Curding DSA’s enthusiasm
Plus, Kaploun's restitution vow draws doubters
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In today’s Daily Kickoff, we break down the results of yesterday’s primaries in Connecticut, Minnesota, South Carolina and Wisconsin, and talk to New York Jewish leaders who attended a meeting with Mayor Zohran Mamdani to discuss concerns over his inflammatory Israel rhetoric. We report on antisemitism envoy Yehuda Kaploun’s recent pledge, which drew skepticism, to resolve all Holocaust restitution claims in the final years of the Trump administration, and have the scoop on New Jersey congressional candidate Rebecca Bennett’s efforts to distance herself from fellow N.J. Democratic candidate Adam Hamawy. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ken Marcus, Ari Emanuel and Michal Slawny Cababia.
We also have 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
- We’re keeping an eye on the last races to be called after last night’s primaries in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Connecticut and Vermont, as well as the special election primaries in South Carolina and Alabama. More below.
- President Donald Trump asserted late Tuesday that the U.S. has “total control over the Hormuz strait right now,” even as Oman and Iran engage in talks over control of the waterway. More below from our conversations with Iran experts and observers about the talks and likely outcomes.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR
In Tuesday’s newsletter, we wrote that four major Democratic primary races — in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Connecticut — would be key tests of the depth of the anti-establishment, anti-Israel left’s staying power.
So far, the left of the party won three of the four contests, with the notable exception of Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, who fell short against Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley — in the night’s most high-profile race testing whether a socialist can win the Democratic nomination for an executive role in a pivotal battleground state.
Hong, who drew criticism from leading Democrats over her record of comments attacking Thanksgiving, support for defunding the police and overall embrace of the DSA’s radical platform, underperformed the primary polls showing her with a substantial lead in the race. But as Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and leading Democratic officials warned that her nomination could cost Democrats the governorship, her lead dissipated amid concerns about her electability come November.
Of note: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the two leading members of the ideological left in Congress, declined to endorse Hong’s campaign.
The establishment’s unified — and effective — show of force against Hong offered a stark contrast to party leaders’ efforts in Michigan to stop far-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed from winning the nomination. In that race, party leaders were more equivocal in their support of Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), with Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) declining to support Stevens’ candidacy despite their similar political backgrounds. Even Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who offered a late endorsement to Stevens, didn’t go after El-Sayed’s electability like Evers has in his comments speaking out against Hong.
The socialist speed bump in Wisconsin, however, was seemingly the only exception to an overall dominant showing from progressive candidates, highlighted by the left’s successes in Minnesota.
Trust, but verify
Rabbis hope ‘open, honest dialogue’ with Mamdani brings belated change in Israel rhetoric
A roundtable with New York City rabbis held at City Hall on Monday gave participants a chance to voice growing concerns about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Israel rhetoric they felt had before gone unheard — with several attendees telling Jewish Insider the strong collective message, and Mamdani’s reaction, gave them hope he would change tack, JI’s Will Bredderman and Matthew Kassel report.
Airing concerns: Multiple attendees of the meeting told JI they viewed the gathering as an opportunity to bring their fears directly to the mayor and to demonstrate communal unity amid a period of spiking antisemitic hate crimes. “People talked about their own concerns, their families’ concerns, their congregations’ concerns. I think he heard them,” said one participant, who requested anonymity to speak freely about their ongoing contact with Mamdani’s antisemitism czar, Phylisa Wisdom, and her deputy, Josh Binderman. “When they framed the meeting, they said it was going to be an ‘open, honest dialogue.’”
Bonus: The Wall Street Journal reports that Mamdani is facing both “growing discontent from New Yorkers upset with his anti-Israel rhetoric and slights against the business community,” as well as a “fraying” relationship with the New York City Council.
SCOOP
Kaploun vows to resolve all Holocaust restitution issues by end of Trump term, drawing skepticism
Ambassador Yehuda Kaploun, the State Department’s antisemitism envoy, said last month that he would be able to resolve all remaining Holocaust restitution issues within the next two and a half years, before the end of the Trump administration, two sources with knowledge of the remarks told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod.
Response: The assertion — made during the July annual meeting of the board of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, better known as the Claims Conference, in New York — has left experts in the field skeptical. The U.S. has been pursuing Holocaust restitution issues for decades. “The tone … was basically, ‘I’m coming in, and I know what needs to be done, and I’m going to do it my way despite whatever anybody else feels or does because I have the backing of the administration,’” one source, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the meeting, explained.
