For the Jewish Policy Center, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Rich Goldberg looks at the role that a renewed maximum-pressure campaign on Iran could play in stabilizing the region. “The new administration may need to hand-hold Gulf partners at the beginning, steering them back to close coordination on maximum pressure alongside increased security commitments to once again bring them away from China’s orbit. Establishing a U.S.-Saudi Vision 2030 Strategic Dialogue – a cabinet level, interagency, biannual exchange to support MbS’s economic and political reforms – might be helpful, too. But if Trump can pull this off – if he can restore maximum pressure on Iran and its proxies, reunite Washington with Riyadh and rebuild the regional architecture that integrates Israelis and Arabs – he will not only defeat one of America’s greatest threats, but he would also usher in a new era of regional stability and even more historic peace accords.” [JPC]
Word on the Street
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tom Barrack, who served as a senior advisor to Trump in 2016 and was later indicted and acquitted for acting as an unregistered lobbyist for the United Arab Emirates, as his nominee for ambassador to Turkey…
Sen.-elect Dave McCormick (R-PA) hired Mark Isakowitz, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy for the U.S. and Canada, as his chief of staff; Isakowitz previously served as chief of staff for former Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH)…
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who was reelected to his Senate seat in November, said he will likely not seek reelection at the end of his new term, when he will be 89…
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) fell during a GOP conference meeting on Capitol Hill yesterday, sustaining a sprained wrist and minor facial injury…
Gary Schaer, a Democratic state assemblyman in New Jersey, said on Tuesday that he would propose legislation allowing the state to reschedule its June 3 primary election next year to avoid a conflict with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, when observant Jews are unable to vote, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports…
The Free Press hired former Wall Street Journal editor Dennis Berman as its first publisher and president, amid a broader company expansion…
A new study from the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center’s Media Impact Project found that the religious identity of Jewish characters in TV is downplayed, with just 18% of Jewish characters referencing their faith; the study also found that roughly half of the Jewish characters observed over 15 scripted shows are played by non-Jewish actors…
The New York Yankees inked an eight-year, $218 million contract with pitcher Max Fried…
Antisemitic vandals attacked a Jewish neighborhood in Sydney, Australia, setting fire to a car and scrawling antisemitic words on walls, less than a week after Canberra announced the creation of an antisemitism task force following an arson attack at a Melbourne synagogue…
The Biden and incoming Trump administrationsare working closely on efforts to secure a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas before Trump takes office next month…
The New York Times’ Bret Stephens considers the geopolitical and strategic opportunities presented to the incoming Trump administration following the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria…
The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that Tehran’s power “has not diminished”…
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius reports that the Syrian rebels who overthrew the Assad regime received some support from Ukrainian intelligence…
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Israeli forces destroyed Syria’s navy, as part of a broader effort to degrade Damascus’ military infrastructure so as to keep it from falling into the hands of Islamist rebel forces.
The IDF said on Tuesday that it had struck most of the strategic weapons stockpiles in Syria over the prior 48 hours …
The New York Times reports from the Syrian prisons and morgues where people have arrived en masse looking for loved ones who disappeared during Assad’s reign…
The Financial Times spotlights efforts by Syrian rebel technocrats to set up a functioning government in the country…
Russia’s deputy foreign minister told NBC that Moscow had transported Assad to the country “in the most secure way possible” and that “he is secured, and it shows that Russia acts as required in such an extraordinary situation” …
Friends and fans of Ron Kampeas, retiring D.C. bureau chief for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, gathered last night in Washington to toast his two decades in the role. Those celebrating included: hosts West End Strategy Team’s Matt Dorf and Bluelight Strategies’ Steve Rabinowitz, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Amy Spitalnick, Halie Soifer, Aaron Keyak, Matt Nosanchuk, Jim Gerstein, Lisa Hostein, Ben Sales, Arno Rosenfeld and Samantha Kupferman.
Pic of the Day
Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed Paraguayan President Santiago Peña at his residence in Jerusalem today. Peña is on an official visit to inaugurate his country’s embassy in Jerusalem.
Birthdays
AXELLE/BAUER-GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC
Actress and singer, Hailee Steinfeld turns 28…
Former senator and U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry turns 81… Lumber and wood products executive in Bethany, Conn., Stuart Paley… University professor of Jewish history and Jewish thought at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter turns 74… Digital media expert and entrepreneur, Michael E. Kassan turns 74… Professor of international economics at Princeton University, Gene Grossman turns 69… Senior attorney in the environmental and natural resources division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Perry Rosen turns 69… Speech language pathologist in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, Joanne Ring… Best-selling author, she has published eleven novels including seven books in The Mommy-Track Mysteries series, Ayelet Waldman turns 60… Beverly Hills-based cosmetic surgeon for many celebrities, Dr. Simon Ourian turns 58… Partner in Pomerantz LLP where he leads the corporate governance litigation practice, he serves as a trustee of Manhattan’s Beit Rabban Day School, Gustavo F. Bruckner… Senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, Will Wechsler… Former member of the Knesset for the Labor party and then the Independence party, Einat Wilf turns 54… Senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, Shira Efron… Israeli poet and founder of the cultural group Ars Poetica, Adi Keissar turns 44… Hasidic rapper from Boston, known as Nosson, Nathan Isaac Zand turns 43… Israeli actor, director, playwright, rapper and singer, known by his stage name Pedro Grass, Amit Ulman turns 39… Director of public affairs and marketing at Englewood (N.J.) Hospital and Medical Center, Michael Chananie… CEO at D.C.-based Brown Strategy Group, Josh Brown… Former sports editor for Apple News, Kelly Cohen… National political reporter at the Washington Post, Marianne LeVine… Managing director of alternative investments at CAIS, Judah Schulman… Senior editor at Apple News, Gideon Resnick…
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