Lindsey Graham’s ‘indelible mark’
Plus, Georgia Jews’ Senate quandary
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In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to friends and colleagues of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died on Saturday, and spotlight how Georgia’s Jewish community is approaching the state’s Senate race. We report on the confrontation between Rep. Ro Khanna and a group of West Bank settlers during his trip to Israel last week, and cover New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s response to an attempt by top staffers to meet with Iran’s envoy to the United Nations. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. Mitch McConnell, Dennis Baum and French President Emmanuel Macron.
We have also launched a new on-demand Live Briefing that you can access throughout the day via our new app (on Apple and Android) and on our website.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi arrives in Washington today, where he is slated to meet this week with President Donald Trump and other senior administration officials. The trip comes as Washington has sought to pressure Baghdad to crack down on Iranian militias operating in the country, and as the U.S. and Iran continued to trade fire over the weekend, with the U.S. striking Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz overnight after Iran hit a Cyprus-flagged container ship, prompting Iran to fire barrages of drones and missiles at Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
- Current and former government officials and policy wonks are arriving in Aspen, Colo., today ahead of the start of the Aspen Security Forum tomorrow. Will you be in Aspen? Say hello to JI’s Marc Rod, who will be covering the forum this week.
- Israelis will go to the polls in new elections on Oct. 27, MK Ofir Katz, the head of the Knesset’s House Committee, announced on Sunday. Katz’s announcement kicks off the official countdown to elections, even as candidates have for months been campaigning as the date has remained uncertain.
- The House Rules Committee is meeting today to discuss the Sunshine Protection Act, legislation that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent and has been opposed by Orthodox Jewish groups. The committee is also set to discuss legislation about State Department funding when it meets at 4 p.m.
- The Justice Department’s Leo Terrell, Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Greg Stanton (R-AZ), author Dara Horn and the Philos Project’s Luke Moon are among those slated to speak today at the National Coalition Against Antisemitism & Hate Conference, hosted by the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council at the National Press Club.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S EMILY JACOBS
Following the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who was 71, this weekend, tributes poured in from lawmakers, administration officials and Jewish organizations, while Republicans and Democrats alike predicted Graham would be remembered as a legendary American political figure known for his ability to take political risks and find common ground in unexpected places.
Morgan Ortagus, the former deputy presidential envoy for Middle East peace in the second Trump administration and one of Graham’s closest confidantes in Washington, spoke to the senator on Saturday afternoon, hours before paramedics were called to his Capitol Hill home after he experienced an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
“He was extremely jazzed up in our last conversation,” Ortagus told JI. “He had just gotten off the phone with the president, and he was super excited about the Russia sanctions bill and the president deciding to go back into Iran. He could not have been happier when I spoke to him last night. He was in the best mood and in a great place. He spoke about how he felt like he was doing consequential work.”
“Nobody was expecting this. That’s for sure. Not even Lindsey was, or he wouldn’t have been running for another term,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who has had close relationships with both Graham and President Donald Trump, said of the senator’s sudden passing. “When a person cuts as wide a swath as Lindsey cuts, it is shocking. It will take some time to process the reality of it. It should really hit on Monday when we show up for work.”
“He was not afraid to be critical and he was never uncritical of friends. He believed that friends owe it to each other to try to enable them to do better,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said. “He had a vision, which was in effect the normalization of relationships throughout the Middle East, an extension of the Abraham Accords. He pursued it relentlessly.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) credited Graham with doing “a masterful job of pulling” senators from across the ideological spectrum “in the same direction” in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, swiftly organizing a bipartisan congressional delegation alongside former Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as he sought to salvage his long-standing efforts to achieve Saudi-Israeli normalization.
