• White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is in Israel today for meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir before heading to the United Arab Emirates for Russia-Ukraine talks. Witkoff is expected to travel to Turkey later in the week for talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi aimed at calming tensions between Washington and Tehran.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is traveling to Saudi Arabia today to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, before traveling on to Egypt tomorrow to co-chair the second meeting of the Turkey–Egypt High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism is holding a hearing on terrorism in North Africa with the State Department’s Robert Palladino and Joel Borkert.
• The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing this morning on the Nazis’ use of Swiss banks during World War II. The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper is among those testifying at the hearing.
• The House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing this morning on U.S. policy in Lebanon with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s David Schenker, Hanin Ghaddar and Dana Stroul.
• Elsewhere on the Hill, the Helsinki Commission is holding a hearing on “Securing Syria’s transformation by diminishing Russia’s influence” with The Washington Institute’s Anna Borschevskaya, the Hudson Institute’s Mike Doran and the Atlantic Council’s Richard Outzen.
• The House could vote as soon as today on a massive funding package after the legislation passed the Senate last week. The package also includes a continuing resolution that would keep the Department of Homeland Security funded for 10 days.
• The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington is holding its Jewish Advocacy Day today. Gov. Wes Moore, who addressed the group’s legislative breakfast last month, will serve as today’s keynote speaker.
• The Carlyle Group’s David Rubenstein will be the featured speaker at Gettysburg College’s 24th annual Blavatt Lecture tonight, where he’ll speak about the semiquincentennial anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
• In San Francisco, late-night host David Letterman is holding a fundraiser for NY-12 congressional candidate Jack Schlossberg.
• The three-day World Governments Summit kicks off today in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Speakers this year include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Jeffrey Katzenberg, podcaster Tucker Carlson, MobilEye CEO Amnon Shashua and former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss.
• Web Summit Qatar continues in Doha. Anti-Israel activist Hasan Piker is slated to take the stage later today.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR

Ohio was once a perennial swing state but, as Democrats have lost ground with working-class voters, it has been a Republican stronghold over the last decade. But it could once again emerge as a political bellwether in 2026, as a test of whether Democrats can make inroads in rebuilding a coalition that can win back national power.

If Democrats want to have hope of regaining the confidence of the silent majority that propelled President Donald Trump to victory in 2024, they’ll need to be able to compete in the Buckeye State. And if Democrats hope to have any outside shot at retaking a Senate majority, the path runs through Ohio as well. 

The state is holding two major races: appointed Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) is facing off against former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who lost his reelection in 2024. Early polling shows the race is competitive. Of note: Brown significantly outraised Husted in fundraising over the last three months of the year, $7.3 million to $1.5 million, and already has more cash-on-hand than the sitting senator.

Brown had been the only statewide Democratic politician to maintain some support with the blue-collar voters that drifted away from the party in the Trump era. Husted, the state’s former lieutenant governor and secretary of state, is a traditional Republican politician with a party-line voting record but is facing the prospect of rough political headwinds this year for the GOP.

And in an open gubernatorial race to succeed the term-limited GOP Gov. Mike DeWine, Democrat Amy Acton is facing off against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, two candidates whose time spent in public service and politics have been quite polarizing.  

Acton, who was head of the state’s Department of Health during the COVID pandemic, ended up leaving the role early amid a chorus of conservative complaints about her heavy-handed approach to coronavirus regulations and safety protocols. Acton, who is Jewish, is hoping her medical background and role as a political outsider will matter more than the polarizing public health controversies. 

Ramaswamy, who made an unlikely jump to presidential politics in 2024 after a career as a biotech entrepreneur, alienated a number of Republicans for his anti-establishment and isolationist messaging during the campaign. But his gubernatorial campaign has tacked more to the center, as he has spoken out against white nationalists within the GOP during his campaign.  His newfound pragmatism helped him receive this month the endorsement of DeWine, who had been an occasional critic. 

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

The Saudi Shift: Bloomberg’s Ethan Bronner looks at the dwindling odds of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia as Riyadh takes an increasingly antagonistic approach to Israel. “Israeli officials are weighing whether the shifts are temporary or Saudi Arabia is permanently redrawing the balance of power in the region in a way that would make normalization impossible. While little has been said publicly inside Israel, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an Israeli diplomat both said the concern is real. … Adding to Israel’s concerns are what some see as an increasingly anti-Israeli tone from Saudi Arabia. The Anti-Defamation League in New York last month said it was ‘alarmed by the increasing frequency and volume of prominent Saudi voices — analysts, journalists, and preachers — using openly antisemitic dog whistles and aggressively pushing anti-Abraham Accords rhetoric.’” [Bloomberg]

War Dividend: The Washington Post’s Shira Rubin spotlights Israeli military-tech startups that have seen surging interest in their products, which were developed and improved over the course of two years of war and real-world battle testing. “By the time the Israeli start-up Kela opened its doors in 2024, its employees had already been serving as reservists on Israel’s battlefields. Once in the office, the team at the military tech firm began experimenting with solutions for overcoming the kinds of problems they’d personally seen drones encounter in war zones like Lebanon, including electronic jamming and signal loss. … Israel’s success in carrying out devastating pager attacks in 2024 against the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, intelligence operations in Iran during the 12-day war last year and commando raids to rescue hostages in Gaza have stoked foreign demand for the weapons and other technology used by Israeli troops.” [WashPost]

Doomed to Fail: In a longform post on X, former Sky News Arabia General Manager Nadim Koteich explains why talks between the U.S. and Iran are unlikely to produce a resolution palatable to both the Trump administration and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Totalitarian systems inevitably suffer from catastrophic informational feedback loops. Khamenei’s reality is filtered through a sycophantic intelligence apparatus that interprets genuine domestic fury as the product of CIA machinations. To a man who views 47 years of systemic failure as a ‘foreign conspiracy,’ the concessions [White House Senior Advisor Steve] Witkoff seeks are not terms of a deal, they are ‘nonsense.’ The tragedy of the Islamic Republic is its structural inability to evolve. It is a brittle system that has mistaken rigidity for strength. When Khamenei says the American demands are impossible, we should believe him. The regime he has spent a lifetime fortifying is designed to break, not to bend.” [X]

Warsh of Wall Street: The Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman explores the relationship between incoming Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh and his former boss, Stanley Druckenmiller, following President Donald Trump’s announcement on Friday that he was appointing Warsh to the position. “Druckenmiller and Warsh spent over a decade working together at Druckenmiller’s firm, discussing the economy, markets and more, according to people close to the men. Warsh’s relationship with Druckenmiller is one reason Wall Street largely appears comfortable that he will continue the central bank’s tradition of independence, despite pressure from Trump to lower interest rates. … Druckenmiller had made it clear to some on Wall Street that he hoped Warsh would get the job. Trump mentioned that Warsh worked for Druckenmiller in his Truth Social posting announcing his choice.” [WSJ]

Following a New York Times report on Monday that the Trump administration had dropped its demand for Harvard to agree to a $200 million settlement, President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social site that he is seeking “One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University”…

A whistleblower complaint filed against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been stalled for eight months as her office refuses to move forward and share the complaint with Congress, saying that the disclosure of its contents could result in “grave damage to national security”…

Outgoing Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) endorsed Peggy Flanagan to be her successor, choosing Minnesota’s lieutenant governor over Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) in this year’s high-profile Democratic primary…

Democratic strategist Morris Katz, who played a key role in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory last year, is pushing progressive groups to back Micah Lasher’s congressional run as the state assemblymember makes a bid in the crowded primary to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)…

Deborah Lipstadt, the former State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, was named the recipient of this year’s Jonathan Sacks Institute Prize for Outstanding Achievement as a Public Intellectual at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, named for the late U.K. chief rabbi and leading Jewish thinker…

Officials in France issued warrants for two dual French-Israeli citizens who participated in efforts to block trucks carrying humanitarian aid from reaching the Gaza Strip…

The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza technocratic group set up to oversee the reconstruction of the enclave changed its logo to that of a Palestinian Authority symbol; in response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the original logo that had been presented to Israeli officials was “entirely different from the one published this evening” and that “Israel will not accept the use of a Palestinian Authority symbol,” adding that the PA “will have no part in the administration of Gaza”…

Iranian state media is facing criticism after the political satire show “Khat-Khati” aired a segment mocking Iranians killed in the country’s recent protests…

The IDF announced Maj. Ella Waweya as the army’s next Arabic-language spokesperson, replacing Col. Avichay Adraee…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a Knesset plenum on Monday marking the 77th anniversary of the first session of the body. 

Monday’s assembly was boycotted by opposition members over Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana’s decision not to invite Supreme Court President Isaac Amit to the plenum. The sole member of the opposition in attendance, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, railed against Netanyahu for excluding Amit from the session, amid a growing rift between the government and judiciary.

Australian actor and author, Isla Fisher turns 50… 

Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1993-2001, Arthur Levitt Jr. turns 95… President and CEO of clothing manufacturer Warnaco Group from 1986 to 2001, at one time she was the only woman CEO of a Fortune 500 industrial company, Linda J. Wachner turns 80… Chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. for almost the full eight years of the Obama administration, formerly president of the Lillian Vernon Corporation, Fred Hochberg turns 74… Partner at Shipman & Goodwin, following 18 years as a justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, Joette Katz turns 73… Singer-songwriter, best known for composing “From a Distance,” a big hit for Bette Midler and winner of the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991, Julie Gold turns 70… Retired member of both houses of the Utah Legislature, she was a co-president of the National Association of Jewish Legislators, Patrice M. Arent turns 70… Former head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Biden administration, now a professor at MIT and Harvard, Eric Steven Lander turns 69… Former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, prior to which he was an alderman of the 43rd Ward of Chicago, Edwin Eisendrath turns 68… Steven F. Schlafer… Member of the Knesset for the National Unity party, Michael Biton turns 56… General counsel of the Girl Scouts of the USA, Diana Hartstein Beinart… French actor with more than 50 film credits and a number of television shows, Vincent Elbaz turns 55… Record producer and music critic, known by her nickname Ultragrrrl, Sarah Lewitinn turns 46… Journalist and television host, best known for her 13-year tenure at CBS News Los Angeles, Brittney Hopper turns 44… Senior director at the GeoEconomics Center of the Atlantic Council, Josh Lipsky… Professional poker player, he won $12.1 million in the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2023, Daniel Weinman turns 38… Senior associate program director at CSS/Community Security Service, Joshua Keyak… One of Israel’s most popular singers, his religiously themed music has become popular in Israeli secular culture, Ishay Ribo turns 37… Director at strategic counsel and communications firm Joele Frank, Noam Safier… Director for J Street U at J Street, Erin Beiner… Forward for Ironi Ness Ziona of the Israeli Basketball Premier League, during the 2021-22 season while at Yeshiva University he was the top scorer in all divisions of college basketball, Ryan Turell turns 27… Vice president for advocacy and innovation at the American Jewish Committee and regional director of AJC Atlanta, Dov Wilker…