• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s planned trip to Israel was reportedly scrubbed today. Hegseth had been slated to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz before joining President Donald Trump, who is traveling to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar next week for his first trip abroad since reentering office.
• The Financial Times Weekend Festival is taking place tomorrow in Washington. Scheduled speakers include former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, U.K. Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson, UnHerd’s Sohrab Ahmari, Rev. Johnnie Moore and Steve Bannon.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S HALEY COHEN

It’s not a coincidence that we’ve been focusing on Michigan a lot in these pages. It’s something of a battleground in the domestic politics surrounding antisemitism and the Middle East. Its universities have been among the epicenters of egregiously antisemitic activity. The state’s congressional delegation ranges from a stalwart ally of the state’s Jewish community in Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most radical anti-Israel voices in Congress.

So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that one of the leading officials in the state, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, found herself caught in political purgatory after abruptly dropping charges against seven University of Michigan students arrested for their role in anti-Israel demonstrations. The students were accused of assaulting police officers and engaging in ethnic intimidation.

Nessel, a Democrat, faced attacks from anti-Israel activists for bringing the case in the first place, and was subject to ugly smears that she only brought charges because of her Jewish identity. Tlaib has for months called on Nessel to recuse herself, arguing she only brought the case because of her “bias.” 

But after Nessel blamed a local Jewish communal organization for playing a role in dropping the case, she’s been facing friendly fire from many of her erstwhile Jewish allies as well. After she dropped the charges on Monday, she criticized the Ann Arbor Jewish Community Relations Council for writing a letter to the court defending her against accusations of bias, claiming it was inappropriate and may have tainted the case. 

In her statement, Nessel maintained the evidence against the suspects was strong, and otherwise would have led to a conviction.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin, director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, told Jewish Insider that the organization has not heard from Nessel since releasing its statement. He said the letter was simply meant to “push back against these accusations against Nessel” and there is confusion over why or how it has compromised the case. 

It’s fair to ask whether Michigan’s charged intra-Democratic politics also played a role in the decision to drop the charges. Nessel is one of the Democratic Party’s leading officials in the state, and didn’t get a lot of public backing from her colleagues when she first brought the case. The Arab American community in the state is significant — and was mobilized against Nessel — often drowning out the Jewish and more-moderate voices looking for accountability for those engaging in antisemitic activity.

On top of that, President Donald Trump’s aggressive (and arguably illiberal) actions against elite colleges with checkered records on antisemitism have made the enforcement against antisemitic hate crimes a more partisan issue, making it uncomfortable for a Democrat who’s tough on enforcement to stand their ground.

The dropped charges also raise legal questions about the validity of the case to begin with — and whether a new precedent is now set for anti-Israel activity in the state, which has seen a spate of antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. 

“If the attorney general believes, as she said in her statement, that a reasonable jury would find the defendants guilty of the charges, we worry about the precedent this decision sets,” a spokesperson for the Michigan office of the Anti-Defamation League told JI. 

Grays’ Anatomy of a Gift: eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports on the recent $125 million gift by Jon and Mindy Gray to Tel Aviv University — the largest in both the school’s history and in the Grays’ giving to Israel causes. “For one of the largest donations ever made to Israeli academia, the ceremony marking the inauguration of the Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at Tel Aviv University on Thursday morning was an understated affair — at least as understated as an event can be when it’s attended by one of the world’s top hedge fund managers, Blackstone President and COO Jonathan Gray; Israeli President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog; the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Blackstone Vice Chair Tom Nides; along with some of Israel’s top academics and medical professionals. … ‘We are American Jews who grew up on modest means far from Israel, in Chicago and Philadelphia. But thanks to our families, we have always known where our past was rooted: here in this sacred land, where orange trees were coaxed from the arid desert. Tragically, the unthinkable events of Oct. 7 awakened the need to express that connection in a far more concrete way,’ Jon Gray said, citing his family’s immigration to the United States at the end of the 19th century fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.” [eJP]

Plan B, For Bomb: Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen suggests that the U.S. should take military action against Iran if Tehran doesn’t agree to dismantling its nuclear program. “Trump understands the nature of an Iranian regime that has plotted to assassinate American officials on American soil — including him. Like presidents before him, he has pledged that Iran will not be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. Unlike presidents before him, he is now poised to deliver on that pledge and actually stop them. I don’t believe Trump will agree to a deal with Iran that is weaker than the deal Bush negotiated with Libya. If Trump can convince Iranian officials to allow U.S. military aircraft to land in their country, load up all of their uranium, centrifuges, bomb designs and ballistic missiles, and fly them to Oak Ridge — and agree to cease its support for terrorism — then Trump should sign on the dotted line. If not, then it’s time for Plan B — and for the United States and Israel to, in Trump’s words, ‘bomb the hell out of them.’” [WashPost]

Harvard’s Defiance: In The Wall Street Journal, Roland Fryer, an economics professor at Harvard and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, considers the clash between “economic interests and principle” as the university’s battles with the Trump administration. “My hope is that Harvard has realized its past wrongs and will resist these pressures going forward — allowing the university to determine and uphold its own core values. But two other theories would explain Harvard’s recent behavior just as well. One is political bias. Harvard’s leadership leans decidedly to the left and will likely be far friendlier to pressure from that direction. Its spine could thus weaken again once the presidency changes hands. The other explanation is simple economics. Like any institution, Harvard seeks to maximize its utility — prestige, endowment growth, influence. That might mean resisting federal policy that threatens core funding, but yielding quietly on symbolic or lower-stakes issues. Behavior under this explanation is determined not by veritas — truth, Harvard’s motto — but by coldly calculated costs and benefits. … I hope that Harvard’s current defiance is a burning-bush moment: a real commitment to institutional independence and to the search for truth that will last beyond a single presidency. The economist in me worries that it’s only another move in a political chess match — one in which the board tilts depending on who’s in power and which way the wind blows.” [WSJ] 

Portnoy’s Complaint: MSNBC columnist and New School professor Natalia Mehlman Petrzela considers how educators can combat antisemitism, following a recent antisemitic incident at a Philadelphia bar that garnered national attention. “Students should learn about Jewish history and identity as an important part of their study of the United States. Social studies curricula should teach about Jews as immigrants, Americans, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, and as members of a diverse community from many national and ethnic backgrounds who hold a range of views on any given topic, including Israel, and most importantly, as everyday people deserving of respect and full civil rights. Understanding antisemitism is of paramount importance, but it should not be addressed only in response to incidences of Jew hatred, or uniquely in relation to the Holocaust. Rather, antisemitism should be explained as a centuries-old hatred that shape-shifts depending on the historical moment, to be about religion, biology or culture, and as still very much with us. Teaching about Jewish identities and experiences, both of perseverance and success and of facing persistent discrimination, is important to understanding, and improving, our pluralistic society.” [MSNBC]

President Donald Trump met with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Thursday during Dermer’s trip to Washington to discuss Gaza and ongoing nuclear talks with Iran…

Judea Pearl, the father of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, clarified reports on Thursday that a terrorist tied to his son’s death had been killed by Indian forces in Pakistan; Pearl said that Abdul Rauf Azhar’s group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, “was not directly involved in the plot to abduct Danny, it was indirectly responsible. Azhar orchestrated the hijacking [of IC-814 in 1999] that led to the release of Omar Sheikh — the man who lured Danny into captivity”… 

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin held a ceremony in his office with Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) in Washington, to inscribe letters into The Washington Torah and affix a mezuzah to his office door… 

The Trump administration canceled an additional $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard University amid a growing battle between the school and the White House…

Claire Shipman, the acting president of Columbia University, released a five-minute video stridently criticizing the anti-Israel campus activists who disrupted hundreds of students studying in the school’s main library during finals week…

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) launched his Senate campaign challenging Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA); Carter is the first Republican to enter the race to unseat Ossoff…

Ivanka Trump made her first public appearance since President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, speaking with Arianna Huffington at the Heartland Summit in Bentonville, Ark., about Planet Harvest, the produce company she co-founded after leaving her White House role in the first Trump administration…

The Washington Post reviews British author Rachel Cockerell’s Melting Point: Family, Memory and the Search for a Promised Land, about her great-grandfather’s efforts to help Russian Jews emigrate to Galveston, Texas, in the early 20th century…

A British art dealer who appeared on the TV show “Bargain Hunt” pleaded guilty to a series of charges tied to his sale of art to a Hezbollah financier in violation of the country’s 2000 Terrorism Act…

Brigham Young University quarterback Jake Retzlaff is in Israel this week for his first trip to the Jewish state; Retzlaff, who is Jewish, is making the trip along with five teammates through an initiative run by Athletes for Israel…

The Adelson Family Foundation made a “transformative” seven-figure gift to the American Friends of Bar-Ilan University to help create the Israeli school’s Adelson Institute for Smart Materials, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports…

Former World Food Program head David Beasley, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, is in talks with key stakeholders, including the Trump administration and Israeli government, to lead the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as the U.S., Israel and a number of aid groups work to address mounting food distribution challenges in Gaza…

The mother of Israeli hostage Tamir Nimrodi said her son, who was serving on the Nahal Oz base when he was taken captive alive by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, is one of three hostages whose status is unknown; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged earlier this week that Israel had not had signs of life since early in the war from three of the 24 hostages who were taken captive alive that day…

A Jewish jeweler from the Tunisian island of Djerba was injured in an axe attack days before thousands of Jews from around the world are slated to travel to the city for an annual Lag B’Omer pilgrimage; five people were killed in a terror attack targeting the city’s synagogue, the oldest in Africa, in 2023… 

The Walt Disney Co. announced plans to open a theme park on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, which CEO Bob Iger said will be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati”…

Paul Singer is stepping down as chair of the Manhattan Institute after 17 years in the role, and will be succeeded by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos…

Film director Ziad Doueiri, Forbes Executive Vice President Moira Forbes, staff from Iran International and Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner were honored last night at the America Abroad Media awards in Washington. Döpfner was introduced by Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), who called him a “true groundbreaking innovator in the media landscape.”

Attendees at the dinner included U.S. Ambassador to Israel Yechiel Leiter, Deputy Middle East Special Envoy Morgan Ortagus, Brett Ratner, Elliot Ackerman, former Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Sara Bloomfield, Jan Bayer, Michael and Sofia Haft and Karim Sadjadpour.

Israeli actress, she appeared in 30 episodes of “Shtisel,” played the lead role in the Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox” and appeared as the Marvel superhero “Sabra” in the newest “Captain America” film, Shira Haas turns 30 on Sunday…

FRIDAY: Holocaust survivor, philanthropist and social activist, she marched in Selma, Ala., with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965, Eva Haller turns 95… Academy Award-winning director, producer and screenwriter, James L. Brooks turns 85… Guitarist and record producer, best known as a member of the rock-pop-jazz group Blood, Sweat & Tears, Steve Katz turns 80… Israeli rabbi who is a co-founder of Yeshivat Har Etzion, Yoel Bin-Nun turns 79… Mashgiach at Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Rabbi Beryl Weisbord turns 78… Winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Michael Levitt turns 78… Pianist, singer-songwriter and one of the best-selling recording artists of all time, Billy Joel turns 76… Physician in Burlington, Vt., she was the first lady of Vermont from 1991 until 2003 when her husband (Howard Dean) was governor, Judith Steinberg Dean turns 72… Sharon Mallory Doble… Co-founder and board member of PlayMedia Systems, Brian D. Litman… Founding executive director of Chai Mitzvah, The Resource Center for Jewish Engagement, Audrey B. Lichter turns 70… Film director and producer, Barry Avrich turns 62… Staff writer at The Atlantic and author of five books, Mark Leibovich turns 60… Chair of Bain Capital and owner of a minority interest in the Boston Celtics, Jonathan Lavine turns 59… President of global affairs at Meta/Facebook, he was previously the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a law clerk for Justice Scalia, Joel D. Kaplan turns 56… NYC-based celebrity chiropractor, Arkady Aaron Lipnitsky, DC… and his twin brother, managing director at Baltimore’s Pimlico Capital, Victor “Yaakov” Lipnitsky both turn 52… VP at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Lesli Rosenblatt Gillette… Owner of NYC’s Dylan’s Candy Bar, Dylan Lauren turns 51… Executive director of the Richardson Center and former IDF paratrooper, he has negotiated the release of political prisoners worldwide, Michael “Mickey” Bergman turns 49… Deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Veterans Affairs during the Biden administration, Aaron Scheinberg turns 44… Founder and managing member at Revelstoke PLLC, Danielle Elizabeth Friedman… Opinion columnist and podcast host at The New York Times, Ezra Klein turns 41… Jenna Weisbord… Principal at Blackstone Growth Israel, Nathaniel Rosen… Graduate of Harvard Law School, Mikhael Smits…

