• Some 2,000 Jewish communal leaders, philanthropists and nonprofit officials from North America, Israel and beyond will gather in Washington on Sunday for the Jewish Federations of North America’s annual General Assembly. The opening plenary will include former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, authors Sarah Hurwitz and Micah Goodman, CNN contributor Scott Jennings and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City. Read more here from eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim and Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch.
• New York City Mayor Eric Adams is traveling to Israel today for a five-day trip where he plans to meet with government officials and economic development and high-tech leaders.
• The Texas Tribune Festival, taking place this week in Austin, continues today with speakers including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Democratic Texas Senate candidates James Talarico and Rep. Colin Allred, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), comedian John Mulaney, former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Tomorrow, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) are slated to speak.
• MSNBC is launching its rebrand tomorrow as MS NOW, part of its separation from NBCUniversal, with dozens of veteran journalists recruited as part of its expanded newsroom.
• On Sunday, the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust will present its fourth annual New York Jewish Book Festival. 

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar

Given the GOP’s sturdy 53-seat majority in the Senate, combined with the increasing rarity of split-ticket voters, the Republican Party’s hold on the upper chamber looked nearly guaranteed, with a map featuring very few true swing-state pickup opportunities for the Democrats.

Indeed, the unlikely pathway for Democrats to win back control of the Senate in 2026 runs through states that have been reliably Republican in recent years — Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Florida and Alaska. To win back a majority, the party would need to win at least two of these red-state races, reversing the yearslong Democratic drought in many of these states — along with winning GOP-held seats in battleground Maine and North Carolina, which is far from assured.

But given the dominant Democratic outcomes from the off-year elections, there’s been renewed attention to the possibility of some red-state upsets in 2026. Already, political strategists from both parties are mulling over which seats are the most likely to get competitive, in preparation for an unpredictable midterm election.

On paper, Ohio looks like it’s the best opportunity for Democrats to play offense. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a populist, battle-tested Democrat won three statewide elections in Ohio even as the state trended in a more conservative direction. He eventually lost in 2024 to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) by five points, but ran well ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ double-digit defeat in the state.

With the national environment tilting back in the Democrats’ favor, Brown is seeking a comeback against appointed Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), Ohio’s former lieutenant governor. A September poll of the race conducted by the respected Democratic firm Hart Research found Brown narrowly ahead over Husted, 48-45%. Among independents, Brown held a substantial 25-point lead (56-31%).

Of all the five “reach” states for Democrats, Ohio was the closest in the presidential race, with President Donald Trump winning by 11 points. That should make it the best opportunity for Democrats to win a third seat — even as it underscores how many Trump voters Democrats will need to convert in order to win.

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

MBS in the Oval: Jason Greenblatt, Middle East envoy in the first Trump administration, writes in Newsweek that the upcoming White House visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a “pivotal moment for U.S.–Saudi relations and the future of the Middle East.” “Together, [the U.S. and Saudi Arabia] safeguard the Red Sea and Arabian (Persian) Gulf, counter drone and missile attacks from Iran-backed militias and help prevent nuclear proliferation. A formal defense pact — linking U.S. technology and intelligence with Saudi reach and resources — would cement this cooperation for the long-term. It would show that Riyadh is ready to share the burden of regional security and that Washington remains a reliable ally. … For Israel, a secure and forward-looking Saudi Arabia is especially significant. It reduces tensions and opens the door to deeper cooperation in intelligence, missile defense and maritime security. For the rest of the region, it helps maintain balance and sustain diplomatic and economic progress. When the U.S.–Saudi partnership is strong, the entire region benefits.” [Newsweek]

Tending Your Garden: Conservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen argues that conservatives must “keep our own house in order” and reject figures like neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes to constitute an effective opposition to the political left. “As for the argument that we should focus our attention on the left, we can’t effectively oppose the left if we don’t keep our own house in order. Conservatives can’t complain that Democrats call us fascists if we let actual fascists into our movement. If we want to persuade the American people to support our cause, then we need to be clear about what conservatism stands for — and what it does not. That requires we keep out Nazis, along with their enablers. These cranks want to hijack the MAGA movement for their own vile purposes. We need to stop them from doing so. There can and should be vigorous debate among different factions inside the conservative tent. But we must draw a line somewhere — and it should be self-evident that fascism is over that line. If conservatives can’t agree on that, then we will end up like the left — beholden to antisemites in our midst.” [WaPo]

Fever Pitch: Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz draws the connection between antisemitism and anti-Zionism through antisemitic rhetoric used by protesters at last week’s soccer match in Birmingham, England, between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv. “The fact is, however, that if the prime, or in most cases the only, focus of your human rights activism is to target Israel — if you don’t take to the streets in support, for instance, of Gazans being murdered by Hamas, or masses being slaughtered in Sudan or any other of the world’s innumerable combat zones, and, needless to say, would not dream of taking a placard onto the streets in support of Jews and other Israelis being slaughtered by Hamas — then, that’s antisemitism. … The ‘If you see a Zionist, call the anti-terror hotline’ slogan does more than equate Zionism with terrorism; it seeks to legitimize the targeting of all who live in and love Israel, by branding us all terrorists. Its dissemination, largely unremarked upon, its malevolent, incendiary rebranding of Zionism as a force of evil, crosses yet another red line in the international effort to achieve Israel’s demise. And it will doubtless reappear along with ever more vicious anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and, yes, antisemitic words. And deeds.” [TOI]

Israel is seeking a new 20-year memorandum of understanding with the U.S. when the current 10-year one expires in 2028, U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios, including new propositions meant to emphasize U.S.-Israel cooperation and make the deal more attractive to the “America First” GOP…

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post that Israel “prefer[s] that Turkey not receive F-35 [fighter jets]s from the U.S,” but said that “there’s no indication that Israel’s qualitative edge will be compromised” if Saudi Arabia were to acquire them…

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations philanthropic organization gave the left-wing media organization Drop Site News $250,000 last year, the Washington Free Beacon reports, for it to establish a Middle East desk to “bridge a critical information gap in independent journalism”; over the past year, Drop Site has repeatedly produced anti-Israel coverage, including a series of interviews with Hamas leaders to provide “deeper insight” into the terror group’s decision to launch the Oct. 7 terror attacks…

A group of 25 Senate Republicans led by Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) urged the State Department to “ensure that [the U.N. Relief and Works Agency] play[s] no role in any efforts to stabilize, govern, and rebuild Gaza,” given UNRWA’s ties to terrorism, and urged the U.S. to work instead with trusted international and regional partners and NGOs…

Indonesia’s defense minister said the country has trained up 20,000 troops for health and construction-related tasks as part of the proposed international stabilization force for postwar Gaza…

The body of Meny Godard, who was killed and kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, was returned to Israel on Thursday night…

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was hospitalized after suffering a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up” and subsequent fall and face injuries, but is doing well, his spokesperson reported…

The anti-Israel IMEMU Policy Project organization is running an ad targeting Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who is visiting New Hampshire today, criticizing him for appearing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year and for voting against blocking arms sales to Israel…

A federal jury recently convicted a neo-Nazi for hate crimes after he mailed antisemitic threats to Georgia state Rep. Esther Panitch, the state’s only Jewish legislator, and Rabbi Elizabeth Bahar of Temple Beth Israel after both women publicly supported the passage of legislation codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…

Puck profiles Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, Vice President JD Vance’s longtime friend and Pentagon reformer, as he navigates Washington politics while building a reputation as a rising star…

The New York Times reports that Pakistan spent millions on Trump‑linked lobbyists — including his former business partners and bodyguard — in a high-stakes effort to influence U.S. policy…

Venture capitalist Elad Gil has doubled the target size of his new fund to nearly $3 billion, which, if successful, would be the largest known fund raised by a solo general partner, according to the Information…

Harriet Schleifer, former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was elected to the board of directors of Democratic Majority for Israel, the group announced…

Some 400 people gathered on Wednesday evening at a private estate in Beverly Hills, Calif., for the American Friends of Magen David Adom gala, celebrating the work of MDA — Israel’s national emergency services organization. Actor, singer and writer Jonah Platt hosted the evening’s program, which honored Elizabeth Goldhirsh-Yellin with the Humanitarian Award for her leadership and commitment to the cause of saving lives in Israel. An ambulance was dedicated in memory of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, the two Israeli Embassy staffers who were killed in a terror attack in May outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. Their parents, Nancy and Robert Milgrim and Ruth and Daniel Lischinsky, delivered remarks honoring their children. A second ambulance was dedicated in memory of Sami Liber, a member of the Brentwood community. Carla and Rodney Liber, Sami’s parents, honored her with remarks. 

Pictured, from left: Platt, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. and MDA’s Global President Gilad Erdan, AFMDA CEO Catherine Reed and MDA Director-General Eli Bin.  

After 15 seasons in the NBA, he became an owner and player for Hapoel Jerusalem and led the team to an Israeli League championship, Amar’e Yehoshafat Stoudemire turns 43 on Sunday…

FRIDAY: Cellist, Natalia Gutman turns 83… Former professional bodybuilder who played for two seasons with the New York Jets, Mike Katz turns 81… Los Angeles businessman, community leader and political activist, Stanley Treitel… Retired member of the U.K.’s House of Lords, Baron Jeremy Beecham turns 81… Former British Labour party MP who resigned in 2019 in protest of Jeremy Corbyn, Dame Louise Joyce Ellman turns 80… Television director and producer, her neurotic text messages to her daughter are the subject of the CrazyJewishMom Instagram page, Kim Friedman turns 76… Editor-at-large for Bloomberg View, Jonathan I. Landman turns 73… Former Democratic member of the New York state Assembly from Brooklyn, his 22-year term was completed at the end of 2022, Steven H. Cymbrowitz turns 72… U.S. secretary of state during the last four years of the Bush 43 administration, now on the faculty of Stanford University and the director of the Hoover Institution, Condoleezza Rice turns 71… Senior advisor to President Barack Obama throughout his eight-year term in the White House, she is now CEO of the Obama Foundation, Valerie Jarrett turns 69… Detroit-based communications consultant, Cynthia Shaw… President of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Laurie L. Patton turns 64… Partner at the Santa Monica-based law firm of Murphy Rosen, Edward A. Klein… Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of political science at George Washington University, Sarah A. Binder… Vice chairman of The Atlantic and managing director of media at Emerson Collective, Peter T. Lattman… and his twin brother, SVP at Forman Mills, Brian Lattman, both turn 55… Businessman with interests in real estate, gambling software, payments processing and digital advertising, Teddy Sagi turns 54… Member of the Colorado House of Representatives until last year when she became a Colorado state senator, Dafna Michaelson Jenet turns 53… Former deputy national security advisor for President Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes turns 48… Head of public policy and government affairs for Lime, Joshua Meltzer… Actress and comedian best known for her eight years as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” Vanessa Bayer turns 44… Senior advisor at Clarion Strategies, Jacob Freedman turns 43… Rabbi of the Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue in Indonesia, Yaakov Baruch turns 43… Israeli conductor and pianist, he is a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Nimrod David Pfeffer turns 41… Executive director of the One Percent Foundation, Lana Talya Volftsun Fern… Actress and producer, she is a daughter of Bette Midler, Sophie von Haselberg turns 39… First baseman and second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball, he played for Team Israel in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Spencer Elliott Horwitz turns 28…

SATURDAY: Author of dozens of children’s books and young adult fiction, frequent NPR guest, Daniel Pinkwater turns 84… Pianist and conductor, formerly music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim turns 83… Boca Raton, Fla., resident, Stephen Wolff… Former Chairman and CEO of Film and Music Entertainment, Lawrence (Larry) Lotman… NYC-based consultant for nonprofit organizations, Perry Davis turns 77… Retired immigration and nationality attorney in Southern California, Michael D. Ullman… Past president of Gratz College in Melrose Park, Pa., he is the author or editor of more than 50 books, Paul Finkelman turns 76… Executive vice president at Aish and former executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museums of Tolerance, Rabbi Meyer H. May turns 73… Executive producer and director of television programs, including “Friends,” one of the most popular TV programs of all time, Kevin S. Bright turns 71… Member of the Knesset for the Yesh Atid party, Meir Cohen turns 70… Partner in Toronto-based accounting firm Fuller Landau, he is a past president of Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation (BAYT), Jeffrey M. Brown… Senior project manager at T-Mobile, Michael A. Lewine… Member of the Florida House of Representatives, Michael Alan Gottlieb turns 57… Former member of Knesset for the Likud party, Nava Boker turns 55… Founder and chairman of Perilune Capital and co-founder of Harspring Capital Management, Carey Robinson Wolchok… Mortgage executive, Joshua Shein… CEO of the Riverdale Y in the Bronx until 2022, she is now a leadership coach, Deann Forman… As a 12-year-old baseball fan in Yankee Stadium, he interfered with a ball batted by Derek Jeter in the 1996 ALCS that was ruled to be a game-tying home run, Jeffrey Maier turns 42… Professional golfer, he won the gold medal at the 2013 Maccabiah Games, Ben Silverman turns 38… Deputy Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press, Zeke Miller… Press secretary for Maine Gov. Janet Mills, Ben Goodman… Talent Acquisition Partner at Engine, Alison Borowsky… Recent graduate at Harvard Law School, now serving as judicial law clerk for a federal judge in California, Micah Rosen… Military legislative assistant in Rep. Wesley Bell’s (D-MO) office, Ethan Sorcher…

SUNDAY: Justice on the Supreme Court of Canada until he retired in 2013, Morris Jacob Fish turns 87… Professor of mathematics and statistics at Concordia University in Montreal, Abraham J. Boyarsky, Ph.D. turns 79… Milwaukee-based founder and co-managing director of A.B. Data, Ltd, he is the past chair of the Pincus Fund for Jewish Education, Bruce A. Arbit turns 71… Director of programs at IKAR, Susan Brooks… Writer and producer for television and film, Jeff Pinkner turns 61… CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Jewish Policy Center, Matt Brooks turns 60… TV producer and president of Keshet Studios, Peter Traugott turns 55… Former senior vice president at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, Rabbi Justus Baird turns 53… Israeli singer-songwriter, author and travel documentarian, known professionally as “Passerby,” Gilad Segev turns 51… Author of several novels, he was the science fiction and fantasy book columnist for The Washington Post until 2022, Lavie Tidhar turns 49… SVP at The D. E. Shaw Group, he was previously a special assistant to President Obama for energy and economic policy, Michael A. Levi turns 48… 1994 Olympic gold medalist in figure skating, she first discovered that she was Jewish when she was 25 years old, Oksana Baiul turns 48… Stage, film and television actress, Margalit Ruth “Maggie” Gyllenhaal turns 48… Israeli actress, model, film producer and TV host, Adi Ezroni turns 47… VP at Jetro Restaurant Depot, he is a former NFL placekicker and punter, Hayden Scott Epstein turns 45… Snowboarder for the U.S. Olympic team in 2014 and 2022, he competes in the halfpipe, Taylor Gold turns 32… Chief of staff at Lightricks, Aaron Kalman…

• On Sunday, the Zionist Organization of America will hold its annual gala, where it will present awards to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY); Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter; Leo Terrell, head of the Department of Justice’s antisemitism task force; Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon; and philanthropists Irit and Jonathan Tratt. 
• Stefanik will be announcing her campaign for New York governor today, setting up a battle against Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat. Stefanik, who led the fight against campus antisemitism in Congress, is expected to make democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City a major attack line against Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani in the mayoral race.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar

Former Minnesota Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, who turns 95 today, isn’t necessarily a household name — but is one of the more consequential figures in Jewish political history, as the first Holocaust survivor elected to Congress and one of the most prominent Jewish Republicans during a golden period of Jewish representation on Capitol Hill.

Boschwitz now holds the distinction of being the oldest living elected senator, and remains active in political and business life from his home in Plymouth, Minn. He spoke on the phone to Jewish Insider this week about his life story, legacy and thoughts about our current political moment.

Boschwitz was born in Berlin in 1930. On the day that Hitler took power in 1933, Boschwitz’s father came home and told his family they would be leaving Germany forever. He arrived in the United States in 1935 with his family, completed college at the age of 19, started a retail lumber business and quickly made a career in business and, later, politics. 

He was elected as a Republican to the Senate in 1978, scoring an upset against the state’s former Gov. Wendell Anderson. He served there for 12 years, eventually losing reelection in 1990 to Democrat Paul Wellstone.

“When I came to the Senate, I was really the first Jewish conservative that many of my colleagues really met. They hadn’t met many Jewish Republicans at all. I think we had a hand in building some of the pro-Israel feelings now,” Boschwitz told JI. (During the 1980s, four other Jewish GOP senators would end up serving alongside him.)

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

The GOP Battle Over Bigotry: Author Jamie Kirchick argues in The Washington Post that the fight on the right over Tucker Carlson is a microcosm of deeper moral and ideological fault lines in the GOP.  “Carlson’s promotion of [neo-Nazi Nick] Fuentes was a signal moment in the former Fox News star’s moral atrophy. It also has forced an overdue reckoning on the American right. For far too long, the problem of antisemitism has been allowed to fester there because too many conservatives have been reluctant to speak out against its chief propagator … Stalinists and Holocaust deniers like Fuentes are perfectly entitled to spew their nonsense on street corners, through self-published manifestos or in online livestreams. What they are not entitled to is the imprimatur of purportedly respectable institutions whose reputations hinge upon the voices they choose to amplify.” [WashPost]

Teshuva at Heritage: William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, calls on the Heritage Foundation, a place he called a “second home,” to engage in “repentance” in the Washington Times. “Heritage’s decision to defend Mr. Carlson marks a dangerous turning point. An organization that once modeled moral seriousness now tolerates moral confusion. The one that built its reputation on defending Western civilization now aligns itself with those who undermine it. … It pains me to say it, but a relationship that began for me over four decades ago now stands on the edge of breaking. If Heritage cannot right its ship, that long relationship will end. Institutions that trade moral clarity for populist rage do not endure. … Mr. Roberts and Heritage must decide whether they still believe in moral clarity. They can stand for decency, admit error and reaffirm that antisemitism never belongs in conservative thought. Or they can let their silence define them as collaborators in decline.” [WashingtonTimes]

The Mamdani Doctrine: Zineb Riboua, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, writes in The Free Press about New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s worldview. “I grew up amid the lingering echoes of decolonization, which continue to mold perceptions of justice and power, albeit less overtly than in the West. From high school onward, Third World rhetoric permeated everyday discourse on climate change, Palestine, or inequality. The issues evolve, but the lens persists — a moral binary logic that divides the powerful from the powerless. … What Mamdani represents is not a new movement but a continuation of this sensibility. His stances on housing, policing, and Palestine project global anti-imperial archetypes onto contemporary New York City politics. The landlord morphs into the colonizer, the tenant into the colonized. The New York City Police Department becomes the occupier. The city’s streets serve as metaphorical battlegrounds in the decolonization process. Mamdani’s movement transcends socialism, unmoored from class or ownership, and eludes Islamism, unbound by theocratic aims. Here, Islam serves as an emblem of subjugation with universal resonance, a faith recast as resistance against Western dominance.” [FreePress]

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, in an interview with Semafor, revealed he had a “healthy dialogue” with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the wake of Mamdani’s win where the two “agreed to disagree” on some issues. Shapiro also commented on the ongoing “conservative infighting over antisemitism”: “I don’t share a lot in common ideologically or on the issues with Sen. [Ted] Cruz,” but Cruz “did the right thing by speaking out against [Nick] Fuentes and [Tucker] Carlson and the Heritage Foundation and others”…

In another interview with Puck, Shapiro commented on the shifting opinions on Israel in the Democratic Party: “I don’t pay attention to shifting political winds. I try and do what I think is right, and say what I believe. … I believe in Israel, but I don’t like the direction that it’s going under Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership”…

Two top advisors to Mamdani, Ali Najmi and Elle Bisgaard-Church, attended a Somos reception in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Thursday hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council and UJA-Federation of New York. “We are here to represent the transition with the Jewish community, and we’re so happy to be here,” Najmi, a Mamdani confidante who serves as chief counsel to the mayor-elect’s transition team, told JI’s Matthew Kassel. “We see so many good friends and old friends, and we’re so looking forward to our new friends, and the food was great here”…

Spotted at the JCRC-UJA Federation event: Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Brad Lander, Alex Bores, Lincoln Restler, Kalman Yeger, Mark Treyger, Micah Lasher, Michael Miller, Leon Goldenberg, Josh Mehlman, Sara Forman, Jason Koppel, Yeruchim Silber, Menashe Shapiro, Joel Eisdorfer, Jacob Eisdorfer, Daniel Rosenthal, Hindy Poupko, Mercedes Narcisse, Sandy Nurse, Eddie Gibbs, Thomas DiNapoli, Noam Gilboord…

Federal prosecutors are conducting a corruption investigation into a foreign trip taken by Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel E. Bowser with members of her staff that was paid for by Qatar, The New York Times reports…

A new course on “Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide” in Gaza was introduced at Princeton University, taught by a scholar who was briefly arrested for incitement while teaching at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for her inflammatory rhetoric about Israel, which has included calling for the end of the Jewish state…

The Israeli government has hired firms to conduct public diplomacy campaigns, including outreach to evangelical Christians and boosting search results on AI services like ChatGPT, Haaretz reports. The firms and experts hired seem to indicate a focus on amplifying pro-Israel messages among the American right… 

The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted on Thursday to advance legislation eliminating loopholes used by museums and other stakeholders to continue possessing Nazi-looted artwork that Jewish families have been trying to recover since the end of World War II. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked during the vote that their names be added as co-sponsors to the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, led by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)…

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) introduced the Ideologically Motivated Violence Accountability Act, which would provide sentencing enhancements for crimes committed “wholly or in part because of the victim’s actual or perceived political or religious beliefs, affiliation, expression, or activity” or to “make a public statement concerning any political or religious belief, practice, institution, group, ideology, event or public figure”…

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a Senate candidate, and Del. James Moylan (R-Guam) introduced a bill requiring a “whole-of-government strategy to interrupt cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea”…

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer is expected to step down from his position next week, with Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter taking over some of his responsibilities regarding ties with the Trump administration…

The Treasury Department announced sanctions today against members of Hezbollah’s “finance team” who “oversee the movement of funds from Iran” in an effort to support the Lebanese government’s moves to disarm the terror group…

The University of Maryland, College Park student government unanimously passed two resolutions hostile towards Israel on Wednesday night, including one that called for the school to ban members of the Israel Defense Forces from speaking on campus, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…

Pope Leo XIV met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday at the Vatican and the two discussed “an urgent need to provide assistance to the civilian population in Gaza and to end the conflict by pursuing a two-State solution,” according to a statement by the Holy See…

A covert operation reportedly carried out by Qatar sought to find evidence tying the woman who made sexual abuse allegations against Karim Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to Israel; according to documents obtained by The Guardian, no such connection was found…

Two 19-year-olds from Montclair, N.J., were arrested on Tuesday on accusations of participating in an ISIS-inspired terror group, with one allegedly planning a Boston-bombing-style attack…

French police arrested four protesters who repeatedly disrupted an Israel Philharmonic Orchestra concert in Paris on Thursday…

British authorities arrested 11 people amid protests surrounding Wednesday’s highly politicized soccer match between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Birmingham, after police banned Maccabi fans from attending the game. Aston Villa won 2-0…

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced a 70-year-old Iranian American Jewish man from New York to two years in prison for traveling to Israel 13 years ago to celebrate his son’s bar mitzvah…

Former Vice President Mike Pence announced his forthcoming book, What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience, will be released June 2, 2026…

Ye, formerly Kanye West, met with Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, an influential Orthodox rabbi who serves as the chief rabbi of Morocco, to apologize for his repeated extreme antisemitic remarks. “I feel really blessed to sit here and take accountability. I was dealing with various issues. I was dealing with bipolar also, so I would take the ideas I had and forget about the protection of the people around me and myself”…

The Wall Street Journal interviews Ruth Porat, the Jewish chief investment officer and president of Google and its parent company, Alphabet…

The Financial Times details the unraveling of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious megacity project, The Line, now with a significantly reduced vision, due to finance and physical constraints…

Singapore announced it will replace its fleet of Hermes 450 drones, used by the Singapore Air Force for 20 years, with the Hermes 900 model, produced by Israel’s Elbit Systems. Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in separate meetings in Jerusalem on Thursday focused on boosting ties between the two countries…

FIFA announced the creation of a FIFA Peace Prize which will “recognize exceptional actions for peace,” which it intends to present to its recipient, rumored to be President Donald Trump, at the World Cup draw in Washington on Dec. 5…

Israeli American citizen Capt. Omer Neutra was laid to rest this morning at the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery in Tel Aviv after his body was returned to Israel from Gaza on Sunday. Neutra was killed and kidnapped in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. The 21-year-old Long Island native, an IDF tank commander, was among the first soldiers to respond to the attack, serving near the community of Kibbutz Nahal Oz. 

Journalist and pioneering podcaster, he is the creator and host of “How I Built This” and “Wisdom from the Top,” Guy Raz turns 50 on Sunday…

FRIDAY: Neuropsychiatrist, a 1944 graduate of Yeshivah of Flatbush and 2000 Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, Eric Kandel turns 96…Former U.S. senator from Minnesota, he later served on the boards of AIPAC and JINSA, Rudy Boschwitz turns 95… MIT professor in electrical engineering and computer science, Barbara Liskov turns 86… Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, he was the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Donald Kohn turns 83… University professor at Harvard, expert on Shakespeare, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Stephen Greenblatt turns 82… Founding president of Santa Monica, Calif., synagogue, Kehilat Maarav, and senior partner in the West Los Angeles law firm of Selvin & Weiner, Beryl Weiner turns 82… Past international president of the FJMC International (formerly the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs), Thomas “Tom” Sudow turns 73… Entrepreneur, bar owner and television personality, Jonathan “Jon” Peter Taffer turns 71… Constituent affairs representative and community liaison for Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), Laurie Tobias Cohen… Volunteer coordinator for the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, Marcy Meyers… President and CEO of the Boston-based Jewish Alliance for Law & Social Action, Cindy Rowe… Funeral director at Berkowitz-Kumin-Bookatz in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Michael R. Holub… Director, writer and showrunner of the legal drama series “Suits,” Aaron Thomas Korsh turns 59… Former professional racing driver, now CEO of McLaren Racing, Zakary Challen Brown turns 54… Chairman and CEO of luxury apparel company Canada Goose, Dani Reiss turns 52… European casino owner, art collector and CEO of Vestar Group, Leon Tsoukernik turns 52… Deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh Yitzhak King turns 52… Founder and director of Eden Village Camp, an environmental Jewish summer camp based in New York, Yoni Stadlin… and his twin brother, rabbi, wilderness guide, experiential educator and artist, Pesach Stadlin, both turn 47… EVP of communications at NBC Universal, Jennifer B. Friedman… Reporter for Sportico focused on the business of college sports, Daniel Libit… Baseball outfielder, he won two minor league batting titles, Brian Horwitz turns 43… Consultant for family foundations, he holds two graduate degrees in Nursing, Avi Zenilman… Northeast regional deputy director at AIPAC, Alexa Jordan Silverman… National political reporter at Politico, Elena Schneider… Founder and CEO emeritus at Swipe Out Hunger, Rachel Sumekh… Toronto-native, he is the founder and CEO of Count Me In, a global youth empowerment organization, Shane Feldman… Co-founder and CEO at Moneta Labs Limited, Tomer Aharonovitch…

SATURDAY: U.S. attorney for New Jersey, then a U.S. District Court judge, now a criminal defense attorney, Herbert Jay Stern turns 89… Actress, comedian and writer, she played the recurring role of Doris Klompus on “Seinfeld,” her solo theater shows include “Yenta Unplugged” and “The Yenta Cometh,” Annie Korzen turns 87… French heiress, pediatrician, businesswoman and philanthropist, Léone-Noëlle Meyer turns 86… Former CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, he was a senior White House aide to President Bill Clinton, Ira C. Magaziner turns 78… Leader of the Sephardic baal teshuva movement in Israel, Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak turns 72… Senior managing director and global head of government relations for Blackstone, Wayne Berman turns 69… COO at Forsight, Michael Sosebee… Emirati businessman, developer of the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Mall, Mohamed Alabbar turns 69… Health-care executive, venture capitalist and real estate developer, Daniel E. Straus turns 69… Financial consultant at Retirement Benefits Consulting, Michelle Feinberg Silverstein… Israel’s former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant turns 67…  Television producer, she is the co-author of Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In, Helen Vivian “Nell” Scovell turns 65… NYC area attorney, Charles “Chesky” Wertman… Principal at Lore Strategies, Laurie Moskowitz… Popular Israeli female vocalist in the Mizrahi music genre, Zehava Ben turns 57… Board member at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Allison Gingold… Sports journalist for TelevisaUnivision Deportes Network, he was born in Ashkelon, Israel, and has covered both the World Cup and the Summer Olympics, David Moshé Faitelson turns 57… Professional poker player and fashion designer, Beth Shak turns 56… Founder of Ayecha, Yavilah McCoy turns 53… Congregational rabbi in Paris and co-leader of the Liberal Jewish Movement of France, Delphine Horvilleur turns 51… Kyiv-born CEO of Gold Star Financial Group including sports management, mortgage lending, publishing, film production and venture capital, Daniel Milstein turns 50… Israeli singer, Lior Narkis turns 49… Senior Director for Global Policy and Defense Cooperation at Saronic Technologies, Mira Kogen Resnick turns 43… Canadian entrepreneur and president of Shopify, Harley Finkelstein turns 42… Director of high school affairs at the American Jewish Committee, Aaron Bregman… Principal at Bayit Consulting, he is active in both the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the Israel Policy Forum, Roei Eisenberg turns 38… Film and television actor, Jared Kusnitz turns 37…Consultant on media, strategic communications, branding and podcast production, Alana Weiner… Student at Johns Hopkins University in the Class of 2026, Cameron Elizabeth Fields…

