Jewish Dems endangered by Florida redistricting
Plus, acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling's Jewish roots
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In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the implications of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposed new congressional map on a handful of Sunshine State seats currently held by pro-Israel Democrats, and profile acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, who prior to his appointment played a role in federal efforts to counter antisemitism. We look at the challenges facing Jewish voters in the Democratic primary in NJ-12, where Israel critic Adam Hamawy is drawing national attention, and interview cookbook author Adeena Sussman about her new book Zariz, out today, that was inspired by the need for quick and easy recipes as Israelis faced disruptive wars. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Roy Altman, Liron Fanan and Sergey Brin.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with an assist from Danielle Cohen-Kanik. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- Talks between the U.S. and Iran remain at an impasse, with the Islamic Republic’s hard-liners reportedly at odds with each other over how the regime should approach negotiations with the West, and whether those talks should include issues related to Iran’s nuclear program.
- King Charles III is set to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress — the second time in history that a British monarch has done so — this afternoon, before a state dinner tonight.
- Education Secretary Linda McMahon will appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee this morning as the committee holds its budget hearing for the Department of Education.
- The Zionist Rabbinic Coalition kicks off its three-day annual conference today, with speakers including Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, State Department antisemitism envoy Yehuda Kaploun, the Justice Department’s Harmeet Dhillon and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer. The group also plans to honor Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) today with the “Pillar of Zion” award.
- Israel Tech Week continues today in Miami.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S matthew kassel
The hyperpartisan gerrymandering arms race is threatening to derail the careers of several of the strongest allies to the Jewish community within the Democratic Party.
A newly redrawn congressional map proposed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday targets four seats held by pro-Israel Democrats, raising concerns among many Jewish leaders at the state and national levels about the implications of losing pivotal voices helping moderate the Democratic Party’s rhetoric on Israel and antisemitism.
The aggressive redistricting plan, the broad outlines of which were first shared with Fox News, appears to eliminate a pair of South Florida House seats held by two of the most vocal pro-Israel Jewish Democrats in Congress, Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), as well as two districts in Tampa and Orlando held respectively by Reps. Kathy Castor (D-FL) and Darren Soto (D-FL), both of whom are viewed as dependable voices in support of Israel.
The map, which comes amid nationwide redistricting efforts from both parties, is expected to pass the Republican-controlled Legislature in a special session this week, though Democrats have said they intend to challenge it in court. Democrats currently hold seven of the state’s 28 congressional seats, after Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) resigned last week amid a House ethics investigation. Her seat did not seem to be affected by the map, which is facing accusations of partisan gerrymandering that could run afoul of state laws.
DeSantis has cast the new map as a necessary corrective meant to reflect the state’s changing population. But Jewish Democrats questioned the Republican governor’s motives, while expressing alarm that his plan threatens pro-Israel members, especially as the party has grown increasingly divided on Middle East policy and the rise of antisemitism.
The new congressional lines “risk drawing out members who have represented large Jewish constituencies for decades and dedicated their careers to combating antisemitism and strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), a Jewish Democrat who is one of his party’s most outspoken supporters of Israel, told Jewish Insider on Monday. “Losing them would be a massive blow to Congress.”
NORTH STAR
Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling guided by Holocaust survivor grandparents
Keith Sonderling’s path to leading the Department of Labor, a role he assumed last week, was relatively straightforward, professionally speaking. But for Sonderling, working to set American labor policy has a more personal resonance, too. He said in his Senate confirmation hearing to serve as deputy secretary that his Jewish grandparents faced religious discrimination at work once they arrived in the United States, after surviving the Holocaust, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
History lessons: “Although more than willing to work, my grandparents lost employment opportunities based solely on their religious beliefs and life circumstances,” Sonderling, 43, said last year. “It was only through their tenacity and relentless hard work that they overcame the barriers put before them, ultimately paving the path for me to appear here, before you, today.”