PEACH STATE PROBLEMS
In Georgia’s Senate race, tough choices ahead for the state’s Jewish community
For some Jewish voters in Georgia, this year’s Senate race offers no comfortable choice. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-GA) votes to block weapons shipments to Israel have alienated some longtime supporters, while Republican nominee Rep. Mike Collins’ (R-GA) history of inflammatory rhetoric and controversial staffing choices has made him a nonstarter for others, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
The dilemma: The Jewish community remains divided on the race — some prominent community leaders, including prominent longtime Democrats, say they can’t see themselves voting for Ossoff given his record. But they also say that Collins is an unpalatable choice for them given his own history. Yet, both candidates also maintain strong supporters: Ossoff supporters argue that the response to his votes against weapons shipments have been overblown, or support the stances he’s taken. Collins supporters say that, despite past controversies, he’s the more reliable advocate for Israel and the Jewish community, in part because of his evangelical Christian background.
‘Rogue’ rhetoric
Abdul El-Sayed calls Israel a ‘rogue state’
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan running in the race’s far-left lane, on Sunday described Israel as a “rogue state” that has committed genocide and apartheid. El-Sayed made the comments in an interview with Manu Raju on CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
What he said: Asked whether he thought the Israeli government should be considered by the U.S. to be a foreign terrorist organization, El-Sayed answered, “It’s certainly a rogue state.” He continued, “I mean, they did a genocide. What about doing a genocide is not evil in your book? At baseline they do apartheid.”
Endorsement alert: Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) endorsed Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) over El-Sayed for the seat he is vacating, touting Stevens’ having demonstrated “time and time again that she’s a fighter” and adding that the U.S. Senate “is not a place for on-the-job training.”
SETTLER SCRUTINY
Khanna calls for investigation into West Bank altercation
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Sunday called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch an investigation after the lawmaker said he was harassed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank last week, an incident Netanyahu attributed to a small group of “vigilantes,” Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Khanna’s claim: During his first known trip to Israel and the West Bank since October 2024, Khanna said that his delegation’s van had been surrounded, stopped and taunted last Wednesday by Israeli settlers. Israel Police said that officers on the scene did not witness any violence and that the group was stopped in a restricted zone. Police added that Khanna’s tour group leader was warned of a possible arrest and that the group was told that civilians were not permitted in the area, before being released.
Bonus: The New York Post reports that Khanna ignored efforts by the Israeli Embassy in Washington to arrange a meeting with former hostages and survivors of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.
MEETING MISHAP
Mamdani pleads ignorance of commissioner’s plan to meet Iranian ambassador
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told reporters on Friday that he had been unaware that top officials in his administration planned to meet with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations earlier this month — calling the decision “an error” on the part of one of his most prominent and politically active commissioners, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.
Mayor’s comments: Speaking after an unrelated event, the mayor maintained he only learned from a request for comment from City Journal that International Affairs Commissioner Ana Maria Archila and what the publication described as “two other senior officials” working under her had planned to sit down on Tuesday with Amir-Saeid Iravani of the Iranian Mission to the U.N. City Journal, affiliated with the right-of-center Manhattan Institute, reported that the State Department stepped in to preempt the meeting.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Radical GOP governor hopeful got cash from backers of far-left Dems
James Fishback, the GOP candidate for Florida governor whom critics call “openly racist” and “openly antisemitic,” ostensibly sits at the opposite end of the political spectrum from the likes of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. But the far-right and far-left politicians share more than just an aversion to Israel — they also overlap in donors, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman has found.
Money matters: Among the 27 donors to give the maximum $3,000 contribution to Fishback’s bid for Tallahassee is New York-based philanthropist and financier Amed Khan. A longtime associate of the Clinton family and contributor to former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as to the Democratic National Committee, Khan’s public commentary and political giving has pivoted leftward since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. Besides maxing out to Fishback, this cycle the investment banker and Quincy Institute board member has donated $7,000 to former Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner, the progressive Democrat whose tirades against “oligarchs” and “the establishment” — not to mention his rhetoric on Israel — made him a favorite of the online left before a rape allegation derailed his campaign.
Targeting Fishback: The Front Line, a newly launched political nonprofit group aligned with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), is making a $400,000 ad buy in Florida targeting Fishback over his past antisemitic comments and suggestion that he would not enforce the state’s antisemitism law if elected.
