Daily Kickoff
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview President Donald Trump’s address tonight before a joint session of Congress, and talk to legislators about what they hope the president will say about Israel and Ukraine. We also spotlight Jared Isaacman, the Trump administration’s pick to head NASA, and report on the witness list for Wednesday’s long-awaited Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on antisemitism. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Dore Gold, Rahm Emanuel and Dana Nessel.
What We’re Watching
- President Donald Trump will address a joint session of Congress tonight at 9 p.m. ET. It’s the first speech that Trump will give before Congress since being sworn in for a second term in office.
- Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee to be undersecretary of defense for policy, faces his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee today at 9:30 a.m. ET. Colby continues to face skepticism from some Senate Republicans over his past support for accommodating a nuclear Iran and calls for a reduced U.S. military presence in the Middle East.
- Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is slated to speak tonight at an invitation-only event at Columbia University tonight hosted by Columbia/Barnard Hillel’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs’ Institute of Global Politics.
- The Arab League Summit will kick off today in Cairo, with leaders set to discuss an alternative proposal to Trump’s proposal for a U.S. takeover of Gaza. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Issa Al Khalifa are slated to deliver opening remarks.
- Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich arrived in the U.S. today for meetings over the next several days with government officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
What You Should Know
President Donald Trump’s apparent abandonment of the close alliance between the U.S. and Ukraine — in favor of seeking better relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia — should be a sobering moment for any American ally whose close relationship with the U.S. has been based on shared democratic and liberal values, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
And while Ukraine and its European partners have borne the brunt of the diplomatic pressure since Trump took office, the lessons can’t be lost on Israel, with its standing as the lone democracy in the Middle East playing a major role in driving the close U.S.-Israel relationship over the decades.
To be sure, Trump has been a stalwart ally of Israel since his first term, and has shown admiration for the Jewish state’s staunch self-defense in the face of terrorist threats. Moreover, the breadth of support for Israel is widespread among Republicans, with a new Gallup poll showing over 80% of GOPers having a favorable view of the Jewish state — and much of that support runs deep.
But in the partisan, tribal hothouse that is Washington, it’s easy to see how solid public support can evaporate in short order — particularly in a Republican Party where loyalty to Trump matters more than adherence to closely held principles. The ascendance of several isolationist foreign policy officials in the new administration, favoring an accommodationist approach towards Iran and holding a more skeptical view of the U.S.-Israel relationship, is another cautionary signal.
In the Gallup survey conducted last month, Ukraine was still viewed favorably by a majority of Republicans, but there are clear indications that Trump’s nationally televised clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday will turn the U.S.’ relationship with Kyiv into a partisan issue. Already, polling is showing that support for Ukraine is declining among Republicans, even as a narrow majority of Americans still back military aid to the war-torn country.
Former Israeli MK Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, offered a reminder of how quickly the political winds within a party can shift, in comparing the Trump-Zelensky showdown with former President Barack Obama’s frosty meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2011.
Back then, support for Israel within the Democratic Party was widespread. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had just graduated college, there was no Squad on Capitol Hill and leaders in both parties showcased their support for the Jewish state. Netanyahu’s televised clash with Obama, followed by the Obama administration’s pursuit of an Iran nuclear deal that threatened Israel’s sense of security, was a major tipping point that led to the left flank of the party becoming more critical of Israel and jeopardizing the party’s long-standing support for the Jewish state.
Interestingly, Oren criticized Zelensky’s approach in responding to Trump’s criticisms, even as Netanyahu took a similar approach in his dealings with Obama. Oren’s analysis omits one of the seminal political moments in the U.S.-Israel relationship when Netanyahu in 2015 challenged the Obama administration’s normalization of Iran in a high-profile address before Congress. While Netanyahu powerfully laid out the stakes of a nuclear Iran in the address, the decision to publicly challenge Obama cost the prime minister valuable political capital with Democrats — a dynamic that has lingered to this day.
If anything, Zelensky is taking a page out of the traditional Netanyahu playbook — but is operating in a political environment where persuasion takes a back seat to partisan loyalty. Expecting leaders to change their views based on powerful commentary is an outdated view in today’s Washington. Over the weekend, Netanyahu offered a fulsome thank you to the administration, clearly reading the room after the dramatic showdown last Friday between Vice President J.D. Vance and Zelensky, who had expressed his thanks to the U.S. on previous occasions.