SCOOP
N.J. Dem nominee Rebecca Bennett will not endorse Hamawy, campaign says
Rebecca Bennett, the Democratic nominee in New Jersey’s swing 7th Congressional District, distanced herself from a fellow Democratic nominee, Adam Hamawy, who is running in a neighboring district, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Notable quotable: “Rebecca Bennett is not going to campaign with or endorse Adam Hamawy this fall, as she is laser focused on flipping New Jersey’s seventh district, lowering costs, and getting corruption out of Washington,” a Bennett campaign spokesperson told JI.
STRAIT TALK
As Hormuz talks stall, experts see economic pressure — not war — as Trump’s likely path
Talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz appear unlikely to produce an agreement, analysts told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea this week, with little sign that Washington and Tehran can bridge their competing demands over the waterway. The Trump administration is more likely to pursue continued economic pressure than return to military confrontation, the experts suggested — but that strategy may not be enough to force Tehran to back down.
Trump’s options: “Given the extreme unlikelihood of any successful negotiation between the U.S. and Iran, the two plausible scenarios are either a continuation of the status quo, or Trump using an Iran-Oman agreement on Hormuz to declare victory and extricate himself from the situation altogether,” Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, said. “Trump’s preferred option is economic pressure … The economy has priced in the Hormuz closure, so if the U.S. keeps up economic pressure without returning to war, Trump can at least count on no drastic changes on inflation or public opinion, even if neither improves before the election.”
EDUCATION CONSTERNATION
ADL reports find professors pushing anti-Israel bias, antisemitism in university classrooms
Even as student-driven protests against Israel and the war in Gaza have quieted down on college campuses, two new Anti-Defamation League reports reveal rising levels of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in university classrooms nationwide driven by faculty, noting that some instructors are still presenting one-sided views on Israel as fact, assigning readings by terrorist groups and offering extra credit for attending anti-Israel protests, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Findings: “The Faculty Factor: Inside the Networks Driving Anti-Israel and Anti-Zionist Activism on Campus,” published on Wednesday, documents how faculty groups, unions and networks drive anti-Israel and anti-Zionist actions at universities. The report claims that faculty networks such as Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine and the American Association of University Professors have shielded anti-Israel student groups from discipline since the 2024 campus anti-Israel encampments, detailing methods used by influential organizations to provide institutional cover. A second report, “Antisemitism Among Faculty and in the Classroom: Trends, Patterns and Institutional Dynamics,” highlights anti-Israel narratives presented to students through regular course study since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and the ensuing Gaza war.
DATA DEBATE
Brandeis Center president urges EEOC to repeal employer data collection requirements
Kenneth Marcus, the chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, urged the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday to repeal a long-standing rule requiring large employers to keep and report data on the racial, ethnic and sex makeup of their workforce, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
The argument: Marcus was one of a slew of speakers who appeared before the commission to testify for and against the rule, which the commission has proposed repealing. He argued that the reporting requirements have resulted in employers feeling pressure to make hiring decisions based on race, rather than encouraging equal treatment. He said that the Jewish community’s experience “illustrates both the promise and the peril of demographic data collection.”
Worthy Reads
Youth Movement: The New Yorker’s Bernard Avishai profiles Israeli satirist and Netanyahu government critic Lior Schleien, who through his “Free Israel” movement engages in dialogue with right-leaning young Israelis that is filmed and shared online. “Relevant closed in late 2024, but last November Schleien launched an online movement, called Free Israel, a play on the slogan ‘Free Palestine,’ and released videos, he told me, aimed at influencing public opinion so that Israel can ‘free itself first from Netanyahu’s rule.’ … Since then, Schleien has continued his campaign, which he and a few friends have financed, to meet with dozens of groups of Israeli youth — some seven hundred thousand of whom will be voting for the first time in the fall and who, in their majority, identify as ‘right wing.’” [NewYorker]
Rationing the Islamic Republic: The Wall Street Journal’s Georgi Kantchev, Henna Moussavi and Summer Said look at how Iran is becoming a “survival economy” that rations its limited resources in an effort to buy time until the current conflict ends. “Tehran is rationing scarce goods, limiting access to foreign currency, slashing investment and shifting more of the burden onto households while preserving strategic imports and the essential machinery of the state, analysts say. The result will be a deepening economic malaise that leads to rising poverty and dysfunction, but also more room for Iran’s leaders to stall talks with the U.S.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Craig Goldman (R-TX) and Haley Stevens (D-MI) wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation CEO Ben Black urging them to prioritize the Great Sea Interconnector linking the Greek, Cypriot and Israeli energy grids as part of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor…