SATURDAY: Scion of a Hasidic dynasty and leader of the Beth Jehudah congregation in Milwaukee, Rabbi Michel Twerski… and his twin brother, who is a professor at Brooklyn Law School, following a career as dean at Hofstra University School of Law, Aaron Twerski, both turn 86… Real estate developer and principal owner of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, Stephen M. Ross turns 85… Leading Democratic pollster and political strategist, Stanley Bernard “Stan” Greenberg turns 80… British actress, she is a vocal supporter of Israel, Dame Maureen Lipman turns 79… Israeli businessman and philanthropist, his family founded and owned Israel Discount Bank, Leon Recanati turns 77… Founder and CEO of OPTI Connectivity, Edward Brill… CEO of Medical Reimbursement Data Management in Chapel Hill, N.C., Robert Jameson… American-born Israeli singer, songwriter and music producer, Yehudah Katz turns 74… Claims examiner at Chubb Insurance, David Beck… Anchor for SportsCenter and other programs on ESPN since 1979, Chris “Boomer” Berman turns 70… Former NBA player whose career spanned 18 seasons on 7 teams, Danny Schayes turns 66… U.S. senator (R-MS), Cindy Hyde-Smith turns 66… U.S. senator (R-UT), John Curtis turns 65… Reform rabbi living in Israel, she is the sister of actress Laura Silverman and comedian Sarah Silverman, Susan Silverman turns 62… Brazilian businessman, serial entrepreneur and partner with Donald Trump in Trump Realty Brazil, Ricardo Samuel Goldstein turns 59… Neil Winchel… Attorney general of Colorado, elected in 2018 and reelected in 2022, he is running for governor of Colorado in 2026, Philip Jacob Weiser turns 57… Senior rabbi of Houston’s Congregation Beth Yeshurun, Brian Strauss turns 53… Israeli rock musician, singer-songwriter, music producer and author, Aviv Geffen turns 52… Editor-in-chief, recipe developer, art director and food stylist of Fleishigs, a kosher food magazine, Shifra Klein turns 43… Reporter for the Associated Press based in Israel, Melanie B. Lidman… Video games reporter at Bloomberg News, Jason Schreier turns 38… Manager of government affairs at the American Forest & Paper Association, Fara Klein Sonderling… Associate director of communications in the D.C. office of Pew Research Center, Rachel Weisel Drian… National correspondent for New York magazine, Gabriel Debenedetti… Editorial director at The Record by Recorded Future, Adam Janofsky… Actress who has appeared in many films and television series, Halston Sage (born Halston Jean Schrage) turns 32… Scriptwriter and actress, she is the daughter of Larry David, Cazzie Laurel David turns 31… Mollie Harrison…

SUNDAY: Israeli optical and kinetic artist and sculptor, born Yaacov Gibstein, Yaacov Agam turns 97… Sociologist and author, Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D. turns 80… Israeli social activist focused on issues of women’s and human rights, Iris Stern Levi turns 72… Treasurer and receiver-general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Deborah Beth Goldberg turns 71… Past president and then chairman of AIPAC, Morton Zvi Fridman, MD turns 67… Copy chief at Random House until 2023 and the author of Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, Benjamin Dreyer turns 67… Brian Mullen… Howard M. Pollack… CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, William Albert “Bill” Ackman turns 59… Michael Pregent… Member of the California state Senate since 2016, he is a co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, Scott Wiener turns 55… Co-founder and president of Omaha Productions, which he started with Peyton Manning, Jamie Horowitz… Filmmaker and podcast host, Dan Trachtenberg turns 44… Deputy chief of staff in the Office of the President at Carnegie Mellon University, Pamela Eichenbaum… Senior cost analyst at the Israeli Ministry of Defense, Michael Jeremy Alexander… PR and brand manager for overseas resource development at Leket Israel, Shira Woolf… Founder and CEO of the digital asset technology company Architect Financial Technologies, Brett Harrison turns 37… Staff writer at Time magazine, Olivia B. Waxman… Manager of paid search and e-commerce at Wavemaker, James Frichner… Paralympic track and field athlete, he is also a motivational speaker and disability rights advocate, Ezra Frech turns 20…

BIRTHWEEK (was yesterday): Founder of Follow Team Israel, David Wiseman…

• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is in Washington today, where he’ll meet with President Donald Trump at the White House.
• The House Appropriations Committee is holding simultaneous oversight hearings this morning with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
• This afternoon, the House Foreign Affairs Middle East subcommittee is holding a public hearing on “Maximum Impact: Assessing the Effectiveness of the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism and Charting the Path Forward.”
• The Israel Allies Foundation, in conjunction with Eagles’ Wings, the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, American Christian Leaders for Israel and the Combat Antisemitism Movement, is hosting its Israel Advocacy Day and Independence Day Reception today in Washington. The groups will host a reception tonight with the co-chairs and members of the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus.
• The Orthodox Union is convening its annual Washington mission today and tomorrow. Tonight, they’ll host a kickoff dinner reception honoring Sen. James Lankford (R-OK).
• At the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles, IKAR’s Rabbi Sharon Brous will speak on a panel titled “What Faith Means to Me,” while Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman and Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Ari Berman will speak at back-to-back sessions on higher education. Also slated to address the gathering today: pollster Frank Luntz, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Relativity Space CEO Eric Schmidt.
• The Future Summit continues today in Israel.
• We’re also keeping an eye on Berlin, where earlier today conservative leader Friedrich Merz failed to secure the number of parliamentary votes necessary to become the country’s next chancellor. Merz had allied his Christian Democratic Union party and associated Christian Social Union party with the more liberal Social Democrats. The Bundestag could hold a second round of voting as soon as today, but must elect a new chancellor in the next two weeks.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR

Even as deep ideological divisions within the Democratic Party persist, pro-Israel Democrats are growing bullish about their recruiting class of congressional candidates in key Senate and House races — as groups anticipate contested primaries against their favored frontrunners, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes. 

In three key Senate battleground races, the emergence of mainstream Democratic members of Congress with lengthy records supporting Israel — Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI), Angie Craig (D-MN) and Chris Pappas (D-NH) — is a sign that for all the energy of the progressive left, traditional Democrats are still more reflective of their party’s overall electorate. 

While the lawmakers start their campaigns with advantages, several face the prospect of competitive primary challenges coming from their left. 

In Michigan, Stevens has emerged as one of the most outspoken backers of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, boasts close connections to Jewish community leaders and already has ousted an Israel critic (former Rep. Andy Levin) in her young political career. She starts out the Senate race with a healthy $1.6 million cash on hand, according to first quarter FEC filings.

Stevens, however, is facing candidates courting the progressive base: State Sen. Mallory McMorrow became nationally known for her abortion rights activism, and launched her campaign by calling for a younger Senate leader to replace Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). McMorrow, whose husband is Jewish, has also met with Jewish leaders to assure them of her pro-Israel bona fides.

The Michigan candidate courting anti-Israel elements of the electorate is former Michigan health official Abdul El-Sayed, who has run unsuccessfully for statewide office before. Former Michigan House Speaker Joe Tate, a former NFL player, is also seriously considering a run.

Many Jewish Democrats view Stevens as an ally in the same light as pro-Israel stalwarts like Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) or Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) — as someone principled and unafraid to speak out against antisemitism and anti-Israel extremism. Her candidacy will serve as an early bellwether for how much room there is for such moderate voices in today’s Democratic Party.

In Minnesota, Craig is another Israel ally looking as the early favorite in the Democratic primary against the state’s progressive lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan. Craig has been willing to speak out against anti-Israel Democratic colleagues amid Middle East policy disagreements; Flanagan is more closely aligned with J Street.

And in New Hampshire, Pappas is looking like the clear favorite for the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). A swing-district moderate, Pappas has generally held a more pro-Israel record than his Democratic colleagues in the state. 

Outside the battlegrounds, Illinois’ wide-open Senate primary to succeed retiring Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) could potentially feature divisions over Middle East policy. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Robin Kelly (D-IL), both potential candidates, are listed on the AIPAC political portal for favored candidates, while Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL), another possible contender, is not. 

There are also developing House race skirmishes over Israel. As JI’s Matthew Kassel scooped today, state Sen. Laura Fine announced her candidacy to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) in a district with a significant Jewish constituency. Fine, who is running on a pro-Israel platform, is expected to face a challenge from Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who drew controversy in 2017 for initially tapping (and later dropping) an anti-Israel, DSA-affiliated running mate for his gubernatorial campaign. 

Levin, the former Michigan congressman who has been critical of Israel, is also exploring a political comeback in two of the open House seats in the Detroit suburbs. If he runs in Stevens’ House seat, he could face state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is one of the strongest allies of the Jewish community in the Michigan state legislature.

Hard Look at Harvard: The Atlantic’s Eliot Cohen weighs in on Harvard’s recently released report documenting antisemitism on the Cambridge campus. “The widespread harassment of Jews reported at Harvard reflects the attitudes of hundreds if not thousands of students, faculty, and staff—that last group is an often underappreciated element in indulging or even encouraging this behavior. It reflects the development of identity-driven politics, for which responsibility lies outside the university as well as within it. It has been fed by witch-hunting for ‘white privilege’ (no matter that there are plenty of Jews of color, as a walk down the streets of Tel Aviv will show you). It flourishes in the bogus specializations that have hived off from more traditional and all-embracing disciplines such as history, literature, and anthropology. It has been nurtured in research centers whose very existence is premised not on the quest for truth but on the pursuit of a political or ideological agenda.” [TheAtlantic]

Life in the Big Apple: In The New Yorker, actress Lena Dunham reflects on her childhood and life in New York before she made a transatlantic move to the U.K. “In the city, by contrast, my mother could pack ten or eleven separate excursions into a single day — or, conversely, spend hours wandering the floors of the discount department store Century 21, striking up endless conversations in the communal dressing room. … My mom and her sisters — Jewish girls at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Margarets, Hazels, and Tesses of the world — lived to move. I distinctly remember my mother repeating that ‘what I love about Manhattan is that if you really want to you can always get from one end to the other in twenty minutes.’ (This is not, strictly speaking, true, and I blame the remark for my lifelong inability to properly judge commute times.) My aunt Susan once said of my mother, ‘Laurie is a ‘from’ girl — the lox is from one place, the bagels from another, the flowers from someplace else.’ Knowing how to get the best out of the city — from discount Manolos to vintage buttons to a ten-dollar blow-dry — gives my mother the satisfaction of a chess grand master stumping her opponent with a series of unexpected moves. But being a ‘from’ girl is about more than the provenance of goods; it’s about living at such high speeds that your inner life can never quite catch up to you.” [NewYorker]

President Donald Trump is pushing Republican lawmakers to support the confirmation of Ed Martin, the administration’s nominee to be U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., who had previously praised a Nazi sympathizer…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo calling for a “minimum” 20% reduction in the number of four-star generals and admirals on active military duty…

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) received the distinguished statesmanship award from the Council of Jewish Organizations Flatbush at the group’s annual legislative breakfast over the weekend. Previous recipients include Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY)…

The House of Representatives passed the Solidify Iran Sanctions Act, extending indefinitely existing energy sanctions on Iran first passed in 1996, by a voice vote…

Sheikh Bandar bin Mohammed bin Saoud al-Thani, the chairman of the Qatar Investment Authority and governor of the Qatar Central Bank, met on the sidelines of the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles with senior business executives including Steve Mnuchin, Peter Chernin and Howard Marks…

Speaking at Milken, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan backed the Trump administration’s tariff policy while cautioning that the economy could slow down if “damage” to the U.S. brand isn’t addressed…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company was dropping its plan to pivot to a for-profit structure… 

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel withdrew all charges against seven University of Michigan students arrested last year for their role in anti-Israel protests on the campus; Nessel said the decision was made in part due to the “impropriety” of a letter sent by the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor defending her against allegations of bias…