Those are the decisions any world leader has to make, especially when it comes to the transactionalism of the new administration: Stick to your principles, or make the necessary compromises in order to maintain Trump’s support.
trump talk
In Congress address, Trump to discuss plan ‘to restore peace around the world’
President Donald Trump will focus part of his first address to a joint session of Congress in his second term on his administration’s efforts to “restore peace around the world” and the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, a White House official told Jewish Insider on Monday. The theme of Tuesday evening’s address, the president’s first major address since returning to office in January, will be the “Renewal of the American Dream,” JI’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report.
Breakdown: The speech will be divided into four sections: what the administration has accomplished thus far in the second term; what the administration has done to improve the economy; Trump’s desire for Congress to pass an additional border security funding package; and the president’s plan “to restore peace around the world.” On the foreign policy front, Trump is expected to discuss his administration’s push to secure the release of the hostages still being held by Hamas and other groups in Gaza. He will also address his intention to end U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and to bring the fighting to a halt. In the audience will be several released hostages and hostage family members, many of whom were invited by members of congressional leadership and rank-and-file lawmakers.
Read the full story here.
moon walk
Musk ally Jared Isaacman’s unconventional path to NASA chief
“Shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” It’s a cliched piece of inspirational wisdom, the type of thing you might find printed on a forgettable motivational poster in a regional corporate office. But for Jared Isaacman, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be administrator of NASA, it’s not a bad guiding creed — and he takes it literally, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. “With the support of President Trump, I can promise you this: We will never again lose our ability to journey to the stars and never settle for second place,” Isaacman wrote on X in December, after Trump announced his pick. “Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars and in doing so, we will make life better here on Earth.”
Infinity and beyond: Isaacman is the 41-year-old billionaire CEO of Shift4, a payment processing company he started at age 16 in his parents’ basement in New Jersey. He’s also a pilot and a commercial astronaut who has trained to travel to space — not through NASA, but with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In 2021, Isaacman self-funded a three-day SpaceX mission to space called Inspiration4, marking the first spaceflight manned only by civilians, rather than government astronauts. Isaacman is not a political ally of Trump’s; he has made over $300,000 in donations to Democrats. But his close ties to Musk and his shared excitement for Musk and Trump’s goals of bringing humans to Mars likely played a role in him getting the job.
Read the full story here.
scoop
Witness list for Senate antisemitism hearing draws from wide array of backgrounds
Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are set to call witnesses from a wide range of backgrounds for Wednesday’s hearing on antisemitism, two sources familiar with the witness list told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod.
On the list: Republicans will be calling Adela Cojab, a former student activist and legal fellow at the National Jewish Advocacy Center; Alyza Lewin, the president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; and Asra Nomani, the editor of the Pearl Project. Democrats will call Kevin Rachlin, the Washington director of the Nexus Leadership Project, and Meirav Solomon, a Jewish student at Tufts University and co-vice president of J Street U’s New England branch, as their witnesses.
Read the full story here.
Email troubles: Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, a National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine email circulated to supporters urges faculty to lobby senators against the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, the Trump administration’s executive order on antisemitism and the recently announced investigations by the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
columbia concerns
Trump admin announces probe of federal government contracts with Columbia University
The Trump administration announced on Monday a multiagency review of the federal government’s $51.4 million in contracts with Columbia University, citing the academic institution’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students,” Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
Comprehensive review: As part of a federal task force combating antisemitism created by President Donald Trump, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration will consider whether to end the contracts “in light of ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act” facing the school. A press release on the review stated that the agencies “will also conduct a comprehensive review of the more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments to Columbia University to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities.”
teacher’s ties
Board member of anti-Israel teachers’ union is member of American Communist Party
A member of the Massachusetts Teachers Association executive board is also a member of the American Communist Party — a group with direct connections to Hamas and Hezbollah, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen has learned. Several American Communist Party leaders attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah until his recent assassination by the Israeli army, and met with Hamas leaders in person in recent weeks.
Party support: In a Feb. 14 letter obtained by JI, the party wrote that it “strongly condemns recent attempts by Zionist politicians to intimidate the MTA and Palestine solidarity movement by singling out and fear-mongering about a member of our party, Comrade Joe Herosy.” The statement was referring to a Feb. 10 meeting of the Massachusetts Legislature’s Special Commission to Combat Antisemitism, where members expressed concern over a series of Herosy’s social media posts — including a photo he posted to Facebook on Oct. 8, 2023, that appeared to celebrate Hamas’ deadly massacre that took place the day prior.
in memoriam
Decorated Israeli diplomat Dore Gold dies at 71
Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and a longtime foreign policy advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whose diplomatic expertise was credited with moving the Abraham Accords forward — died on Monday in Jerusalem from an undisclosed illness. He was 71. Born in Hartford, Conn., Gold made aliyah in 1980 after receiving a doctoral degree from Columbia University. He went on to break barriers for olim by serving at the highest levels of the Israeli government — positions that included director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations and political advisor to two prime ministers, Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Bibi’s eulogy: Netanyahu, who continued throughout the years to receive advice — both formally and informally — from Gold, eulogized him as “a prolific academic researcher, brilliant Israeli diplomat and close personal friend.” Netanyahu said, “Dore accompanied me for over three decades as a dedicated public servant without peer. He was endowed with a unique intellectual integrity, working ability and a genuine love for the State of Israel.” Gold served as Netanyahu’s foreign policy advisor for a year beginning in June 1996, during the prime minister’s first term.
Worthy Reads
Line in the Sand: Laura Ann Rosenbury, president of Barnard College, writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education that the recent antisemitic events at Barnard are her “line in the sand” and said the school will “vigorously pursue discipline” against those involved. “Over the last year and a half, an unauthorized group of anonymous individuals calling themselves Columbia University Apartheid Divest have exploited the conflict in the Middle East to try to tear our campus community — our Barnard home — apart. They operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and ‘Zionist billionaires,’ and calls for violence and disruption at any cost. They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is, because their members wear masks, no one really knows whose interests they serve. … Even when under enormous pressure from outside groups, we will ensure our community is safe and free from discrimination and intimidation, while also supporting students as they grow, learn, and make mistakes. We will stand strong and act thoughtfully, even while being criticized for being both too punitive and not punitive enough. Disrupting classes and defacing buildings to intimidate and divide our community is not academic exploration. It is a betrayal of the goals and sanctity of higher education.” [ChronicleofEducation]
Quandary on the Quad: The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller visits Harvard University as the school finds itself grabbling with campus climate issues more than a year after anti-Israel activity swept the campus in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. “Harvard keeps no official figures for its Jewish population, but surveys suggest that representation has more than halved since the Vietnam era. Today, less than ten per cent of Harvard College students are reported to be Jewish, one of the lower proportions in the Ivy League. ‘I initially appreciated more the problem for Israelis, who faced, especially after October 7th, really fierce shunning and discrimination,’ [Harvard Medical School professor Matthew] Meyerson told me as we arrived at the lunch — a small group sitting in a medical amphitheatre, eating kosher wraps. ‘But it has also been more serious than I appreciated for Jewish students and staff.’ He believes that Jewish representation among the younger generation at Longwood is smaller than on the campus broadly. ‘I’ve talked to graduate students whose advisers had basically never heard a Jewish perspective,’ he said. … One Israeli medical researcher and Harvard professor who had raised his kids — happily, he said — in a social circle of ‘stereotypical Cambridge liberals who used to drive Subarus and now drive Teslas’ described to me being shocked by the community’s response to the Hamas attacks on October 7th, even before there was Israeli retaliation. ‘I got zero responses, except from open supporters of Israel,’ he said. ‘It’s almost as if empathy has become politicized.’” [NewYorker]
Bezos’ Moment of Truth: In The Atlantic, Marty Baron, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, weighs in on Jeff Bezos’ oversight of the Post following his announced changes to the paper’s editorial stance. “If the Post does its job correctly in both its opinion section and its news coverage, it will hold Trump fully accountable when he engages in deceit and as he continues to subvert this country’s democratic institutions. It will report what Trump is seeking to conceal but what the public deserves to know. That, at some point, will make the Post a fresh target for malevolent and punishing attacks. Amazon and Blue Origin might well be in the line of fire too, and Bezos’s postelection outreach to Trump is unlikely to count for much amid his fury. As Bezos decides how to respond, I urge him to make one of his rare visits to the Post’s newsroom and stare at the wall where its nearly century-old principles are affixed, paying attention to two in particular. No. 1: ‘The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.’ And then No. 5: ‘The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.’” [TheAtlantic]
The Case for Gaz-a-Lago: In The Wall Street Journal, Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University Scalia School of Law and a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, makes the case for how President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians living in Gaza does not violate international law: “The sovereignty gap doesn’t determine what should happen to the territory, but it does make a U.S. bid legally feasible. Israel, having taken parts of the territory in a war of clear self-defense, should be able to claim sovereignty over all or part of the territory, as it did in the Golan Heights. Or Washington and Jerusalem could work out a condominium — not the kind envisioned for Gaza’s beaches, but an arrangement in which two nations share sovereignty, like Spain and France in Andorra and many countries in Antarctica, or the erstwhile Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. … Mr. Trump seeks to lift an iron curtain from Gaza, letting people escape tyranny and destruction. No one argued that the campaign for Soviet Jewry was ethnic cleansing. Nor did the international community regard the forcible expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Gaza by Egypt in 1948, and again by Israel in 2005, as ethnic cleansing. Conventional ‘two state solution’ peace plans are premised on a mass expulsion of Jews from Judea and Samaria.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
Trump temporarily suspended all U.S. military aid to Ukraine on Monday effective immediately, impacting more than $1 billion in arms and ammunition…
The Wall Street Journal editorial board sounded an alarm on Elbridge Colby, warning that the Pentagon is “fill[ing] up with neo-isolationists who make Mr. Colby look like Paul Wolfowitz,” and saying that the “minimum price of confirming Mr. Colby should be exile for staffers such as Michael DiMino”…
The Senate voted to confirm Linda McMahon as secretary of education on Monday evening; McMahon was confirmed by a 51-45 vote, with none of the present Democrats crossing party lines to support the billionaire World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder’s nomination, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports…
In an interview with Israeli media, Majed al-Ansari, an advisor to the Qatari prime minister, dismissed the new proposal to extend the first phase of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire — which Hamas has already rejected — and said the best way to secure the release of more hostages is to move into phase two of the deal…
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, called on President Donald Trump to begin talks on a new nuclear deal with Iran, after warning last week that Tehran has increased its enrichment of uranium since Trump’s election in November…
In the aftermath of Trump’s clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC)said, “The fact is that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin started the war and he’s a murderer who wants to see the decline of the United States” and called for Trump to continue pursuing the U.S.-Ukraine mineral rights deal he put on pause after the disastrous Oval Office meeting…
A group of 77 retired generals and admirals, organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said in an open letter that the U.S. should support Israel if it strikes Iran to eliminate Iran’s nuclear facilities…
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he had a “great conversation” with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth yesterday and thanked him for the administration’s move to expedite military aid; “We agreed: All hostages must be brought home, and Hamas rule in Gaza must be eliminated,” Katz said. “Iran remains the greatest threat to regional security – we will work together to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons”…
Every Jewish House Democrat wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday urging the company to restore the default listings for International Holocaust Remembrance Day and Jewish American Heritage month to the company’s Google Calendar service, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
Israel assumed the presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on Monday and chose for the theme for its one-year term “The Crossroads of Generations.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement marking the occasion, “The United States will partner with Israel during its IHRA presidency to defend the memory and historical fact of the Holocaust and fight the toxic spread of Holocaust denial and distortion and all other forms of antisemitism.”…
In an interview with Detroit One Million, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel defended felony charges pressed against anti-Israel protesters at the University of Michigan, saying “I’ve heard people say they want the charges dropped, I have not heard people say that there’s not evidence to substantiate the charges” …
Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who previously served as mayor of Chicago, addressed a question at an Economic Club of Chicago event about he would run for mayor again, responding, “I’ve said it before. I’m gonna say it again. I’m not done with public service and I hope public service is not done with me”…
Democratic political consulting firm SKDK registered under the Foreign Agent Registration Act on Friday to work on behalf of the Israeli government, reportedly focusing on media relations around the Bibas family tragedy…
Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown Universities maintain partnerships with Doha Debates, a project of the state-led Qatar Foundation, which promotes editorial content critical of the U.S., the Washington Examiner reports…
Journalist Yardena Schwartz, the author of Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict, is joining Ark Media, home of Dan Senor’s “Call Me Back” podcast, as executive editor…
The Wall Street Journal profiled Justin Peterson, a Republican political strategist and lobbyist, and uncovered court documents that spotlight the role he played in the criminal case against Israeli investigator Amit Forli…
Ethan Sorcher is joining the office of Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) as a military legislative analyst. Sorcher was previously a legislative analyst for Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), and prior to that worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington…
After their conference championship win on Sunday evening, the Yeshiva University Maccabees will advance to the 2025 NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Championship, which kicks off on Friday when the team will play Tufts…
The New York Times “Renters” section spotlights Rabbi Yanky Bell and his wife, Shternie, who run a Chabad House in El Cerrito in the San Francisco Bay Area…
Pic of the Day
The Anti-Defamation League’s Never Is Now summit kicked off yesterday at Manhattan’s Jacob Javits Center for two days of sessions and speakers. In his “State of Hate” address on the first morning of the conference, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt outlined the organization’s “pivot” in strategy for combating antisemitism, which includes demanding accountability through litigation, model legislation and allocating more resources to collecting data on antisemitism, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports.
Rep. Elise Stefanik also spoke at the opening plenary, but — in an otherwise well-received address — faced booing when she claimed that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks would not have happened if President Donald Trump had been reelected in 2020.
Birthdays
Ice hockey goaltender with the Chicago Wolves in the American Hockey League, he made his NHL debut in 2024, Yaniv Perets turns 25…
Composer, conductor, author and music professor, Samuel Adler turns 97… Broadcast journalist and author, she is best known as a correspondent for the ABC news magazine “20/20” for almost 30 years, Lynn Sherr turns 83… Board member emeritus at New York City Center, the arts center at Brown University bears her name, Perry B. Granoff… British promoter of rock concerts, charity concerts and television broadcasts, Harvey Goldsmith turns 79… North American representative of World ORT for 20 years, Harry Nadler… Screenwriter and director, she is the mother of actors Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal turns 79… CEO of LCH Clearnet LLC, a clearing house affiliated with the London Stock Exchange, David A. Weisbrod… Director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, Rabbi Avi Shafran turns 71… U.S. senator (D-MN), Tina Smith turns 67… Founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools and a former City Council member for the Upper East Side, both in NYC, Eva Moskowitz turns 61… President of the New England Patriots, Jonathan A. Kraft turns 61… French art historian, she manages the Louvre’s restitution investigations of art looted from Jewish families during the Nazi and Vichy regimes, Emmanuelle Polack turns 60… U.S. senator (R-OK), James Lankford turns 57… Former member of both the New York City Council and the New York State Assembly, now at the Brandeis Center, Rory I. Lancman turns 56… Evan L. Presser… Staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and a senior fellow at Yale Law School, she is the author of a 2019 book criticizing mass incarceration, Emily Bazelon… Chief of staff at Goldman Sachs, Russell Horwitz… First Jewish player to be selected in the top round of the NHL Draft (1998), his career lasted 20 seasons in North America and Europe, Michael Henrich turns 45… Member of the Knesset for the New Hope party, Sharren Haskel turns 41… VP of public policy at the International Council of Shopping Centers, Abigail Goldstein “Abby” Jagoda… Brazilian entrepreneur and software engineer who co-founded Instagram in 2010, Michel “Mike” Krieger turns 39… Singer, music producer and composer, Aryeh Kunstler turns 39… Chief of staff for New York state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, Victoria “Tori” Burhans Kelly… Israeli-born basketball player who starred at Wichita State and then played for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans, Gal Mekel turns 37… Model and actress, Erin Heatherton (born as Erin Heather Bubley) turns 36… Foreign policy advisor for U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), Jennifer Miller…
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