JERSEY JOSTLING
New Jersey’s 12th District Democratic primary poses tough choices for Jewish voters
The wide open Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District could pose a difficult dilemma for local Jewish voters and national pro-Israel groups, given the candidacy of Adam Hamawy, a physician who served in Gaza and has made criticism of Israel a centerpiece of his campaign, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
State of play: With a crowded field of candidates staking out a range of views on the U.S.-Israel relationship, the race poses tough strategic questions for the pro-Israel community — if it wants to block Hamawy from becoming the Democratic nominee. With such a divided field, a candidate could win the nomination in the June 2 primary with a small plurality.
EYE ON ISLAMABAD
U.S. lawmakers voice caution on Pakistan’s new middleman role
Lawmakers are expressing skepticism over Pakistan’s expanding role in the Middle East, cautiously welcoming its involvement in U.S.-Iran negotiations while questioning its defense aspirations in the region and whether it can truly serve as an impartial intermediary — even as the Trump administration increasingly engages with the country, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Proceed with caution: “I think the approach has to be: don’t trust, but verify,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told JI. “[Pakistan] has certainly been a somewhat ambiguous force in many ways. They’ve been disruptive to some relationships. They’re a nuclear-armed power, but they are definitely a force, and if they can play a constructive role here we should welcome it. It doesn’t mean that we have to accept their word on everything they do or say.”
LEGAL APPROACH
Judge Roy Altman, in new book, takes on Israel critics, one legal claim at a time
U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida Roy Altman decided to apply the same legal methodology that judges, lawyers and juries have deployed in courtrooms across America for centuries to address six legal accusations being wielded against Israel by its detractors, in a new book called Israel On Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence and the Law. Altman sat down with Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen, just ahead of the book’s release today, to make the case for examining Israel through a legal lens.
Providing perspective: “Legal questions allow us to pare back the vitriol, emotion, bias and prejudice. That’s what we do with jurors every day in this country,” Altman told JI. “For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have been accustomed to living in small groups. It was really important in the context of that environment to tell the truth and for the group as a whole to be able to decide whether the person was telling the truth.”
HUSH-HUSH
Brad Lander stays mum on Mamdani buffer bill veto
Congressional hopeful and former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s favored candidate to dislodge sitting Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) — refused to comment on Mamdani’s veto of a bill that would set NYPD policy around security perimeters at educational facilities during protests, even as a Jewish group Lander co-founded denounced the mayor’s move, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.
Unreachable: Lander has not issued a public statement on the move and failed to respond to calls or text messages on his personal cell phone from JI, while his campaign did not answer queries sent via phone and email regarding Mamdani’s controversial Friday veto, the first of his mayoralty.
BOOKSHELF
Adeena Sussman’s new cookbook spotlights simple cooking for complicated times
Adeena Sussman’s Tel Aviv kitchen is a chef’s dream. The long marble countertop next to the stove extends out from the gas range, perfect for preparing ingredients, pouring drinks and entertaining. “This is my safe room,” Sussman half-jokingly told Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss. Her actual safe room is a floor below, used frequently during the war with Iran, in the midst of which JI visited the cookbook author last month, weeks before the release of her third book, Zariz: 100 Easy, Breezy, Tel Aviv-y Recipes, out today.
Comfort food: The first sentence of the introduction of Zariz begins: “When the going gets tough, the cooking gets easy.” Sussman began writing the book in the weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, amid regular rocket fire that frequently sent Israelis, including Sussman, who made aliyah a decade ago, to their shelters. “It’s simple cooking for complicated times,” Sussman explained of the book’s origins. Nearly two and a half years after she began writing the book, “it hasn’t gotten any less complicated.”
Worthy Reads
The Common Foe Theory: In Foreign Policy, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Ahmad Sharawi posits that the U.S. could play a role in bringing Syria and Israel together over their shared opposition to Hezbollah, which poses threats to both countries. “Now, the United States could help pressure both sides to work together more effectively. Indirect coordination or tacit understandings about red lines could significantly reduce friction while tightening constraints on Hezbollah’s movement in Syria. Crucially, Israel could provide Damascus with intelligence that would help it crack down on Hezbollah-linked networks, particularly those tied to weapons transfers and cross-border operations.”[ForeignPolicy]
Tying Mossad’s Hands?: In his Substack “Between Us,” Nadav Eyal looks at the degree to which the Mossad’s plans to target Iran — which so far have left the regime damaged but in power — were hamstrung by the U.S. and other regional actors. “The plan included, as was widely reported in The New York Times, a massive deployment of Kurdish forces in a broad invasion of Iran. This was thwarted by Turkey, which successfully used its influence to prevent the plan from being activated. Had such an invasion taken place, the Islamic Republic would have faced a severe crisis — forced to divert resources to suppress both an internal uprising and an armed incursion.” [BetweenUs]
Israel is Real: In the “Boundless Insights” Substack, Adam Hummel argues that the debate over Zionism ignores the reality of Israel’s existence. “Israelis don’t owe anyone an argument for their existence. They don’t need to win the debate about whether Zionism was the right idea in 1897. They don’t need to persuade Ezra Klein or Hasan Piker or the student encampments that their country’s creation in 1948 was just. The debate is over, not because one side won, but because the thing itself came into being. They are a people. They speak a language. They live on a piece of land and have mortgages. That is what peoples do. The Greeks do it. The Poles do it. The Québécois do it. The arguments about whether they should are, at this point, a leisure activity for people who live elsewhere.” [Boundless]
Word on the Street
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the U.S. is being “humiliated” by Iran amid stalled talks, adding that the “Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either”…
President Donald Trump, speaking to CBS News’ “60 Minutes Overtime,” said, in response to conspiracy theories swirling around the attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, that people who say “Oct. 7 didn’t happen, and World War II didn’t happen and the Holocaust didn’t happen — and many things didn’t happen” are “more sick than they are con people”…
The California man accused of opening fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night made his first court appearance on Monday, where he was charged with attempting to assassinate Trump, as well as two firearms charges; Cole Tomas Allen, who did not enter a plea, is expected to face additional charges…
The Wall Street Journal does a deep dive into the recent spike in domestic anti-government violence, finding that attacks and plots targeting the government are at their highest levels in more than three decades…
The New York Times looks at how Google co-founder Sergey Brin has begun to move to the right, citing the Democratic Party’s leftward shift on a variety of core issues, including Israel; Brin told the Times, “I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don’t want California to end up in the same place”…
David Ellison’s Paramount filed a request for approval from the FCC for Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding Co. to collectively take a nearly 50% stake in Paramount’s equity interests…
All five of Pennsylvania’s living former governors, both Republicans and Democrats, released a statement on Monday calling on state officials to prioritize the safety and security of Gov. Josh Shapiro; the letter comes days after Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity — Shapiro’s leading Republican opponent in this year’s gubernatorial race — said the state would not pay for security upgrades at Shapiro’s private home, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports…
Amir Makled, who earlier this month beat Jordan Acker in the race for the Democratic nomination to the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents, defended sharing social media content praising Hezbollah and demonizing Israelis, while saying he “disavow[s] antisemitism completely”…
A federal judge in Pennsylvania delayed an order that would have required the University of Pennsylvania to turn over information to the Trump administration by Friday about Jewish faculty and individuals affiliated with Jewish campus organizations…