The Trump administration proposed that Columbia University enter into a consent decree by which the government would have oversight over the school’s efforts to ensure viewpoint diversity and not factor race into admissions decisions; the consent decree was suggested as an alternative to a court battle between the government and the Ivy League school…

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy rescinded his offer to fund a trip to Auschwitz for at least one of two men involved in an incident in a Barstool bar in which an antisemitic sign was carried around the premises; Portnoy said one of the individuals, a student at Temple University, “did a 180” and absolved himself of responsibility for the incident…

New York’s City Park’s Foundation dropped singer Kehlani as a performer at an upcoming Pride concert in Central Park, following pushback, including from Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), over Kehlani’s use of antisemitic and anti-Israel imagery and phrases in her performances and music videos…

Gal Gadot and Matthias Schoenaerts will star in the upcoming post-WWII thriller “Ruin,” about a Holocaust survivor and German soldier who partner to exact revenge on a Nazi unit…

If Hamas does not accept a ceasefire and hostage-release deal by the end of next week, Israel will launch “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” escalating the war in Gaza until Jerusalem attains its war aims, a senior Israeli defense source said on Monday, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports…

The Daily Mail interviews Israeli singer Yuval Raphael, who survived the Oct. 7, 2023, attack at the Nova music festival by hiding under bodies in a bomb shelter, about her journey to the Eurovision Song Contest…

The IDF said that two Hamas commanders, including one who participated in the Oct. 7 attacks and held hostages, surrendered to Israeli troops in Rafah…

Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha received the Pulitzer Prize in commentary for his essays, published in The New Yorker, about life in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war…

Pope Francis, who died last week, had directed for the “popemobile” that transported him during a 2014 trip to the West Bank to be donated to a Catholic charity that operates in the Palestinian territories for use as a mobile children’s aid clinic in Gaza…

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and documentarian Wendy Sachs speak at the Capitol Hill screening of “October 8,” which looks at the rise of antisemitism on campus following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Reps. Laura Gillen (D-NY) and Virginia Foxx (R-NC) were also in attendance.

Conductor, pianist, clarinetist, and composer, he is currently music director of The Louisville Orchestra, Edward “Teddy” Paul Maxwell Abrams turns 38…

U.S. senator (R-AL) from 1987 until 2023, Richard Shelby turns 91… Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, previously a Columbia law professor, a U.S. District Court judge and the State Department legal advisor, Abraham David Sofaer turns 87… Novelist, playwright and human rights activist, professor emeritus of Latin American studies at Duke University, Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman turns 83… Professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago, she has been awarded 69 honorary degrees from around the world, Martha Nussbaum turns 78… Israeli theoretical physicist and astrophysicist, he is best known for his work on gamma-ray bursts and on numerical relativity, Tsvi Piran turns 76… Partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, she was the deputy attorney general of the U.S. in the Clinton administration, Jamie S. Gorelick turns 75… Former prime minister of the United Kingdom, he then served as the special envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, Tony Blair turns 72… President emeritus of the Jerusalem College of Technology / Lev Academic Center, Noah Dana-Picard turns 71… Director of the Jewish studies program at Northeastern University, Lori Hope Lefkovitz turns 69… Co-founder of Boston-based HighVista Strategies following 23 years at Goldman Sachs, he is the former board chair of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Daniel Jick turns 68… Member of the Knesset for Likud between 2003 and 2006, Daniel Benlulu turns 67… President and CEO of The Jewish Federations of North America, he was previously CEO of Hillel and a U.S. congressman, Eric David Fingerhut turns 66… Retired attorney and former member of the board of trustees of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ, Sheri Goldberg… Los Angeles-based attorney and real estate entrepreneur, Daniel Todd Gryczman… Israel’s minister of national security since 2025 and leader of the Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben-Gvir turns 49… Member of the Knesset for the Yesh Atid party, Shelly Tal Meron turns 46… Los Angeles-based television personality, actress, writer and video blogger, Shira Lazar turns 42… Partner at Amiti, an early-stage deep tech fund, Brachie Sprung… Founder at ALC Hospitality, Alyse Cohen… Senior principal at Alterra climate investment fund, Benjamin Levine… Partner at Courtside Ventures and advisor to the board of directors of the Atlanta Hawks, Oliver Ressler… Head of business development at Seam, she is a conservative commentator across many social media platforms, Arynne Wexler… Actor and singer, Noah Egidi Galvin turns 31…

• President Donald Trump is slated to announce Washington as the host of the 2027 NFL Draft. Trump will make the announcement today from the White House, where he’ll be joined by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris.
• Jordanian King Abdullah II arrived in Washington today for meetings with senior officials.
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Dan Goldman (D-NY) are hosting a screening of Wendy Sachs’ “October 8” documentary about antisemitism on college campuses this evening at the Capitol Visitors Center.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) are speaking today at the National Zionist Rabbinic Coalition’s national conference in Washington.
• The Milken Institute Global Conference continues today in Los Angeles. Today’s speakers include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the Carlyle Group’s David Rubenstein, Starwood Capital’s Barry Sternlicht, Apollo Global Management’s Marc Rowan, Mubadala’s Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, Mohamed Albadr and Khaled Al Shamlan, Axel Springer’s Mathias Dopfner, TWG Global’s Amos Hochstein, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, BDT-MSD Vice Chairman and President of Global Client Services Dina Powell McCormick, former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Saudi Investment Minister Khalid Al-Falih, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, Lazard’s Peter Orszag and Alphabet’s Ruth Porat.
• The Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California is holding its Capitol Summit in Sacramento today and tomorrow. Those addressing the two-day gathering include UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk, Gov. Gavin Newsom (who is speaking virtually), California Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta, former Heath and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Lieutenant Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
• The Future Summit kicks off today in Tel Aviv. Lightspark founder David Marcus, Papaya Global’s Eynat Guez, Tinder founder Sean Rad, Insight Partners cofounder Jeff Horing, NFX cofounder Stan Chudnovsky, First Round Capital cofounder Josh Kopelman, Freestyle General Partner Jenny Lefcourt, Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire and Poalim Tech’s Michal Kissos Hertzog are slated to speak at the three-day confab.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S LAHAV HARKOV

For the third day in a row, air raid sirens blared throughout central Israel on Sunday morning after the Iran-backed Houthis launched a missile from Yemen. This time, the IDF was unable to shoot the missile down before it reached Israel, and while no one was killed, it landed in a strategically damaging location: Ben Gurion Airport. Several airlines canceled flights for the coming days.

While Israel dealt with threats to its north and south, the IDF began calling up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of a return to more intensive warfare in Gaza, unanimously approved by the security cabinet on Sunday night and likely to begin after President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East next week.

Amid U.N. pressure, the cabinet also approved a plan to allow humanitarian aid in again — once the food currently in Gaza runs out — with a new distribution mechanism meant to prevent Hamas from pocketing the goods and using it as leverage to stay in power.

Since the last ceasefire in Gaza ended on March 18, Israel has been slowly intensifying the war with the aim of ramping up pressure on Hamas, first by stopping humanitarian aid, and then by evacuating the civilian population from more and more areas of the coastal enclave, and continuing airstrikes throughout.

After Hamas rejected the ceasefire and hostage release deal that Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, attempted to negotiate last month, and the terrorist group’s counter-offer excluded disarmament – a red line for Israel – plus a spike in IDF casualties in Gaza, Israel’s patience began to run out.

The open decision to escalate and the mobilization of reservists to that end is its own form of pressure, another warning shot at Hamas aimed at pushing it to enter a hostage release deal, but Jerusalem views the intensification of fighting as the only way to reach the war’s other goal, “total victory” over Hamas, as Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Sunday.

An Israeli official told media that the plan includes occupying Gaza and retaining the territory, moving the Gazan civilian population south, and conducting “powerful attacks” against Hamas.

The mission, the prime minister said, remains to bring back the hostages and defeat Hamas: “There will be no Hamas [in Gaza] … We will not give up on defeating them. Wars must end decisively. We will win.” 

At the same time, many hostage families and their supporters continued to speak out against intensifying the war, with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum saying, “The expansion of military operations puts every hostage at grave risk.” The group also noted that “the vast majority of the Israeli public views the return of the hostages as the nation’s highest moral priority.” Recent polls back up that statement, indicating that most Israelis would be willing to end the war in exchange for all the hostages.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir warned ministers in recent days that “in a plan for a full-scale maneuver, we won’t necessarily reach the hostages. Keep in mind that we could lose them,” according to Israel’s Channel 13. The channel also quoted Zamir as saying that the goals of defeating Hamas and returning the hostages “are problematic in relation to each other.”

Netanyahu, however, continued to argue that the choice between defeating Hamas and the hostages is not binary. “Military pressure is what worked and it is what will work now,” he said. “If we are victorious, we will free the hostages, and we are in the stages of victory … Victory will bring the hostages.”

The prime minister also waved off accusations that he was continuing the war for his own political longevity as “the propaganda line of the propaganda channels and the left,” saying: “Should we leave Hamas inside [Gaza] so they will be at the [border] fences again? Should Hezbollah be at the fences? That’s political?”

Bucking Boulos: Politico’s Felicia Schwartz and Robbie Gramer look at the relationship between the White House and Massad Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law and the Trump administration’s Africa advisor and senior advisor of Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, whose role has become “diminished” amid reported tensions with the White House. “Trump named Boulos as a senior adviser on the Middle East during the transition last year and he began taking informal meetings with Lebanese officials and other diplomats. But some in the administration say he was overstepping. ‘The job was more symbolic, but he didn’t know that,’ said an administration official. ‘Everyone knew it but him.’ … Boulos was weakened by a spate of early media interviews asserting himself as a dominant voice on Lebanon policy, irking Trump’s inner circle in the process, as well as a New York Times story that exposed he had for years misled the public about the source of his wealth. Two of the people familiar with Boulos’ interactions said he had developed an unfavorable reputation for talking too much. His move away from Middle East work stemmed also from concerns within the administration about some of his political and social connections in the region.” [Politico]

Campus Beat: In The Free Press, Rabbi David Wolpe, who served for a year as a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, reflects on the school’s recently released report on antisemitism. “[The report] explains that anti-colonialism has become the ideological battering ram to mobilize a diverse cult of anti-Western sentiments. The challenge to Zionism becomes a first step in turning disillusion with the West into a wholesale indictment of it. The old antisemitism of the Soviet Union had this double purpose as well — destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization. Harvard is not just a host for this worldview. It is the dominant view on campus. But what no report can capture is the feeling that Jewishness was something to hide, and the stigma of being a Jew-hater was fading. One student in my class, after having walked through Harvard Yard and being screamed at by some of the protesters, said to me: ‘They don’t just hate what I believe. They hate me.’” [FreePress]

Weiner’s Way: In The Atlantic, Josh Tyrangiel interviews former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who is attempting a return to politics in his bid for New York City Council. “Weiner’s a centrist Democrat — he thinks the neighborhood needs more cops and fewer pot shops. ‘If this election is about the most anti-Trump, crazy-making person on the left, you’re not going to pick a Cuomo or a Weiner,’ he said. ‘Now, I could be completely wrong, but there seems to be a disconnect with the brand that New York Democrats are selling and what people want to buy right now.’ I asked what evidence he had to support this. ‘I’m in New York with a head on my shoulders seeing what’s going on on 14th Street.’ … Most politicians know how to live on the surface in these moments. But Weiner uses conflict to make small things feel more urgent, to make local democracy into something worthy of passion. He’s not a beautiful speaker, but he challenges Democrats to hear the jagged melody blaring through his septum: Do we want to be polite, or do we want to solve this? If I’m willing to fight with you, imagine how hard I’ll fight for you.” [TheAtlantic]

Alarm in Africa: In the Jerusalem Post, Amjad Taha and Eitan Neishlos consider the threat posed to Israel by extremist elements in Sudan that are bolstered by support from Tehran. “Sudan is no longer just a battlefield. It is rapidly becoming a terror hub, strategically positioned near Israel’s southern flank and the vital shipping lanes of the Red Sea. The Baraa ibn Malik Brigade, operating under SAF, openly venerates Sayyid Qutb, the ideological architect of jihadism. Its leader, Al-Musbah Abu Zaid, often referred to as the Yahya Sinwar of Sudan, poses with figures like Mukhtar Badri, notorious for anti-Semitic incitement and global terror ties. … Iran is also a central actor in this Islamist resurgence. Port Sudan has quietly transformed into a key node in Tehran’s regional weapons network. Through covert maritime shipments and military contracts, Iran has begun supplying drones to the Sudanese Armed Forces, the same types used by the Houthis to target Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea.” [JPost]

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is slated to travel to Israel on May 12, before traveling on to Saudi Arabia, where he will join President Donald Trump, who also is slated to travel to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates… 

White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller is reportedly a top candidate to succeed Mike Waltz as national security advisor, following Trump’s announcement last week that he planned to nominate Waltz to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N….

Politico looks at Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s standing in the Trump administration, noting that the former Florida senator, who was appointed interim national security advisor following Waltz’s ouster, “offers a lesson to others trying to survive under Trump”…

The House of Representatives postponed a vote on the IGO Anti-Boycott Act, which expands existing U.S. anti-boycott laws addressing compulsory boycotts of U.S. allies enforced by foreign nations, following outcry from the far-right, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) and influencer Charlie Kirk, online on Sunday; the legislation received near-unanimous support in committee last year…

Beth Davidson, a Democratic Rockland County legislator running against Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), shared with Jewish Insider her position paper on Israel and the Middle East, outlining her support for “the continuation and growth” of U.S. military aid to Israel, her plans for countering Iran’s nuclear ambitions and her support for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…

Harvard President Alan Garber said that the Trump administration’s threat — made by the president on Friday — to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status would, if carried out, be “highly illegal” and “destructive” to the university…

A Temple University student was suspended after an incident in which he and another individual ordered a sign with antisemitic text to his table at a bar owned by Barstool founder Dave Portnoy; in a social media post, Portnoy said he would, following a conversation with the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism’s Robert Kraft, cover the costs for the two individuals to travel to Auschwitz “to learn about the Holocaust”…

University of Michigan President Santa Ono is departing the Ann Arbor school for the University of Florida, following the UF presidential search committee’s unanimous decision to recommend Ono as the sole finalist to succeed former President Ben Sasse, who stepped down last summer…

Officials in the U.K. arrested seven Iranian men in connection with two separate national security-related threats; police said four of the men were planning a terrorist attack on an unnamed site…

The Associated Press spotlights the “Violin of Hope,” which was recently discovered to have been made by a Jewish craftsman while imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp; the violin-maker, Franciszek “Franz” Kempa, survived the war and died in his native Poland in 1953…

The Wall Street Journal looks at the increase in online radicalization of European teenagers following the arrests of dozens of young people across the continent in connection with plots to conduct terror attacks…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that Qatar has “decisive influence” over Hamas “that is not always exercised but could be,” a day after the Prime Minister’s Office released a statement calling on Doha to “stop playing both sides with its double talk and decide if it’s on the side of civilization or if it’s on the side of Hamas”…

Hamas released a video of hostage Maxim Herkin, a month after releasing a video showing the first sign of life from the Russian-Israeli citizen who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023…

The Israeli government decided not to establish a state commission of inquiry into the events surrounding the Oct. 7 attacks at this stage, citing the intensifying war in the Gaza Strip…

Tehran said it would strike Israel or the U.S. if either responded to the Sunday ballistic missile attack conducted by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen…

Iran unveiled the new “Qassem Basir” ballistic missile that Iran’s defense minister said has a range of 745 miles…

Phil Gordon, who served as national security advisor to former Vice President Kamala Harris, is joining the Brookings Institution as the Sydney Stein, Jr. Scholar in the Brookings’ Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology…

Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, the longtime leader of The Shul of Bal Harbour, Fla., and founder of the Aleph Institute, died at 78…

Singer Jill Sobule, who was known for her hits “Supermodel” and “I Kissed a Girl,” died at 66…

Attorney Sybil Shainwald, who represented female clients whose health had been damaged by poorly tested devices and treatments, died at 96…

Singer and Nova music festival massacre survivor Yuval Rafael met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog before departing for the Eurovision Song Contest in Switzerland, which takes place next week, where she will perform “New Day Will Rise” as Israel’s entrant in the annual competition.

Former Israeli national soccer team captain, he also played for Chelsea, West Ham United and Liverpool in the English Premier League, Yossi Benayoun turns 45…

Senior U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Illinois, Robert W. Gettleman turns 82… Best-selling author of 20 novels featuring fictional Manhattan prosecutor Alexandra Cooper, written by the former head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Linda Fairstein turns 78… Retired chief judge on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, he was once president of the Jewish Community Council of Washington, Peter B. Krauser turns 78… Docent at NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ruth Klein Schwalbe… Gayle Weiss Schochet… Member of the Knesset, almost continuously since 1988, for the Haredi parties of Degel HaTorah and United Torah Judaism, Moshe Gafni turns 73… South African-born president of American Jewish World Service, Robert Bank turns 66… David Shamir… Pulitzer Prize-winning author of three nonfiction books, historian and journalist, Tom Reiss turns 61… Senior managing director of the Jewish Funders Network, Yossi Prager… Emmy Award-winning television writer and producer, known for “The Simpsons,” Josh Weinstein turns 59… Special education consultant and nanny, Nancy Simcha Cook Kimsey… EVP of BerlinRosen, Nicole Rosen… Executive director of public relations at UJA-Federation of New York, Emily Kutner… Executive director of Micah Philanthropies, Deena Fuchs… Head coach of the football team at the University of Washington, Jedd Ari Fisch turns 49… President of Charleston, S.C.-based InterTech Group, Jonathan M. Zucker turns 47… Journalist, stage and film actress, Lara Berman Krinsky turns 45… Mayor of Bat Yam, Israel, Tzvika Brot turns 45… Member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives since 2013, Michael H. Schlossberg turns 42… Former professional golfer, now an orthopedic surgeon, David Bartos Merkow, MD turns 40… Partner at New Enterprise Associates, Andrew Adams Schoen… Maxine S. Fuchs… Blake E. Goodman… Basketball player for the Under 20 Team Israel in 2023 and the Michigan Wolverines in the Big Ten Conference, he recently declared for the NBA draft, Daniel Wolf turns 21…

• Nuclear talks between Iran and the U.S. that had been expected to take place this weekend in Rome have been postponed. The State Department said the talks had not been confirmed, while Iran said that Tehran and Washington, along with Oman, which is facilitating the talks, had decided to postpone the fourth round of negotiations over “logistical and technical reasons.”
• The McCain Institute’s two-day Sedona Forum kicks off today in Arizona.
• The Zionist Rabbinic Coalition National Conference begins on Sunday in Washington.
• And on the West Coast, the Milken Institute Global Conference kicks off on Sunday in Los Angeles.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR

Call it the horseshoe theory in action: The senatorial tag team of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rand Paul (R-KY), representing the far left and far right of their caucuses, joined forces this week to scuttle bipartisan legislation designed to crack down on campus antisemitism by codifying the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Jewish discrimination into law. 

Sanders proposed several “poison pill” amendments to the Antisemitism Awareness Act during a committee meeting — condemnation of the destruction in Gaza, protection for college students’ free speech rights and rights for universities — that received unanimous Democratic support in the committee vote, as well as backing from Paul. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) also voted for two of the Sanders-sponsored amendments. A fourth amendment by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) opposing deportation and revocation of foreign students’ visas also passed with Paul’s support.

The Antisemitism Awareness Act has long been a major priority for Jewish leaders, especially with discrimination against Jews on the rise, but is facing continued hurdles for passage because of growing antagonism from both parties’ extreme flanks.

The legislation, which passed the House with a substantial 320-vote majority last year, was opposed by only 21 House Republicans and 70 House Democrats, though opposition has grown since then. 

Last year, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) didn’t bring the legislation to the Senate floor for a vote out of concern it would expose divisions over the issue in the party. A number of progressive Democrats oppose the mainstream IHRA definition of antisemitism, arguing the definition is too broad because it considers certain criticisms of Israel to be antisemitic. 

On the far right, there was growing discomfort over free speech concerns. Most prominently, a smattering of right-wing Republicans, including Paul, and prominent influencers such as Tucker Carlson raised objections because the IHRA definition tags the claim that Jews killed Jesus as antisemitic. In cooperation with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), who shared similar concerns, the committee added language explicitly specifying that First Amendment protected speech, religion, press, assembly and petition rights are protected under the legislation.

The retreat on what, on paper, should have been an easy political win for both parties is just one small example of the growing influence of the populist, anti-establishment grassroots — fueled by voters increasingly turning to unconventional and unreliable sources for information.

As a result, on issues ranging from hostility to mainstream foreign policy views to distrust of traditional medicine to anger at Wall Street, the far left and far right of both parties are forming alliances of convenience.

Just scan the daily headlines for examples of an upside-down politics: Within the Trump administration, the reassignment of national security adviser Mike Waltz to Turtle Bay and the recent purge of experienced officials on the National Security Council at the recommendation of a far-right conspiracy theorist is backed by an isolationist faction that wants to upend the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks, in a notable warning this week, said anti-Israel views are beginning to seep into the Republican party as part of a “woke right” whose worldview often overlaps with the far left. 

Meanwhile, Democratic grassroots’ enthusiasm and excitement for Sanders’ rallies with left-wing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), as moderates struggle to put forward an alternative vision for the party, is a cautionary sign that progressive party activists are still empowered despite the political hole they dug for their party. The fact that Sanders-championed resolutions to block arm sales to Israel received 15 (of 47) Democratic votes in the Senate last month is a sign of how much the party has changed in recent years. 

As Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), a 36-year-old progressive House Democrat, said on CNN Thursday: “There is a new generation of Republicans and Democrats who want to think about some of the things that we have been taking for granted as core tenets of our foreign policy.”

It’s no coincidence that antisemitic views are on the rise within both parties, as a result of this collapse of institutional authority. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, it’s becoming difficult to pass bipartisan legislation to fight the oldest hatred.

Political Parallels: Puck’s Julia Ioffe looks at the similarities in the Trump administration and Obama administration’s approaches to foreign policy. “Both came to power contemptuous of the Washington foreign policy establishment, which Obama lambasted as an ‘elite that largely boarded the bandwagon for war,’ clinging to the ‘Washington playbook’ and stuck in ‘groupthink.’ Trump reviles the ‘deep state’ and dinged Hillary Clinton, once the secretary of state, for having ‘bad experience.’ Both came to Washington wanting to end wars, but quickly found that not only was doing so harder than they thought, but existing wars also had a way of expanding under their watch. … ‘I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran,’ Trump said in his 100-days interview with Time. ‘Nobody else could do that.’ Nobody other than Obama, who negotiated a deal with Iran in 2015. Trump would obviously know that because, following [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] lead in cursing the deal for years as empowering Iran over the objections of American allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, Trump unilaterally pulled out of the J.C.P.O.A. in 2018… only to now come back and try to strike a deal with Iran once again, after reportedly talking Israel out of striking Iranian nuclear sites.” [Puck]

Doha Dealings: In Commentary, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Jonathan Schanzer considers Qatar’s yearslong quest to become a key global player in media, diplomacy, academia and politics. “It’s fair to ask whether the Qataris are making a play for ‘state capture.’ Law firms, lobby groups, public relations shops, and other levers of influence are all on generous Qatari retainers. Hedge funds, mutual funds, joint ventures, and other generators of American wealth are similarly beholden to Qatari cash. Large parcels of real estate in one city after the next have been gobbled up by Qatari-backed developers. And that’s just what we know. Money is no object for Qatar. This is a country that controls more than 10 percent of the world’s energy. And the needs of the country’s tiny population make it such that the regime can spend money on soft power and influence without limit.” [Commentary]

Mandate-era Mode: In Tablet, Karen Burshtein spotlights ATA, a clothing company that provided workwear for recently arrived immigrants to pre-state Israel that has been revived in the last decade. “ATA now has minimalist chic boutiques in Tel Aviv and a just-opened store in Haifa, from which it sells its thick cotton jackets, quality T-shirts and sweaters, jumpsuits and, yes, the kibbutz hat. Most items have some reference to the workers’ uniforms at the heart of their history. Each is given a name that evokes kibbutz or Jewish history: Boker (morning) trousers, Po’elet (workers) dress, Hechrachi (Gematria) jacket, and Shabbat (Sabbath) shirts. The reborn brand often references ‘worker’s blue’ color tones. … Their first collection was directly inspired by what used to be called Havileh Oleh (Oleh packages). Upon arriving in Palestine/Israel, every oleh got a ‘Havileh Oleh,’ which contained work pants, a work shirt, a white shirt for Shabbat, a tembel hat, and a towel. “It was about how to identify yourself as an Israeli after you came from another place,” [creative director Yael] Shenberger continues. ‘When we started, what I wanted to do was exactly the same clothes. The white shirt in our first collection was the same white shirt Ben-Gurion wore.’” [Tablet]

President Donald Trump threatened to impose sanctions on entities and individuals involved with the purchase of oil and petrochemicals from Iran…

The Trump administration commissioned L3Harris to refurbish a Boeing 747 previously owned by Qatar for use as a presidential plane, amid delays in Boeing’s production of two Air Force One replacement jets…

Zach Witkoff, the son of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, on Thursday announced a deal between the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial, Emirati investment firm MGX and Binance at the Token2049 cryptocurrency conference in Dubai… 

The Pentagon’s inspector general is expanding an investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging platform following reports that Hegseth shared plans to strike the Houthis in Yemen in a second group chat that included his brother and wife…

The New York Times looks at Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-NY) return to the House of Representatives — and GOP leadership — following the Trump administration’s rescinding of her nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N. over Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House…

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is set to headline South Carolina’s Blue Palmetto Dinner, Politico reports, amid speculation about the 2028 presidential race, in which Moore insists he is not running…

A new poll from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) narrowly trailing GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, 49-46%, in a potential Georgia Senate matchup next year…

Counterterrorism authorities in the U.K. are investigating the Northern Irish hip-hop group Kneecap over its members’ alleged support for violence against government officials and support for Hamas and Hezbollah; the group recently faced criticism for broadcasting anti-Israel messages during their set at Coachella… 

Police in Victoria, Australia, are investigating after flyers promoting a neo-Nazi group were distributed to homes in a Melbourne suburb…

The Jewish Life Foundation is producing a 12-episode TV series and podcast hosted by “How I Met Your Mother” actor Josh Radnor, spotlighting Jewish writers at a time when others boycott them, Jay Deitcher reports for eJewishPhilanthropy… 

Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the Embassy of the Vatican in Jaffa and the Papal Nuncio this morning and signed the book of condolences for Pope Francis…

In a speech at Israel’s annual Bible Contest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the country’s war aims, saying “There are another up to 24 alive, 59 total, and we want to return the living and the dead. It’s a very important goal. War has a supreme goal. The supreme goal is victory over our enemies, and this we will achieve”…

Italy, Croatia, Spain, France, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Cyprus and Romania sent planes and other aerial assistance to Israel to help combat the wildfires that spread through parts of the country this week…

Israeli fighter jets struck overnight close to the Syrian presidential palace in Damascus. In a joint statement, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “This is a clear message to the Syrian regime. We will not allow the deployment of forces south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community”…

A ship said to be carrying aid and activists to Gaza was struck by drones in international waters off Malta this morning, according to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition NGO that organized the ship…

To mark Israel’s Independence Day, Israeli singer Netta Barzilai partnered with the Jewish Agency to create a new cover of “Chai,” in a music video which features new immigrants to Israel, Israeli youth, volunteers from the diaspora, shlichim from around the world, victims of terror and released hostage Dafna Elyakim. 

Former chairman and CEO of American International Group, once the largest insurance company in history, then chairman and CEO of the Starr Companies, Maurice Raymond “Hank” Greenberg turns 100… 

FRIDAY: Former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, he financed the visitors center at the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., John Langeloth Loeb turns 95… Former lord chief justice and president of the Courts of England and Wales, Baron Harry Kenneth Woolf turns 92… Retired professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, journalist, international negotiator and private consultant, Dr. Alon Ben-Meir turns 88… Author of 23 books and conservative political activist, Alan Merril Gottlieb turns 78… U.S. senator (D-VT) since 2023, Peter Welch turns 78… Former member of the Texas Senate, she was born in NYC to Holocaust survivor parents, Florence Shapiro turns 77… Former USAID contractor imprisoned by Cuba from 2009 to 2014, Alan Phillip Gross turns 76… Co-founder and president of private equity firm NCH Capital, he has funded the establishment of hundreds of Chabad Houses at universities throughout the world, George Rohr turns 71… Former under secretary of state for public diplomacy in the Obama administration, following a stint as managing editor of Time magazine, Richard Allen “Rick” Stengel turns 70… Member of the New York State Assembly since 2010, he was previously a member of the NYC Council and former deputy superintendent of the NYS Banking Commission, David Weprin turns 69… Former U.S. secretary of commerce in the Obama administration, she is on the board of Microsoft, Penny Sue Pritzker turns 66… Partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, she is active on many non-profit boards including Penn Law School and the Jewish Federations of North America, Jodi J. Schwartz turns 65… Television writer and reality television personality known for his high IQ test scores, Richard G. Rosner turns 65… Admiral in the IDF (res.), he served as the commander of the Israeli Navy, Ram Rothberg turns 61… Director of the Chabad Center in Bratislava, Slovakia, Rabbi Baruch Myers turns 61… Founder and CEO of Shutterstock, Jonathan E. Oringer turns 51… Israeli writer known for his novels, essays and philosophical work, Yaniv Iczkovits turns 50… SVP of Drumfire Public Affairs following four years as deputy chief of staff to then-Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Stephen Schatz… Founder of MamaDen, a platform that connects and empowers mothers, Julianna Goldman turns 44… Podcast host and founder and president of ETS Advisory, Emily Tisch Sussman… Attorney in the office of New York State’s attorney general, Gabe Cahn… Chief development officer at Cornell Hillel, Susanna K. Cohen… Running back recently signed by the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles, A.J. Dillon turns 27…

SATURDAY: Southern California-area writer and activist promoting wellness, she still works three days per week, Deborah Shainman Szekely turns 103… Senior research scholar at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University, Ely Karmon, Ph.D. turns 84… Television journalist, David Marash turns 83… U.S. senator (R-ID), Jim Risch turns 82… Venture capitalist and economist, his original family name was Jacobstein, William H. Janeway turns 82… Francine Holtzman… U.S. senator (D-OR), his original family name was Weidenreich, Ron Wyden turns 76… Six-time Tony Award winning Broadway producer, Stewart F. Lane turns 74… Retired attorney, he represented political parties, campaigns, candidates, governors and members of Congress on election law matters, Benjamin Langer Ginsberg turns 73… Retired in 2017 as chair and CEO of Mondelez International, a multinational food and beverage company (including Oreo, Nabisco and Cadbury), Irene Rosenfeld turns 72… Retired partner from the Chicago office of DLA Piper, now a consultant at Washburn Advisors, Mark D. Yura turns 72… Political reporter and columnist for The Richmond Times-Dispatch, he has covered Virginia elections and the state Capitol for more than 30 years, Jeff E. Schapiro… Retired senior advisor at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Susan Steinmetz… EVP at NBCUniversal News Group, he is on the Board of Visitors at Duke Law Schol, Stephen Labaton turns 64… Former owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center, Mikhail Prokhorov turns 60… Lobbyist since 2010, he was previously deputy assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in the Bush 43 administration, Scott A. Kamins… Veteran of 13 NHL seasons, in 2005 he sat out a hockey game to observe Yom Kippur, he is now an assistant coach for the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning, Jeff Halpern turns 49… Israeli singer and actress, winner of multiple Israeli Female Singer of the Year awards, Miri Mesika turns 47… Reporter for Politico New Jersey and author of New Jersey’s Playbook, Matthew R. Friedman… Educated at the Hebrew Academy of San Francisco, he was a defensive lineman in the NFL from 2004 until 2011 (Chargers, Cowboys and Dolphins), Igor Olshansky turns 43… Managing director and co-head of executive communications of SKDKnickerbocker, he is a graduate of CESJDS and was previously a speechwriter for President Obama, Stephen Andrew Krupin… President of Flaxman Strategies, Seth Flaxman… Israeli minister for social equality and women’s advancement, she is a member of the Knesset for the Likud party, May Golan turns 39… Benjamin S. Davis… NBA All Star for the Sacramento Kings, he is studying to convert to Judaism, Domantas Sabonis turns 29… Director of the Judaism and State Policy Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, Tani Frank… Foreign correspondent for NBC and a former Middle East correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, Raf Sanchez… 

SUNDAY: Executive director of the Texas A&M Hillel for 30 years, now a security consultant for the tourism industry, Peter E. Tarlow turns 79… U.S. special envoy for climate change in the Obama administration, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Todd D. Stern turns 74… Board chair of the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, Lee Sherman… Partner at NYC-based Mintz & Gold, he was EVP and general counsel for both the Las Vegas Sands and News Corporation, Lawrence “Lon” A. Jacobs… Northern Virginia-based portrait artist, Ilisa G. Calderon… CEO at Gigawatt Global, Yosef Israel Abramowitz turns 61… Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-Vermont-1), Rebecca A. “Becca” Balint turns 57… Triathlete, she earned a Ph.D. in 2001 from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is a winner of international ironman competitions, Joanna Sue Zeiger turns 55… Director of congregational education at NYC’s Park Avenue Synagogue, Bradley Solmsen… State attorney for Palm Beach County, Fla., from 2013 until earlier this year, Dave Aronberg turns 54… Chair and director at NYC’s department of city planning, Daniel Garodnick… Mechal Wakslak… President of national expansion at Veterans Community Project, he served as the secretary of state of Missouri, Jason Kander turns 44… Chief impact officer at RSL Management, Jessica Chait… Tech entrepreneur, best known as a co-founder of both Vine and HQ Trivia, Rus Yusupov turns 41… SVP at BerlinRosen, Allison Fran Bormel… Director of development at Americans for Ben-Gurion University, following ten years at AIPAC, Rebecca Leibowitz Wasserstrom… Writer, production coordinator and assistant to the executive producer of ABC’s “General Hospital,” Steven A. Rosenberg… Adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, Shana Mansbach… Manager of public policy and external affairs at Meta/Facebook, Sasha Altschuler… Actor best known for voicing the title character of the animated film “Finding Nemo,” Alexander Gould turns 31… Partner in the client services group at Signum Global Advisors, Elliot Miller… Medalist in the women’s halfpipe event at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, Arielle Townsend Gold turns 29… Senior business analyst at Shopify, Olivia Breuer…

• The American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum continues today. John Spencer, Ellie Cohanim and Bill Kristol will all speak on the main stage.
• Canadians head to the polls today in a federal election pitting Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal Party against Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
• The Hostage and Missing Families Forum is hosting an event tonight at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan featuring former Israeli hostage Noa Argamani as well as the relatives of slain hostages Omer Neutra, Itay Chen and Shiri Bibas.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR

As official Washington spent this weekend at the parties surrounding the White House Correspondents Dinner, an intimate group of moderate Democratic elected officials, policy wonks and strategists met in Denver to present ideas for rehabilitating their party from the center, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar reports in a dispatch from the event.

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), gathered together a lineup of prominent Colorado centrists — Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) and Michael Bennet (D-CO), among them — along with some former red-state Democratic officials, including former Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) and former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) to brainstorm ideas for a new moderate movement. 

Of note: Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO), a rising star in the party who is rumored to be mulling a Senate bid as Bennet runs for governor, was in attendance and gave a paean to former President Bill Clinton’s brand of politics, directly quoting from a seminal speech from the then-candidate breaking with the left and calling for a more-mainstream direction for the party. 

Neguse quoted from Clinton’s 1991 Democratic Leadership Council speech: “Our burden is to give the people a new choice rooted in old values, a new choice that is simple, that offers opportunity, demands responsibility, gives citizens more of a say, provides them responsive government.”

Neguse, Colorado’s first Black member of Congress, first ran for office as a progressive but has grown more pragmatic over time — and sounded like the type of future national leader the party is looking for. If Bennet wins the governorship in 2026, Neguse would be a strong contender to be appointed to his Senate seat.

Not at the moderate Democratic event: Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is running for governor and will be clashing with Bennet in the primary. In an interview with JI at an outreach event for Black voters, Weiser said he plans to position himself as a “populist problem solver” — while playing up his strong voice against President Donald Trump’s policies. 

Weiser touted the fact that he’s already filed 13 lawsuits against the Trump administration, saying he’s on the front lines of fighting the “lawlessness of the White House.” In the campaign, he plans to contrast his active record litigating Trump’s immigration and tariff policies in the state with Bennet’s time as a lawmaker in Washington. 

But Weiser also sounded like he would be tacking to the senator’s left in the primary. 

Weiser’s speech on Saturday centered on how he would fight to protect DEI programs in the state. Asked about what he thought about the Democratic Socialists of America movement — which has a foothold within the party in Denver — he noted their “deep empathy for how working class people are struggling.” He also noted that he endorsed against a DSA-backed legislator who went on an anti-Israel, antisemitic rant in the state House. 

Weiser, who speaks openly about his Jewish faith, also slammed the Trump administration for its overreach in cracking down against antisemitism, saying he was “horrified” about Trump’s actions. “Using antisemitism as a cudgel against marginalized individuals or to take away freedom is so horrifying to me,” he told JI.  

Bennet, for his part, underscored how Colorado is one of the biggest Democratic success stories because it has nominated candidates who focus on returning results over red-meat slogans. On a PPI panel, he talked passionately about how the country’s health care and education systems are broken — and the Democratic Party has done little to fix it. 

“Where is our agenda to reform the education system for the American people? Joe Biden said not a word about it, and these people deserve better than Donald Trump, who is destroying both what’s left of our health care system and what’s left of our education!” 

He added: “Trump is not the cause of all our problems. He is the symptom of the lack of economic mobility that we have, the sense that people no matter how hard they work, can’t get ahead.”

Power Chats: Semafor’s Ben Smith spotlights the growing use of “power group chats,” in which dozens, or sometimes hundreds, of power brokers and public figures engage in debate and conversation through the group messaging features of Signal and WhatsApp. “But their influence flows through X, Substack, and podcasts, and constitutes a kind of dark matter of American politics and media. The group chats aren’t always primarily a political space, but they are the single most important place in which a stunning realignment toward Donald Trump was shaped and negotiated, and an alliance between Silicon Valley and the new right formed. … The chats are occasionally marked by the sort of thing that would have gotten you scolded on Twitter in 2020, and which would pass unremarked-on on X in 2025. They have rarely been discussed in public, though you can catch the occasional mention in, for instance, a podcast debate between [Mark] Cuban and the Republican entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, which started in a chat. But they are made visible through a group consensus on social media. Their effects have ranged from the mainstreaming of the monarchist pundit Curtis Yarvin to a particularly focused and developed dislike of the former Washington Post writer Taylor Lorenz.” [Semafor]

Has Ben-Gvir Really Changed?: The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood reflects on his interaction with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir at an event in New Haven, Conn., in which Ben-Gvir was pressed about his previous support for Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein, whose portrait was displayed for decades in Ben-Gvir’s home. “[Ben-Gvir] framed his transformation as moral, and said he was not who he was when he was 17. Getting married and having six kids mellows a man out, he said. His whole answer took no more than a couple of minutes. I told Ben-Gvir that I found his contrition perfunctory and unconvincing, and I challenged him, if he was sincere, to prove it. I asked him to tell us all what it was like to idolize a murderer — and then to tell us what he would say to his younger self, or someone still in the thrall of a terrorist, to persuade him to give up violence and mellow out sooner rather than later. He couldn’t even bring himself to pretend. He just asserted that he had changed. ‘I’m sure you did things when you were 17 that you are not proud of,’ he said. (He removed the portrait when he was 44.) And he said again that time and family make a difference — but he added not a word about the inherent value of human life, or the disgrace brought upon religion and country by someone who massacres civilians, especially in a moment of total vulnerability.” [TheAtlantic]

Corbyn-ism Coming to America: In the Jewish Chronicle, Shany Mor raises concerns about the “Corbynization” of left-wing American circles. “As with so many more benign trends, Britain is just ten or so years ahead of the US. And the long march of geostrategic antisemitism’s institutional capture in the US is only about a decade behind Britain’s. Each major milestone – the capture of academia, the arts world, the various NGOs, a few major newspapers and journals of the smart set – was reached on these shores well before crossing the pond. And just as in Britain, so in the United States there is no realistic path to building a majority coalition around antisemitism either in its geostrategic or conventional forms. … American liberals, American Jews, and especially liberal American Jews would be well advised to be extra vigilant about this British import, which no tariff will protect them from. The British experience of the 2010s has a few useful lessons and warnings for what awaits the Americans in the 2020s.” [JewishChronicle]

American and Iranian negotiators concluded a third round of nuclear talks in Oman over the weekend, amid disagreements over Iran’s domestic uranium enrichment; the parties will meet in Europe in the coming weeks…

The Trump administration restored thousands of foreign student visas — largely for students who had committed minor or dismissed infractions — that had been previously revoked…

Donald Trump Jr., alongside investment banker Omeed Malik and Alex Witkoff, the son of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, is opening a members club in Washington; Malik’s 1789 Capital had previously invested in Tucker Carlson’s new media company…

The chair of the United Arab Emirate’s Executive Affairs Authority met in Washington last week with senior Trump administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff…

Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), Troy Carter (D-LA) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) introduced a resolution commemorating Jewish American Heritage Month… 

Reps. David Kustoff (R-TN) and Wasserman Schultz introduced legislation to enable Holocaust survivors to recoup pre-Holocaust insurance policies, the latest in a long series of congressional attempts to move the issue forward…

The Los Angeles Times spotlights a lawsuit between Irish hotelier Patrick McKillen and members of the Qatari royal family over the alleged lack of payment for work done on the Maybourne Beverly Hills…

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke on Friday to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro about the recent arson attack at the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg…

In The Wall Street Journal, Eugene Kontorovich calls on the Trump administration to again withdraw from UNESCO over what he alleges is antisemitism within the body, years after the Biden administration reversed a decision by the first Trump administration to pull out…

The NYPD is investigating clashes that took place last week outside of Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, between demonstrators and counterprotesters during a surprise visit by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir…

“60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley addressed the recent departure of the show’s executive producer in the final minutes of Sunday’s episode; Pelley cited disagreements with CBS parent company Paramount+ over the show’s coverage of “the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration”…

In the latest episode of HBO’s “The Rehearsal,” comic Nathan Fielder compared Paramount+ to Nazi Germany after discovering that a 2015 episode of his “Nathan for You” comedy series that dealt with antisemitism was removed from the streaming service… 

NPR spotlights the “shlissel challah,” a key-shaped loaf that is traditionally made the Shabbat after Passover…

Israel slammed the Spanish government’s cancellation of a €6.6 million deal that would have seen Madrid purchase 15 million bullets from Israel’s IMI Systems…

Israel sent its envoy to the Vatican, Yaron Sideman, to attend the funeral of Pope Francis, opting against sending an official Israeli delegation, days after Israel’s Foreign Ministry deleted a post memorializing the pontiff, who died last week…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Shin Bet head Ronen Bar of lying to an Israeli court that Netanyahu had demanded personal loyalty from him… 

Senior Biden administration official Amos Hochstein said that Israel “missed” an opportunity to reach a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia last year…

Hussein al-Sheikh was appointed vice president of the Palestine Liberation Organization amid an ongoing debate over who will succeed 91-year-old Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas… 

Israel struck a Hezbollah facility in southern Beirut that contained precision missiles on Sunday evening…

At least 40 people were killed in an explosion at the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran following the outbreak of a small fire in a section of the port with large shipping containers…

Iran’s Infrastructure Communications Company said it repelled a large cyber attack the day after the port explosion…

Amateur golfer Jay Sigel, whose plans to go pro were deferred for several decades by a college injury, died at 81…

Attorney and professor Menachem Rosensaft, who was born in a displaced persons camp at Bergen-Belsen, spoke at a memorial ceremony on Sunday at the concentration camp marking the 80th anniversary of its liberation. 

Comedy writer, television producer and showrunner, Daniel Joshua Goor turns 50…

Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., he also served four terms in the Knesset, Zalman Shoval turns 95… White House chief of staff for Presidents Reagan and Bush 41, secretary of the Treasury and secretary of state, James Baker turns 95… Retired judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals (now known as the Supreme Court of Maryland), Judge Irma Steinberg Raker turns 87… Retired four-star United States Marine Corps general, Robert Magnus turns 78… 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, Abbe David Lowell turns 73… 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 65… American-born Israeli writer and translator, David Hazony turns 56… Director of criminal justice innovation, development and engagement at USDOJ during the Biden administration, Karen C. Friedman… Retired soccer player, she played for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team from 1997 to 2000, Sara Whalen Hess turns 49… Founder of GlobeTrotScott Strategies, Scott Mayerowitz… Actress and film critic, she is the writer and star of the CBC comedy series “Workin’ Moms,” Catherine Reitman turns 44… Model, actress and TV host, known for her role in the soap opera “Fashion House,” Donna Feldman turns 43… 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 D.C.-based strategic communications and crisis management firm, Joshua Schwerin… Head coach of the women’s soccer team at Yeshiva University, Ryan Alexander Hezekiah Adeleye turns 38… Israeli artist and photographer, Neta Cones… 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 and CEO of A Better Way ABA, Ahron Fragin… Midfielder for Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls, Daniel Ethan Edelman turns 22…

• Technical talks on Iran’s nuclear program are taking place in Oman this weekend. More below.
• Elsewhere in the region, CENTCOM head Gen. Erik Kurilla is in Israel for meetings with senior officials to discuss Iran.
• The White House Correspondent’s Dinner will take place tomorrow night at the Washington Hilton in Dupont Circle.
• President Donald Trump will attend the funeral of Pope Francis tomorrow in the Vatican.
• Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) is facing at least two years in prison when he is sentenced today for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
• The American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum kicks off on Sunday in New York. More below.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MARC ROD

The American Jewish Committee’s annual Global Forum Conference kicks off this weekend in New York. AJC’s CEO Ted Deutch told Jewish Insider that the organization is expecting over 2,000 attendees.

“It’s been clear since Oct. 7 [and] in everything we’ve seen since, the challenges that the Jewish community in Israel are facing are global challenges and they require global responses,” Deutch said. “AJC has people in 40 places around the world — 25 offices in the U.S., 15 more around the world — this is the opportunity for all of that global advocacy, all of those global advocates, to come together.”

Headline speakers will include Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, who moved his country’s embassy to Jerusalem last year and yesterday designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and expanded Paraguay’s terrorist designations of the armed wings of Hezbollah and Hamas to encompass the entirety of both organizations. In addition, outspoken pro-Israel members of the European and Brazilian legislatures, as well as Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Auburn University basketball coach Bruce Pearl, will address the gathering. John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, and former Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass will be speaking.

Deutch said there will be a significant focus on the hostages — Noa Argamani and the family of Edan Alexander will be in attendance.

The event will also feature a debate between Ellie Cohanim, the former deputy antisemitism envoy in the first Trump administration, and Bill Kristol, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, on American leadership in the world and the implications of Trump’s America First foreign policy.

While not yet confirmed, Deutch said that the Trump administration had “expressed great interest” in sending a representative to speak at the conference.

Deutch also teased the announcement of a new collaborative effort to “help document antisemitism and the need to really confront it in all of its contemporary forms.”

In total, attendees and speakers will hail from more than 60 countries, including a feature discussion with Jewish community members from France, Mexico and Australia. Students will come from 46 U.S. colleges and universities and 27 other countries including Mexico, South Africa, North Macedonia and Australia. Young leaders from 14 countries who are part of AJC’s Access Global program will also be in attendance.

Deutch told JI that seeing university students step up as leaders and work together to strengthen each other has become “one of my favorite parts of AJC.” He said that there will also be opportunities for AJC’s campus programs to work with the World Union of Jewish Students and the European Union of Jewish Students and meet with Deutch and other AJC leaders.

“We’ve continued to work under the firm belief that the most important battlefield in the fight against antisemitism in the United States right now is in education,” Deutch added. He said that the conference will feature conversations with officials and activists at all levels, with a focus on both college and high school.

Speaking to JI at AJC’s offices in Washington this week, Deutch also delved into the nuanced approach AJC is taking on the Trump administration’s high-profile actions on campus antisemitism, including stripping grants from colleges and large-scale deportations of student visa holders, as well as offering an outlook on the ongoing Iran talks. Read more below.

The Last Waltz: The Atlantic’s Isaac Stanley-Becker does a deep dive into the recent upheaval and series of dismissals at the National Security Council coupled with President Donald Trump’s growing “distrust” of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. “The result is that Waltz remains on the job even as he has effectively lost control over his own NSC. The erosion of his authority extends to both policy and personnel. On the priorities that matter most to the president, Waltz has less influence than Stephen Miller, the homeland-security adviser and deputy White House chief of staff for policy, whose team is part of the NSC. Miller treats the advisory body not as a forum to weigh policy options, current and former officials told me, but as a platform to advance his own hard-line immigration agenda. On the most sensitive geopolitical issues, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and U.S. interests in the Middle East, Trump’s longtime friend and special envoy, Steve Witkoff, sometimes draws on the support of the NSC staff but often operates independently, officials said.” [TheAtlantic]

The Dermer Doctrine: The Washington Post’s Shira Rubin looks at Israeli Strategic Minister Ron Dermer’s role in working to facilitate a potential U.S.-Saudi-Israeli mega-deal. “Dermer, 54, is technically Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, but he is widely viewed as Israel’s unofficial foreign minister, and his rise has helped shape the country’s relationship with Washington, the Palestinians and the wider Arab world. … While the Saudis have pinned their hopes on Dermer — seeing him as Netanyahu’s ‘right hand man, who is extremely influential and effective,’ according to Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University — normalization is a harder sell than it’s been before, he said. The war in Gaza has made it more difficult for Saudi Arabia to pursue negotiations with Israel, as Saudi youth have increasingly taken up the Palestinian cause. And Netanyahu’s resistance to Palestinian statehood and the push by some members of his far-right government to resettle Gaza and expel its residents are a challenge to the kingdom’s ambitions to stabilize and modernize the region.” [WashPost]

Alternate Approach: In Foreign Policy, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven Cook argues against both military strikes and diplomacy to address Iran’s nuclear program. “Only once policymakers in Washington understand the Iranian sociopolitical order that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor built does a superior policy become clear: doing more of what Washington has already been doing. Maintaining sanctions on Iran, preventing the regime and its proxies from destabilizing the region, and responding to them when they try, as well as providing moral support for the Iranian opposition, provide the United States with the best chance for the regime to collapse in on itself. Such an approach is not without risk, however, as Iranian scientists continue to work diligently to develop their nuclear program. But it is the most realistic and feasible policy toward rendering Tehran’s nuclear program less worrisome.” [ForeignPolicy]

Hitting Harvard: In The Hill, attorney Mark Goldfeder reflects on Harvard’s response to the Trump administration’s funding cuts and freezes, which it has blamed on the school’s handling of campus antisemitism. “The bottom line is this: We are living at an inflection point in our country’s history, and it is time for everyone to take a long, hard look in the mirror to see where they stand. If you are fine with protesters using their free speech to incite anti-Jewish hate, but not with the government using its free speech to stand up for the Jews; if you are okay with the IRS revoking tax breaks for racist institutions, but not for ones who ignore antisemitism; if you romanticize leaders of groups that endorse the murder of Jews, yet call it ‘unlawful’ when the government enforces civil rights; and if you care so much about ‘illegal’ detentions that you simply must get on a plane and act, but only when the person being held is not Jewish, well, there is a word for that, and it isn’t pretty.” [TheHill]

The Department of Health and Human Services Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said it was “cautiously encouraged” by Yale’s efforts in recent days to swiftly address anti-Israel activity, including the brief establishment of an encampment on the campus…

Ed Martin, the Trump administration’s pick to be U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., who is currently serving in an interim role, apologized for his recent praise of a Nazi sympathizer with a history of making antisemitic comments…

Joe Kasper, who served as chief of staff to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is departing the Pentagon entirely, days after reports that he would be reassigned out of Hegseth’s office… 

The Financial Times spotlights Brian Ballard’s lobbying firm Ballard Partners, which previously employed several members of the Trump administration and includes clients in Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia…

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff rejected a proposal from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to attempt to reach an interim nuclear agreement, saying that the parties should work to reach a comprehensive deal by the end of the 60-day window given by the Trump administration…

Puck’s William Cohan interviews former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, previously the president of Harvard, about the Trump administration’s approaches to tariffs and academia…

In Time, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin called for the party’s senior officials to abstain from intervening in Democratic primaries, days after DNC Vice Chair David Hogg pledged to back insurgent candidates through an outside spending group…

Far-left New York state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, who is mounting a bid for mayor of New York City, released his first ad of the race, targeting front-runner and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo…

Adam Neumann’s real estate startup Flow raised over $100 million in a Series B funding round with backing from Andreessen Horowitz…

The Washington Post reviews Richard Kreitner’s Fear No Pharaoh, which spotlights Jewish American views on abolition in the Civil War era…

The International Criminal Court’s appeals chamber unanimously ruled to return to a lower chamber an Israeli challenge to a ruling regarding jurisdiction in the issuance of arrest warrants of senior Israeli officials to a lower court…

Israel acknowledged its responsibility for the death of a Bulgarian aid worker who was killed in a strike last month on a U.N. guesthouse in Gaza where the IDF said it had “assessed enemy presence”…

Documentarian Andrea Nevins, whose short film “Still Kicking: The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies” was nominated for an Oscar in 1998, died at 63…

Author and researcher Leonard Zeskind, whose work focused on far-right and white nationalist movements, died at 75…

Attorney and art collector Arthur Fleischer Jr. died at 92…

Nechama Grossman, the oldest Holocaust survivor in Israel, died yesterday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, at 110…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem on Thursday with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Reps. Ann Wagner (R-MO), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Marilyn Strickland (D-WA), Greg Landsman (D-OH) and Laura Friedman (D-CA).

Former chairman of the Conference of Presidents and previously president of Bed, Bath and Beyond, Arthur Stark turns 70… 

FRIDAY: Retired attorney, Myron “Mike” Sponder… Social worker and former health spokesman of the Green Party of the U.K., he is the older brother of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Larry Sanders turns 90… Co-founder of Lender’s Bagel Bakery, he was the national chair of UJA, Marvin Lender turns 84… Founder of Omega Advisors, Leon G. “Lee” Cooperman turns 82… Former CEO of Caravan Products and the H.C. Brill Co., Joseph (Joe) Weber turns 80… Founder of CAM Capital, Bruce Stanley Kovner turns 79… Rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University and rabbi of the Young Israel of Riverdale Synagogue, Rabbi Mordechai Willig turns 78… David Handleman… Longtime chairman and CEO of Village Roadshow Pictures, now president of Through The Lens Entertainment, Bruce Berman turns 73… Administrative law judge at the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, Beth A. Fox… Commissioner of the National Basketball Association, Adam Silver turns 63… Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Michael Scott Doran turns 63… Litigator at Quinn Emanuel, he served as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic in the Obama administration and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, Andrew H. Schapiro turns 62… Emmy Award-winning actor, comedian and producer, he is descended from a Sephardic family rooted in Thessaloniki, Hank Azaria turns 61… Infomercial pitchman, better known as Vince Offer, Vince Shlomi, or “The ShamWow Guy,” Offer Shlomi turns 61… Israeli diplomat who served as deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Israel in D.C., Benjamin Krasna turns 60…

CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester (NY) since 2016, Meredith Dragon… New York Times-bestselling author and adjunct professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, David Eagleman turns 54… Deputy director of community health at the Utah Department of Human Services, David E. Litvack turns 53… Manager of the Oakland Ballers baseball team in the Pioneer League until last July, Micah Franklin turns 53… Democratic Party strategist, she is a co-founder of Lift Our Voices, Julie Roginsky turns 52… President of the Alliance for Downtown New York, the nation’s largest business improvement district, Jessica S. Lappin turns 50… Senior-editor-at-large for Breitbart News, Joel Barry Pollak turns 48… Attorney turned grocer and now professor at American University, she founded and sold Glen’s Garden Market north of Dupont Circle, Danielle Brody Rosengarten Vogel… Co-founder of WeWork and now Flow, Adam Neumann turns 46… Executive director at Yaffed, Adina Mermelstein Konikoff… Managing director, head of social, content and influencer at Deloitte Digital, Kenneth R. Gold… Spokesperson and director of public affairs and planning division at FEMA during the Biden administration, now SVP at Avoq, Jaclyn Rothenberg… Film and television actress, model and singer, Sara Paxton turns 37… Staff writer at Daily Kos, Emily Cahn Singer… Former NHL ice hockey defenseman, now a color analyst for Westwood One and ESPN, Colby Shane Cohen turns 36… TikTok Star with 10 million social media followers and over 3 billion annual views, he runs the culinary website CookWithChefEitan, Eitan Bernath turns 23…

SATURDAY: Computer expert, author, lecturer, Jewish genealogy researcher and publisher of Avotaynu, the International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Gary Mokotoff turns 88… Retired Federation executive in Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento, Loren Basch… Investment banker and chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers through its bankruptcy filing in 2008, Richard S. Fuld Jr. turns 79… Professor of computer science and engineering at MIT, Hal Abelson turns 78… Chair of the Conference of Presidents, Harriet P. Schleifer… President of Brandeis University from 2016 until last November, Ronald D. Liebowitz turns 68… Moscow-born journalist and political activist in Israel, Avigdor Eskin turns 65… Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and contributing editor of The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch turns 65… London-based interfaith social activist, she founded and chaired Mitzvah Day International, Laura Marks turns 65… Journalist, biographer and the author of six books, Jonathan Eig turns 61… Former member of the Maryland House of Delegates for four years and then the Maryland State Senate for eight years, Roger Manno turns 59… Former member of the California State Assembly where he served as chairman of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, Marc Levine turns 51… Member of the NYC Council for six years and now a recently elected member of the NY State Assembly, Kalman Yeger turns 51… General partner of Coatue Management, Benjamin Schwerin… Senior staff editor of the international desk of The New York Times, Russell Goldman turns 45… Senior director of federal government affairs at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Karas Pattison Gross… Media relations manager at NPR, Benjamin Fishel… London-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering finance, he is the co-author of a book on WeWork, Eliot Brown… Male fashion model and actor, Brett Novek turns 41… Head coach of the UC Irvine Anteaters baseball program, he played for Team Israel in the 2012 World Baseball Classic, Ben Orloff turns 38… Communications director at the University of Florida College of Health and Human Performance, Alisha Katz… Product strategy services at Apple, Kenneth Zauderer… Washington correspondent for The Epoch Times, Jackson C. Richman… Board liaison at American Jewish World Service, he is also a part-time matchmaker at Tribe 12, Ross Beroff… Ahron Singer…

SUNDAY: Financial executive, he retired in 2014 as head of marketing for money manager Van Eck Global, Harvey Hirsch turns 84… Nonprofit executive who has managed the 92nd Street Y, the Robin Hood Foundation, the AT&T Foundation and Lincoln Center, Reynold Levy turns 80… U.S. senator (R-WV), Jim Justice turns 74… Physician and a former NASA astronaut, she is a veteran of three shuttle flights with more than 686 hours in space, Ellen Louise Shulman Baker, M.D., M.P.H. turns 72… Director-general of the Israel Antiquities Authority until 2020, he was previously a member of Knesset and deputy director of the Shin Bet, Yisrael Hasson turns 70… VP at Covington Fabric & Design, Donald Rifkin… Biologist and professor of pathology and genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine, he won the 2006 Nobel Prize for medicine, Andrew Zachary Fire turns 66… Co-founder of Casamigos Tequila and owner of restaurants, bars and lounges worldwide, Rande Gerber turns 63… Former member of the Knesset for the Shinui party, Yigal Yasinov turns 59… CEO of ZAM Asset Management, Elliot Mayerhoff… Showrunner, director, screenwriter and producer, Brian Koppelman turns 59… Founder and CEO of NYC-based Gotham Ghostwriters, Daniel Gerstein turns 58… Israeli actor, entertainer and television host, Yitzhak “Aki” Avni turns 58… Attorney and journalist, Dahlia Lithwick… Author, political analyst and nationally syndicated op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, Dana Milbank turns 57… U.S. senator (D-NJ) since 2013, he was previously the mayor of Newark, Cory Booker turns 56… Israeli television and radio journalist and former member of the Knesset for the Jewish Home party, Yinon Magal turns 56… Professor of science writing at MIT, Seth Mnookin turns 53… Cinematographer and director, Rachel Morrison turns 47… Identical twin brothers, between the two of them they won 11 Israeli championships in the triathlon between 2001 and 2012, Dan and Ran Alterman both turn 45… Israeli screenwriter and producer, she has written numerous advertisements and screenplays, Savion Einstein turns 43… Deputy regional director for AIPAC, Leah Berry… Television and film actress, Ariel Geltman “Ari” Graynor turns 42… Basketball coach, analyst and writer, Benjamin Falk turns 37… Senior creative director at Trilogy Interactive, Jessica Ruby… Head of data and climate science at Watershed, Jonathan H. Glidden… Associate at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, David Jonathan Benger… Investor and entrepreneur, Noah Swartz… MD/MPH candidate in the 2025 class at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, newly matched to be a medical resident at UCLA, Amir Kashfi…

• Yom Hashoah events continue in Israel and around the world today as governments and communities commemorate the Holocaust. In Poland, the International March of the Living’s ceremonies kick off this afternoon. Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid a wreath at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial.
• The American Jewish Historical Society is hosting a virtual lunch with former Harvard President Lawrence Bacow.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS

“We have a very strong environment for Jews on campus.” It’s the kind of rhetoric often offered up by university presidents, whether they’re discussing campus climate with prospective students, journalists or members of Congress.

It’s what Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff told Jewish Insider last month, days after he was announced as the school’s president after serving in an interim role for eight months.

On Wednesday, Kotlikoff announced that the school was rescinding an invitation to R&B star Kehlani to perform at the school’s annual “Slope Day” event, citing the singer’s history of making antisemitic and anti-Israel comments. (In one of her music videos, Kehlani opens with the text “Long Live the Intifada”; in a social media post, she referred to Zionists as “scum of the earth.”)

The rapid and decisive response from Cornell, one of 60 schools that received a warning from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over allegations of antisemitic discrimination and harassment, is not an isolated example.

At Princeton, administrators swiftly moved to open an investigation earlier this month into an event disruption during a talk by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. In addition to the anti-Israel activists who disrupted Bennett’s talk inside the auditorium, more than 150 demonstrators gathered outside the on-campus event, which ended early after a fire alarm was pulled.

And Yale, a third school included on the Department of Education’s warning list, announced an investigation on Wednesday into an unauthorized encampment on the New Haven campus, which was quickly taken down by campus security. In a statement, the university vowed “immediate disciplinary action” against students who participated in the encampment despite prior warnings and disciplinary measures, in addition to revoking the status of Yalies4Palestine as a registered student organization. 

Whether it’s the threats of funding cuts and freezes from the Trump administration (which has already frozen $1 billion in grants to Cornell), or an attempt at course correction, administrators are responding to campus unrest and anti-Israel organizing more rapidly — and forcefully — than in the past. 

Call it the Trump effect. The combination of executive orders targeting universities, funding freezes and federal investigations — coupled with activist fatigue and a refocusing on other issues, such as the government’s immigration crackdown and deportation efforts — have reshaped the campus landscape this semester.

At this point last year, dozens of coordinated encampments had sprung up across the country. The encampments were followed by efforts to disrupt spring graduations — a threat so significant that Columbia canceled its main commencement ceremony last year, denying the traditional pomp and circumstance to the class of 2024.

This year’s commencement ceremonies, which will take place in the coming weeks, will be the next test for administrators. If they stand up to anti-Israel disruptors, it will be another feather in the Trump administration’s cap. But if they don’t, they may again face the ire of an administration that has shown little restraint — for better or for worse — in addressing the scourge of campus antisemitism.

Northern Exposure: In Foreign Affairs, Shira Efron and Danny Citrinowicz posit that Israel has an opportunity to combine diplomacy with military action to secure the border and prevent malign forces from retaking power in Syria. “If the new Syrian government remains moderate and can consolidate its authority, the upside for Israel would be huge. It would have a stable neighbor not beholden to Iran — one that possesses an effective military that can do its own work to address threats from extremist groups. Israel is not a passive bystander to the trajectory of Syrian politics. It can encourage Shara’s moderation by welcoming Damascus’s overtures, such as the arrest, on April 21, of two senior leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group. Further, Israel should articulate publicly that its territorial advances are designed to be temporary until a responsible force can secure the other side of the border. Until Damascus has such capabilities, Israel should minimize friction with Syria’s population and its new government by reducing its visible military footprint and communicating with Shara’s team through back channels. At the same time, Israel should capitalize on the gains it has made to secure the Israeli-Syrian border by demanding a diplomatic agreement to ensure the protection of Syria’s Druze community and to demilitarize the Golan Heights.” [ForeignAffairs]

Farewell to Arms: In Newsweek, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Sinan Ciddi and Jonathan Schanzer argue against the U.S.’ potential sale of weapons to Turkey, spotlighting Turkish Foreign Minister Fidan’s ties to terror regimes and anti-American forces. “Before becoming foreign minister, Fidan headed Turkey’s intelligence agency (MIT) from 2010 to 2023. During that time, Fidan steered Turkey away from its Western alliances, aligning it instead with Islamist regimes and extremist movements. Fidan was central to making Turkey a safe haven for Hamas. Beginning in 2011, he enabled the group to operate on Turkish soil — raising funds, recruiting, and coordinating attacks against Israel. Hamas reportedly received a Turkish pledge of $300 million in 2011, and today maintains offices in Ankara and Istanbul with access to Turkish leadership, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On October 7, as Hamas carried out its slaughter of 1,200 Israeli civilians, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh reportedly celebrated from Turkey. Fidan’s record extends beyond Hamas. Turkey became a strong advocate of the Muslim Brotherhood, allowing the Islamist movement to establish institutional presence in Turkey. Ankara championed the Muslim Brotherhood government under Mohamed Morsi in Egypt before its downfall in 2014.” [Newsweek]

Sounding the Alarm in Europe: In The Free Press, Haviv Rettig Gur considers how early Zionists understood the looming peril that awaited Europe’s Jewish community at the start of the 20th century. “At the start of the twentieth century, only a minority of Jews were political Zionists. Most Jews still clung to the hope that, despite pogroms and oppressive laws, European liberalism would ultimately win out; or to the promise of universal equality trumpeted by the communists; or to the ultra-Orthodox call for a return to the physical, cultural, and spiritual safety of a renewed ghetto. The Zionists were a minority. Right up until they weren’t. Right up until Europe itself left Jews with no other choice. Put very simply: Zionism, alone among Jewish movements and cultural worlds of the diaspora in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, knew what was coming. The early Zionists saw only dimly, vaguely, the bloodletting that would come. But this foreknowledge rested on serious analysis and theory, and recommended clear action. This was true across the political spectrum of the Zionist movement, from socialists to liberals to right-wing Revisionists.” [FreePress]

White House senior official Seb Gorka said that the Trump administration’s counterterrorism plan, which he said would be “utterly, completely” different from the Biden administration’s approach, will likely be ready in a month…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had the Signal messaging application, which was linked to the same application on his cell phone, installed on his desktop computer in the Pentagon in an effort to work around the building’s poor reception and communicate with senior administration officials…

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) called on the Trump administration to drop its nuclear talks with Iran and mount an attack on its nuclear program, saying, “You’re never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime that has been destabilizing the region for decades already, and now we have an incredible window, I believe, to do that, to strike and destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities”…

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee will hold a vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act and another piece of antisemitism legislation next Wednesday, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) announced, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports…

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Senate Democratic whip, announced on Wednesday that he will not seek reelection to a sixth term, setting up a competitive primary contest to fill his seat and his leadership role, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports…

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) said she will make an announcement about her political plans in early May, following reports that she had told colleagues she intends to retire at the end of her current term…

The Department of Justice canceled hundreds of what Attorney General Pam Bondi called “wasteful grants” to community and local organizations, including funds for programs that were intended to decrease hate crimes against American Jews… 

A Pennsylvania Air National Guard member and self-described “Hamas operative” who was already facing charges tied to the vandalism of a synagogue and Jewish federation office in Pittsburgh was charged this week with making false statements about his loyalty to the U.S. and building pipe bombs… 

The FBI conducted several raids on homes in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area; an anti-Israel activist group in the area said that the raids were targeting protesters…

Harvard is delaying the release of reports from the school’s antisemitism and Islamophobia task forces, which were initially slated to be released in early April, amid its broader fight with the Trump administration over campus antisemitism and federal funding…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring universities to disclose foreign funding in excess of $250,000…

Current and former Barnard College employees received a text message survey from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that asked whether the recipients had Jewish or Israeli ancestry and probed recipients’ experiences with antisemitism on the campus; the move is part of the government’s efforts to investigate discrimination at the New York City school…

A judge in New York ruled that the Art Institute of Chicago must return a 1916 drawing by Egon Schiele to the heirs of an Austrian Jewish art collector who was killed in the Holocaust…

Hamas released a video of Israeli hostage Omri Miran; the video was the first sign of life from the Kibbutz Nahal Oz resident since July, when hostages who were released earlier this year last reported having seen him in Gaza…

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages, referring to the terror group as “sons of dogs” who had given Israel “excuses” to prolong the war in Gaza…

Jordan announced its planned enforcement of a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood’s operations in the Hashemite Kingdom, five years after a court ruling approving the group’s disbandment and nine years after shuttering the group’s headquarters in Amman; 16 people were arrested in Jordan earlier this month on charges that they planned to launch attacks in the country…

The New York Times interviews Syrian President Ahmed al-Shara about his first months leading the country following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad, as well as his approach to relationships with the West…

A new report from the Institute for Science and International Security found that Iran is fortifying the areas around two of its nuclear facilities, which it has refused to allow international inspectors access to…

Released Israeli hostage Agam Berger stood with Holocaust survivor Gita Kaufman at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland, on Wednesday. Berger is part of a delegation of released hostages participating in the annual International March of the Living program alongside Holocaust survivors from around the world.

Former president of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards of the NBA for 16 seasons, himself an NBA player for 9 seasons, Ernest “Ernie” Grunfeld turns 70… 

Rabbi emeritus at Washington’s Adas Israel Congregation, Rabbi Jeffrey A. Wohlberg turns 84… Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony and Peabody Award-winning singer and actress, Barbra Streisand turns 83… Delray Beach, Fla. resident, Phyllis Dupret… Distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park, Jeffrey C. Herf turns 78… Former president and publisher of USA Today, then chairman of theStreet, Lawrence S. Kramer turns 75… Israeli designer, architect and artist, Ron Arad turns 74… President of Cincinnati-based Standard Textile, Gary Heiman… Israeli singer descended from the Jewish diaspora in Kurdistan, Ilana Eliya turns 70… Columnist for Foreign Policy, Michael Hirsh turns 68… Author of books for children and teens, Deborah Heiligman turns 67… Managing director at global consulting firm Actum, and author of books about Bernie Madoff and Rudy Giuliani, Andrew Kirtzman turns 64… CEO and President of Wells Fargo since 2019, he was previously the CEO of Visa, Charles Scharf turns 60… President of sales and marketing at Pimlico Capital, and rabbi of Baltimore’s Shomrei Mishmeres HaKodesh, Carl S. (Rabbi Chaim) Schwartz turns 55… Deputy chief of staff for Montgomery County (Md.) Councilmember Sidney Katz, Laurie Mintzer Edberg… Emmy Award-winning television writer, producer and film screenwriter, known as the co-creator and showrunner of the television series “Lost,” Damon Lindelof turns 52… National political director at AIPAC, Mark H. Waldman… Israeli model, actress, entrepreneur, lecturer and activist, Maayan Keret turns 49… Film and television actor, Eric Salter Balfour turns 48… Brandon Hersh… Partner at Apollo Global Management, Reed Rayman… Special assistant to POTUS and senior speechwriter in the Biden administration, Aviva Feuerstein turns 38… Tech and innovation reporter at Automotive News, Molly Boigon…

BIRTHWEEK: American Jewish Committee ACCESS New York board member, Sam Sorkin (was yesterday)…