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law urged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) to call up the No Antisemitism in Education Act for a full House vote when the chamber returns in September…
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said he would continue to accept AIPAC money, telling Politico, he’s “not going to exclude any person, faith, organization”…
Police in San Diego are investigating a weekend incident at the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house at the University of California, San Diego, in which the building was vandalized with antisemitic and racist graffiti…
The NYPD denied that its officers will be accompanying New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji on a trip to Lebanon and Syria next month after City Hall said that her security detail would join the trip, saying the “NYPD does not send officers to countries with level four travel advisories for discretionary reasons”; Mayor Zohran Mamdani later said the diverging statements stemmed from a “miscommunication,” and that when his wife makes the trip “it will be without any NYPD detail”…
Yankee Global Enterprises announced a new $2.6 billion strategic investment partnership with Apollo Sports Capital…
Ari Emanuel’s Mari reached a $6 billion deal to acquire the U.K.-based theater company ATG Entertainment, whose portfolio includes dozens of theaters, including on Broadway and London’s West End…
Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia was forced to cede board seats and key control of his United Wholesale Mortgage to debt firm Oaktree Capital in exchange for a $1.5 billion rescue, after UWM suffered a $600 million loss…
The Wall Street Journal interviews actor Jon Lovitz, whose films “Redemption” and “Don’t Say Good Luck” are set to be released this week, about his entry into comedy (and his childhood friendship with Lisa Kudrow)…
Yemeni officials said that six people were killed in a Houthi strike on a vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb strait; elsewhere in the region, CENTCOM said it disabled a Panama-flagged cargo ship sailing toward Iranian ports by firing two Hellfire missiles into the vessel’s engine room, the third such incident since the U.S. blockade began…
The Palestinian technocratic committee meant to govern Gaza convened a joint coordination meeting in Cairo with several U.N. agencies — including the World Food Program, UNICEF and the World Health Organization — as well as representatives from the Board of Peace and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change, to coordinate on humanitarian aid and reconstruction issues…
The Wall Street Journal’s William Galston considers the evolution of U.S. support for Israel stemming back to its Six-Day War victory…
LinkedIn is shutting down its research and development facility in Tel Aviv and laying off nearly all of the 50 staffers who work there, four years after establishing the center following its acquisition of analytics startup Oribi…
Teddy Sagi’s Layam and Adel Mardini’s Jetex opened a new VIP lounge in Ben Gurion Airport’s Terminal 3 this week…
Michal Slawny Cababia, the World Zionist Organization’s representative for North America, was sworn in to Israel’s Knesset as a member of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party; in an X post announcing the news, Lapid praised Slawny Cababia’s efforts to help new immigrants assimilate into Israeli society…
The New York Times spotlights concerns among the Druze residents of the Syrian province of Sweida who fear what they believe is a looming government takeover of the region, a year after hundreds were killed in a wave of sectarian violence…
Pic of the Day
A toast was held by the Aner Shapiro Association during the VERSE Festival on Tuesday, honoring the memory of the Jerusalem artist and Nova music festival attendee who saved the lives of dozens of people on Oct. 7, 2023, when he repeatedly caught and threw back grenades hurled by terrorists into a bomb shelter before he was killed.
Birthdays
Award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction and the author of several novels and a novella, Rachel Kadish turns 57…
Hungarian American investor, currency trader and political activist, born György Schwartz, George Soros turns 96… Retired Beverly Hills, Calif., attorney, Sheldon Stanford Ellis… Emmy Award-winning television screenwriter, television producer and author, Gail Parent turns 86… Professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of many self-help books, Martin Elias Peter Seligman turns 84… Attorney in Ontario, Canada, who served as president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Lester Scheininger turns 79… Co-founder and chairman of the film and television company Beacon Pictures, Barry “Armyan” Bernstein turns 79… U.S. diplomat, Karyn Allison Posner-Mullen turns 75… Member of Houston’s Congregation Emanu El, she worked for more than 40 years at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Fredi Bleeker Franks… Sales manager of Illi Commercial Real Estate in Woodland Hills, Calif., Stuart Steinberg… Israel’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Albania, Noah Gal Gendler turns 69… Former member of Knesset from the Yesh Atid party, Haim Jelin turns 68… Founding editor of The Times of Israel and formerly the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz turns 64… Former chairman of Goldman Sachs International, now CEO of Ki Corporation, Sir Bradley Fried turns 61… Senior rabbi at Brookline’s (Mass.) Temple Beth Zion, Claudia Kreiman… Chief strategy officer at NYC’s Educational Alliance, Anya Hoerburger… Scottsdale, Ariz.-based real estate investor, Jay Chernikoff… Co-founder at Understory, David Fine… Head of strategy and innovation at EquipmentShare, Ariel Applbaum…
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