Security experts speaking to eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher warned that philanthropic and Jewish organizations are increasingly at risk as AI enables the proliferation of cyberattacks…
Jewish Community Relations Council of New York’s Mark Treyger, the Met Council’s David Greenfield, UJA-Federation of New York’s Eric Goldstein, Jewish Voters Action Network’s Maury Litwack and Teach Coalition’s Sydney Altfield were among those named to City & State New York’s New York City Power 100 list…
Ynet interviews Liron Fanan, the general manager of the NBA G League’s Cleveland Charge, shortly after she was named the league’s first female executive of the year…
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry summoned Israel’s ambassador in Kyiv amid reports that Israel had allowed a second Russian ship carrying grain looted from Ukraine to dock in the port of Haifa; Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar clashed on X with his Ukrainian counterpart over the allegation, saying, “Evidence substantiating the allegations have yet to be provided”…
Bahrain revoked the citizenships of dozens of people accused of “glorifying or sympathizing” with Iran; Manama revoked 69 total citizenships, including relatives of those alleged to be supporting Tehran…
Adam Safran, who served as legislative director for former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), has joined AIPAC as director for policy and government affairs…
Eugene Kontorovich is joining Advancing American Freedom as a senior legal fellow…
Shayndi Raice, who was previously The Wall Street Journal’s deputy bureau chief for the Middle East and North Africa based out of Israel, was tapped by CBS News to serve in a newly created foreign editor role based out of London; Claire Day, the outlet’s London bureau chief, is set to depart her role next month…
Disability advocate Matan Koch died at 44…
Australian novelist David Malouf, whose writings focused on the country’s dual historical identities as a British empire colony and a rugged outback, died at 92…
Pic of the Day
Israeli President Isaac Herzog met this morning with leaders of Central Asian Jewish communities during his visit to the Beit Rachel synagogue in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital city.
Birthdays
Actress and film critic, she is the writer and star of the CBC comedy series “Workin’ Moms,” Catherine Reitman turns 45…
Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., he also served four terms in the Knesset, Zalman Shoval turns 96… White House chief of staff for Presidents Reagan and Bush 41, secretary of the treasury and secretary of state, James Baker turns 96… Retired judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals (now known as the Supreme Court of Maryland), Judge Irma Steinberg Raker turns 88… Retired four-star United States Marine Corps general, Robert Magnus turns 79… Retired SVP and COO of IPRO and former president of the Bronx/Riverdale YM-YWHA and the Riverdale Jewish Center, Harry M. Feder… Cantor who has served in Galveston, Texas, Houston and Buffalo, N.Y., Sharon Eve Colbert… Criminal defense attorney, his clients have included Hunter Biden and Jared Kushner, Abbe David Lowell turns 74… Author of 28 books, lecturer, podcaster, tour guide in Jerusalem and film producer, Rabbi Hanoch Teller turns 70… Director of congregational engagement at Temple Beth Sholom of Miami Beach, Fla., Mark Baranek… Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Elena Kagan turns 66… American-born Israeli writer and translator, director and senior fellow at Z3, David Hazony turns 57… Director of criminal justice innovation, development and engagement at USDOJ during the Biden administration, Karen “Chaya” Friedman… Comedy writer, television producer and showrunner, Daniel Joshua Goor turns 51… Retired soccer player, she played for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team from 1997 to 2000, Sara Whalen Hess turns 50… Founder of GlobeTrotScott Strategies, Scott Mayerowitz… Model, actress and TV host, known for her role in the soap opera “Fashion House,” Donna Feldman turns 44… CEO and founder of The Branch, Ravi Gupta… Freelance journalist, formerly at ESPN and Sports Illustrated, Jason Schwartz… Senior editor at Politico Magazine, Benjamin Isaac Weyl… President of Saratoga Strategies, a strategic communications and crisis management firm, Joshua Schwerin… Head coach of the women’s soccer team at Yeshiva University, Ryan Alexander Hezekiah Adeleye turns 39… Israeli artist and photographer, Neta Cones turns 38… Marketing director at College Golf Experience, Jeffrey Hensiek… Associate in the finance department of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, Robert S. Murstein… Senior reporter for Cybersecurity Dive, Eric J. Geller… Founder and CEO of Diamond Travel Services, Ahron Fragin… Midfielder for Major League Soccer’s St. Louis City, Daniel Ethan Edelman turns 23…
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