Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on President Donald Trump’s proposed plan for the U.S. to “take over” Gaza, and cover Capitol Hill’s reaction to his proposal. We talk to Josh Kraft, who yesterday announced his bid for mayor of Boston, and cover today’s reintroduction of the Antisemitism Awareness Act in Congress. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Steve Fulop, Iris Apfel and Ian Epstein.
What We’re Watching
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Vice President J.D. Vance in Washington today, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov scooped yesterday. Read more here.
- Netanyahu will also meet this morning with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and this afternoon with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
- Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) are holding a press conference this afternoon on Capitol Hill to announce the reintroduction of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. More below.
- Chabad of Charlotte, N.C., will hold a funeral for American Airlines crew member Ian Epstein, who was killed in last week’s midair collision near Washington’s Reagan National Airport.
What You Should Know
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered the White House optimistic on Wednesday, telling his advisers that, out of dozens of such visits, the one taking place this week is the most important and historic. A Netanyahu spokesman said just before the meeting that the prime minister and President Donald Trump “see eye to eye.” Yet even in his most optimistic moment, Netanyahu couldn’t have imagined a day that kept getting “better and better and better,” as per a hit song that far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, as well as a couple of right-wing Israeli media figures, quoted in reaction to Trump’s statements, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
Netanyahu — still frail from his recent prostate surgery — appeared elated, smiling and chuckling at Trump’s comments. It was as though Trump was checking off items on Netanyahu’s wish list, and when he finished with those, he moved on to the Israeli far right’s list for good measure.
A deal to bring back all the hostagesthat won’t stop Israel from removing Hamas from Gaza? Check. Maximum pressure on Iran? Check. Vowing Iran won’t get a nuclear weapon? Check. Saudi-Israeli normalization? Check. Dropping his 2020 call for a Palestinian state? Check. Considering Israeli annexation of the West Bank? Check — and keep an eye out for an announcement in the coming weeks.
Netanyahu went into the meeting knowing that Trump was serious about a plan to evacuate Gazans to allow for reconstruction, but the details that the president revealed, first in a photo-op and then in a press conference hours later, sounded like the fever dreams of Rabbi Meir Kahane disciple and former Israeli cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Kahane, banned from the Knesset in the 1980s on grounds of racism, advocated for Israel to pay Arabs to leave. In Trump’s formulation, the nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza would be permanently removed to other countries — and wealthy Arab states would be the ones to foot the bill.
In such a scenario, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer would no longer need to work on formulating a “day-after plan” for Gaza, because Trump said the U.S. was going to “take over” and “own” the territory, turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” for people from all over the world to move into. And if that would require U.S. boots on the ground, “we’ll do it if it’s necessary,” Trump said.
As with many of Trump’s most emphatic declarations, this one left many unanswered questions in its wake.
Egypt and Jordan have already stated they won’t take in Gazans, and experts have said doing so could destabilize the neighboring regimes with which Israel has peace. Where are the “five, six, seven” places that Trump wants to send Gazans? Could Qatar house many of them in the vacant lodgings built for laborers who built the country’s World Cup infrastructure? Would the Saudis or the Emiratis really put money into what is essentially the polar opposite of the Palestinians’ nationalism? What about the Saudis’ response to the proposal that they oppose “attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land” and won’t normalize ties with Israel until a Palestinian state is established?
As the euphoria on the Israeli right started to settle, there were those who remembered the similarly ecstatic reaction to Trump’s 2020 “deal of the century” peace plan. Netanyahu’s spokesman at the time said the plan meant Israel would be annexing West Bank settlements the following week — something that never actually ended up happening. Could Trump be bluffing by describing an extreme scenario in order to get something more moderate that he wanted, like threatening Canada and Mexico with a trade war and settling for them sending troops to the border?
Netanyahu applauded Trump’s “willingness to puncture conventional thinking that has failed time and again, to think outside the box…[and] say things others refuse to say.” Even if reality ends up falling short of Trump’s vision, the president may have just scared the Arab world enough to move the region’s Overton window and end up with a more standard “day-after” plan that is relatively favorable to Israel.
confusion circulates
Trump’s Gaza takeover plan met with bafflement, skepticism from Senate lawmakers

President Donald Trump’s surprise comments at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. would take control of the Gaza Strip and lead its redevelopment, with potential deployments of American troops to the area, were largely met with a mix of bafflement and skepticism from Senate lawmakers on Tuesday, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs report.
What they’re saying: “I think that might be problematic,” for both Arab allies and U.S. citizens, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told JI, while Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said, “I don’t know that I think it’s the best use of United States resources to spend a bunch of money in Gaza.” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said he was “speechless, that’s insane. I can’t think of a place on Earth that would welcome American troops less and where any positive outcome is less likely.” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) seemed open to the idea, saying, “It’s a provocative part of the conversation, but it’s part of the conversation, and that’s where we are” and that he’d potentially support a U.S. troop deployment. But some current and former Republican lawmakers, as senior as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came out in support of the plan.
Read the full story here for additional comments from Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Rand Paul (R-KY), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ).