• It’s the first day of New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin’s term after yesterday’s unanimous council vote. Menin, a centrist Democrat representing the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, is expected to serve as an ideological counterweight to elements of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s agenda. More below.
• The Senate will vote today on a war powers resolution that would limit U.S. military action in Venezuela without congressional authorization.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will meet today with survivors of the Hanukkah terror attack in Sydney, Australia. More below.
• Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) will officially announce his plan to retire from Congress in a floor speech today. The 86-year-old Hoyer, who served as House majority leader from 2007-2011 and 2019-2023, told The Washington Post that he “did not want to be one of those members who clearly stayed, outstayed his or her ability to do the job.”
• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — who kicked off his 2026 reelection bid this morning — and Lt. Gov. Austin Davis are slated to speak today in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
• The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center in New York City is hosting a screening this evening of “The Road Between Us,” a documentary about the efforts of Maj. Gen. (res.) Noam Tibon to rescue his son, journalist Amir Tibon, and Amir’s family from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. Read our interview with Noam Tibon and director Barry Avrich, who will speak at the screening, here.
• In Beirut, Lebanese Armed Forces commander Rudolph Haikal is scheduled to brief Lebanese legislators on efforts to disarm Hezbollah in the southern region of the country, along Israel’s border. Lebanon’s army announced that it had completed the disarmament of Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, with the exception of small areas under Israeli control. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office called the efforts “an encouraging beginning, but they are far from sufficient, as evidenced by Hezbollah’s efforts to rearm and rebuild its terror infrastructure with Iranian support.”

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MATTHEW KASSEL

As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani draws increased scrutiny for picking some top appointees whose past incendiary social media comments have provoked controversy and raised questions over his vetting process, Jewish community leaders are now watching closely for signs of how the administration will make staffing decisions on key issues connected to Israel and antisemitism.

One person to keep an eye on is Josh Binderman, who served as Mamdani’s Jewish outreach director during the campaign and transition. He has largely maintained a low profile in his time working for the candidate and now mayor, garnering just a small handful of mentions in the press, despite his critical position leading engagement with a community that in many ways remains deeply skeptical of Mamdani’s hostile stances on Israel and commitment to implementing a clear strategy to counter rising antisemitism.

Binderman, most recently a communications manager for New Deal Strategies, an influential progressive consulting firm, served until 2024 as a PAC manager and a senior associate for J Street, the progressive Israel advocacy group, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

While Mamdani notably refused to work with the organization when he led a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine as an undergraduate student at Bowdoin College, the mayor has since developed a friendlier rapport with J Street, which has defended him amid charges that he tapped transition advisors who engaged in anti-Zionist activism that crossed a line into antisemitism.

Mamdani’s decision to employ a former top J Street staffer during the election suggests he could follow a similar approach to key Jewish community posts for his developing administration. If so, it could help to at least dampen some concerns from Jewish leaders who fear the mayor will end up hiring even harder-left members in his coalition such as activists associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Israel advocacy group that aggressively promotes boycotts targeting the Jewish state.

It is still an open question, however, how Mamdani will move forward on such issues. His decision last week to revoke two executive orders linked to Israel and antisemitism was widely seen as a discouraging maneuver that eroded goodwill among mainstream Jewish leaders — even as Binderman had reportedly given some advance warning to leaders about the effort before the inauguration.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

From Foggy Bottom to the Hill: Politico’s Jordain Carney spotlights Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s positioning on Capitol Hill, where he served as a senator for 14 years, as the point person for the Trump administration’s recent foreign policy moves. “Secretary of State Marco Rubio worked the phones in the wee hours of the morning and, in the days since, has played an outsize role in not only formulating the administration’s strategy in Venezuela but explaining it to skeptical lawmakers wary of a protracted military commitment. That outreach has been to his former Republican colleagues as well as Democrats, including those who see him as a rare Trump official with whom they can maintain a trusted and respectful relationship amid profound policy disputes. ‘Although I may disagree with him on a day-to-day or hour-to-hour basis … he has shown extraordinary competence,’ Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democratic leader, said in an interview. ‘I voted for him in this position; I still have confidence in his abilities.’” [Politico]

Silenced on Venezuela: The Atlantic’s David Graham considers the reticence of Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom come from the isolationist camp, to give vocal backing to the White House’s arrest of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. “What all of these figures understand is the importance of staying on Trump’s good side. [Steve] Bannon was exiled from the first Trump White House; he has since mastered the art of diverging just enough from the president that he sometimes takes flak but never gets banished from the fold entirely. Gabbard already saw the dangers of getting crosswise with the president when she implicitly warned against the bombing of Iran this past summer, before quickly falling back in line. One more break might get her sacked. No one has as much to lose as Vance, though. … Vance may not like what’s going on in Venezuela, though unless he says so, no one knows. Until then, his willingness to keep his mouth shut speaks loudly. For Vance, deeply held principles are fine, but staying in power is even more alluring.” [TheAtlantic]

States’ Rights: In The Wall Street Journal, Guy Goldstein and Daniel Arbess argue that Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is in line with the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States that lays out the parameters for statehood — which the Palestinian Authority falls short of meeting. “[Somaliland] has a permanent population, a defined territory, effective government and the capacity to conduct foreign relations — the four tests of the 1933 Montevideo Convention. … Israel’s recognition of Somaliland affirms something deeply offensive to the professional virtue-signaling ‘peace’ industry. The entire regional narrative collapses once the Montevideo criteria are taken seriously. Somaliland passes. Kurdistan passes. South Yemen is close. Puntland isn’t far behind. The one project that dominates every United Nations agenda, every campus protest, every moral lecture, does not. Israel’s move isn’t a rejection of the two-state idea; it is a return of that idea to reality. It is what happens when you stop rewarding dysfunction and start recognizing good behavior.” [WSJ]

President Donald Trump is expected to announce the members of the newly created Board of Peace next week amid efforts to move into the second phase of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas; Nikolay Mladenov, a former U.N. envoy to the Middle East, will serve as the board’s representative on the ground…

The White House announced its withdrawal from dozens of international organizations, including the Global Counterterrorism Forum, Global Forum on Cyber Expertise and more than 30 U.N.-affiliated groups…

The Senate passed, by unanimous consent, a resolution condemning the rise in ideologically motivated attacks against American Jews and condemning antisemitism…

FTA Administrator Marc Molinaro, who represented upstate New York in the House from 2023-2025, is mulling a run for the state’s 21st Congressional District, a seat being vacated by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) at the end of this year…

Qatar is the top country donating foreign funds to American universities, and Cornell University is its leading recipient, according to a new dashboard from the Department of Education that displays foreign gifts and contracts provided to U.S. educational institutions, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…

The board of Warner Bros. Discovery recommended that shareholders reject a hostile bid by David Ellison’s Skydance Paramount, which had amended a previous bid in an effort to sway Warner Bros. from moving forward with a deal with Netflix…

People interviews Tony Dokoupil about his new role anchoring “CBS Evening News”…

The Richmond, Calif., City Council refused to take up an emergency resolution censuring the city’s mayor, Eduardo Martinez, for sharing conspiracies about the terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia, on social media…

The foreign desk chief of Spanish daily El País apologized for the newspaper’s characterization of Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is presiding over the trial of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro; the paper described Hellerstein as having “made efforts to maintain an impartial stance despite being a well-known member of the Jewish community,” a clause that was later deleted from the online version…

Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage called allegations from numerous former classmates that he engaged in antisemitic and racist bullying as a teenager “complete made-up fantasies”…

Iranian army chief Maj. Gen. Amir Hatami threatened preemptive military action, days after Trump cautioned that the U.S. could act in Iran if protesters in the country were killed…

Iran said it executed a man convicted of spying on behalf of the Mossad, as the Islamic Republic continues its crackdown on alleged spies following the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025…

Deqa Qasim, the director of the political department in Somaliland’s Foreign Ministry, told Israel’s N12 that Jerusalem and Hargeisa are discussing setting up an Israeli military base in the African territory, contradicting a previous denial that such an agreement was on the table… 

Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, in a speech to the Knesset on Monday, warned the American right about the dangers of rising antisemitism within its ranks, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports…

The New York Solidarity Networkannounced that Sara Forman, the group’s inaugural executive director since 2022, will step down at the end of the month…

Josh Hammer is joining the David Horowitz Freedom Center as a Shillman Fellow… 

Jay Stein, whose development of Universal Studios’ tram tour turned the company into an empire that competed with Disney, died at 88…

Swiss film producer Arthur Cohn, who won six Oscars for his films, including Best Documentary Feature for “One Day in September,” about the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, died at 98…

Rabbi Uri Lupolianski, the first Haredi mayor of Jerusalem and founder of Yad Sarah, died at 74…

Guillaume Cardy, the chief of the French National Police’s elite unit RAID (Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deterrence), paid his respects on Monday at Paris’ Hypercacher supermarket during a ceremony commemorating the 11th anniversary of the deadly Islamist attacks on the kosher market as well as the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper.

Member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a guitarist and founding member of the Doors, Robby Krieger turns 80…  

Sociologist at the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Murray turns 83… Senior U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Florida, now on inactive status, Alan Stephen Gold turns 82… Moscow-born classical pianist, living in the U.S. since 1987, Vladimir Feltsman turns 74… Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer, he is a professor of music composition at Yale, David Lang turns 69… Founder and chief investment officer of Pzena Investment Management, Richard “Rich” Pzena turns 67… Israel’s ambassador to the Republic of Korea, Rafael Harpaz turns 64… Co-founder of Pizza Shuttle in Milwaukee, Mark Gold… Violinist and composer best known for her klezmer music, Alicia Svigals turns 63… VP of wealth services at the Alera Group, he was an NFL tight end for the Bears and Vikings, Brent Novoselsky turns 60… Founder and president of DC-based Professionals in the City, Michael Karlan turns 58… Lobbyist, attorney, patron of contemporary art and philanthropist, Heather Miller Podesta turns 56… Anthropologist and epidemiologist, she is a professor of pediatrics at UCSF, Janet Wojcicki turns 56… Former state senator in Maine (2008-2016), Justin Loring Alfond turns 51… Singer-songwriter, musician, and actress, she was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the indie rock band Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis turns 50… Former director of U.S. public policy programs for Meta / Facebook, now a partner in Lev Collective, Avra Siegel… Editor, investigative reporter and screenwriter, Ross M. Schneiderman… Actor, screenwriter and director, he is a son of film director Barry Levinson, Sam Levinson turns 41… Retired professional soccer player, he is now a partner in Columbus, Ohio-based Main + High Investments, Ross Benjamin Friedman turns 34… Principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, Skylar Paley Brandt turns 33…