Worthy Reads
AWOL on Antisemitism: In The Hill, Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK), the co-chairs of the Senate’s antisemitism task force, call on Congress to pass the Jewish American Security Act. “Every single attack represents a violation of Americans’ freedom to safely practice their religion. Failing to confront the moral rot of antisemitism in our country is an abdication of our responsibility to uphold this fundamental right. We cannot continue to allow discrimination and violence to go unchecked. Yet despite the disturbing rise in antisemitism, not a single piece of federal legislation focused solely and directly on combating it has been passed into law since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack.” [TheHill]
Lindsey’s Legacy: In The Atlantic, Mark Leibovich reflects on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) death, looking at how the South Carolina Republican navigated the Beltway bubble, local politics and his relationship with President Donald Trump. “It is perfectly on the nose that Graham’s departure would occur just a few hours before he was supposed to appear on Meet the Press. It would have been his 64th appearance on America’s longest-running public-affairs program. In the Meet the Press greenroom there used to be a prominent photo of Graham yapping away alongside his Senate sidekick, John McCain. McCain, for his part, appeared 73 times on Meet the Press, more than any other guest in history — something McCain was especially proud of. In early 2019, a few months after McCain died, Graham joked to me that his main goal in his remaining time on God’s green Earth (or God’s greenroom) was to beat McCain’s record. He never will.” [TheAtlantic]
White House Inc.: Tablet’s Armin Rosen spotlights the overlap between business and personal dealings among members of the Trump administration, using as an example Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany who serves as a senior advisor to the president on Middle East and African affairs despite his business interests in Africa. “The blurring boundaries between individual personalities and the basic functioning of the American government are characteristic of the second Trump administration, where jobs at the top of the system have been turned into prizes given out to allies and loyalists deemed worthy of having a shot at 10-figure prosperity. … But the result of this new ethos is that the pursuits of personal and public interest now bleed into one another with desensitizing frequency.” [Tablet]
A larger selection of Worthy Reads is available in our Live Briefing.
Word on the Street
In The Atlantic, former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, now the head of the country’s opposition, reflects on what he has learned about the American ethos during his time traveling the country, finding that “America is the place where the individual precedes the tribe and the story precedes history,” and as a place where loneliness “is not a glitch in the system; it is the raw material from which the system was built”…
Politico looks at how Vice President JD Vance’s rhetoric on Israel is alienating some Jewish Republican donors…
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has been hospitalized and has not made any public statements since a fall that he said left him “briefly unconscious” last month, released a photo of himself amid speculation over the extent of his illness, saying that he developed pneumonia while recovering from the fall…
The Washington State Democratic Party is facing criticism from Jewish communal leaders over a change to its party platform that linked rising antisemitism in part to the actions of the Israeli government…
The New York Times looks at the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America in smaller cities in upstate New York as the group seeks to extend its footprint around the state…
Graham Platner officially withdrew his candidacy for U.S. Senate in Maine, clearing the way for the Maine Democratic Party to replace him on the November ballot…
The Anti-Defamation League took out a full-page ad in the Maine Sunday Telegram, declaring of Platner, “The tattoo should have been enough” and warning that those who “traffic in antisemitism” often are associated with other “misconduct”; ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told JI, “At this pivotal moment, antisemitism is not only being normalized in our politics, it is at risk of becoming mainstreamed across society. When conspiracy theories, Nazi-linked symbols, ties to extremists or hatred toward Jews are excused or minimized, leaders cannot look away”…
PEN America President Dinaw Mengestu resigned after seven months in the role, following the organization’s publication of an article describing the harassment and isolation faced by Jewish and Israeli writers in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and ensuing war in Gaza; Mengestu said that the decision was in part because of the group’s opposition to cultural boycotts by pro-Palestinian activists…
The Atlantic explores efforts by the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to learn the truth about their parents, who were executed in 1953 after being convicted of spying for the Soviet Union…
The U.K.’s Home Office announced it will spend £250 million ($335 million) over the next three years to increase security and policing at Jewish institutions…
The Australian royal commission of inquiry into antisemitism heard from students and faculty about the antisemitism they experienced at universities in the country that predated the Oct. 7 attacks…
Australia’s education minister announced an overhaul of the country’s education standards that will now require universities to adopt a definition of antisemitism and develop transparent processes for reporting incidents of racism…
Politico does a deep dive into efforts by Norway, led by a former national team star player-turned-activist, to oust Israel from FIFA…
European foreign ministers gathered in Brussels today to discuss a potential ban on the importing of goods from West Bank settlements…
Deutsche Welle spotlights efforts by Dennis Baum, the Jewish heir to the Simson automobile manufacturing empire, to fight back against the use of Simson vehicles in political materials distributed by the far-right Alternative for Germany party…
Counterterrorism officials in France are investigating after a military-grade weapon was discovered in a vehicle in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in the north of Paris…
The Qatar Investment Authority, which owns a 10% stake in Volkswagen AG, blocked a deal between the German automaker and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems that would have seen Volkswagen produce vehicles supporting the Iron Dome missile-defense system….
Bloomberg looks at the challenges posed to global financial institutions by the growing rift between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that “has the potential to upend global investment flows”…
Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who oversaw the Gulf state’s transition into an era of massive growth that also saw Doha deepen ties with Iran, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and establish Al Jazeera, died at 74; The New York Times’ obituary of Sheikh Hamad included a photo of the former emir with senior Hamas officials…
Find on-demand Live Briefing updates throughout the day via our new app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Pic of the Day
French President Emmanuel Macron and Charles Dreyfus, a grandson of Alfred Dreyfus, on Sunday inaugurated a statue of the military captain, who was the target of the antisemitic campaign known as the Dreyfus Affair. The Paris ceremony marking Dreyfus’ 1906 exoneration was held on the country’s first national day dedicated to the recognition of his innocence.
Speaking at the ceremony, Macron acknowledged that “the old demons of antisemitism have never completely disappeared from our country.”
Birthdays
Television writer, David X. Cohen turns 60…
Scottsdale, Ariz., resident, retired teacher, Howie K. Kipnes… Actor whose films have grossed more than $10 billion, his maternal grandmother was Anna Lifschutz, a Jewish immigrant from Minsk, Harrison Ford turns 84… Ridgefield, Conn., resident, Louis Panzer… Lecturer on the federal budget process following 37 years at various federal agencies, Johnny Cahn… Co-host of “Pardon the Interruption” on ESPN since 2001, Anthony Irwin “Tony” Kornheiser turns 78… Actor, best known for her role as Frenchy in “Grease,” Edith “Didi” Conn turns 75… Author of crime and suspense novels, he is also a conservative commentator, Andrew Klavan turns 72… Guide and educator at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Rabbi Dr. Eric Marshall Lankin… Senior manager of regulatory and legislative affairs at PJM Interconnection, Stuart Widom… Country music artist, Victoria Lynn Shaw turns 64… Television executive and producer, she was the president of HBO’s network’s entertainment division until 2008 and was responsible for commissioning “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and other hit shows, Carolyn Strauss turns 63… Film director and screenwriter, Shari Springer Berman turns 63… Author and journalist, Katie Roiphe turns 58… Chief legal officer and chief policy officer at HackerOne, Ilona Cohen… Owner of the D.C. area franchises of SafeSplash Swim Schools, Jennifer Rebecca Goodman Lilintahl… Founder of Omanut Collective, Sarah Persitz… Director of major gifts for the Southeast region at American Friends of Magen David Adom, Yishai Mizrahi… Creator, writer and producer of the TV show “Casual,” which ran from 2015 to 2018, Alexander “Zander” Sutton Lehmann turns 39… Former CEO at Art of Air Events and Entertainment, Ariana Gradow… Managing director at BDT & MSD Partners, Nicholas Avery Newburger… Managing partner at Surround Ventures, Jared Kash… Television and film actor, Wyatt Jess Oleff (family name was Olefsky) turns 23… Technology investor and executive, Eric A. Kohlmann… Reporter at Punchbowl News, Max Cohen…
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