SUNDAY: Israeli novelist and playwright, she is the mother of former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Shulamit Lapid turns 91… British businessman and philanthropist, formerly chairman of Lloyds Bank, a major U.K. bank, Sir Maurice Victor Blank turns 83… Professional baseball manager in the minor leagues and college, he managed Team Israel in 2016 and 2017, Jerry Weinstein turns 82… Israeli war hero and longtime past member of the Knesset, Zevulun Orlev turns 80… Principal of Los Angeles-based PR and public affairs firm Cerrell Associates, Hal Dash… San Diego-based media developer, Daniel Ajzen… Mitchell Bedell… Founder of the Etz Chaim Center of Jewish Studies in Baltimore, Rabbi Shlomo Porter turns 76… Former deputy national security advisor for President Donald Trump, Charles Martin Kupperman turns 75… Former U.S. senator (D-OH) and current candidate for the U.S. Senate, Sherrod Brown turns 73… Senior producer at NBC Nightly News, Joel Seidman… Political consultant and fundraiser, founder of “No Labels,” Nancy Jacobson turns 63… Executive director of Los Angeles-based Remember Us: The Holocaust Bnai Mitzvah Project, Samara Hutman… Professor of journalism and media studies at Fordham University, Amy Beth Aronson turns 63… Partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis, Douglas C. Gessner… Partner at Covington & Burling specializing in export controls and sanctions, he was previously the assistant secretary of commerce for export administration during the Bush 43 administration, Peter Lichtenbaum turns 60… Chairman and CEO of Sky Harbour, he is an American-born Israeli fighter pilot and author of a 2018 book on the future of Judaism, Tal Keinan turns 56… Grammy Award-winning record producer specializing in comedy, Dan Schlissel turns 55… Founding CEO of OneTable, she retired as CEO in 2024, Aliza Kline… Associate justice of the Michigan Supreme Court since 2015, despite being legally blind since birth as a result of retinitis pigmentosa, Richard H. Bernstein turns 51… Israeli singer and actress, Maya Bouskilla turns 48… Co-founder and executive director of the States Project, he was elected the youngest member of the New York state Senate in 2008, serving until 2017, Daniel Squadron turns 46… COO at Orchestra, a PR and communications firm, David Levine… Singer, songwriter and rapper, Ari Benjamin Lesser turns 39… Army JAG officer, Matthew Adam McCoy…

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky returns to Washington today for a sit-down at the White House with President Donald Trump.
• We’re keeping an eye on the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, amid reports that Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have warned senior White House officials that Hamas’ ongoing refusal to disarm could collapse the agreement.
• Republican Party leaders in New York State are set to hold a vote to disband the state’s Young Republicans chapter today, after the publication of racist text messages shared in a chat of the national Young Republican leaders that implicated members of New York’s delegation. The state party plans to eliminate the group’s charter and rebuild the group with new leadership.
• On Sunday, Americans for Ben-Gurion University is holding a benefit in New York City featuring  former Israeli hostage Sasha Troufanov and comedian Alex Edelman.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR

With all of the living hostages released from Gaza and an end (at least for the time being) of Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory, the coming months could offer the mainstream Jewish community something of a breather to assess the changed political landscape. 

In the war’s final months, the anti-Israel far left gained a foothold in Democratic Party politics, most prominently in the New York City mayoral race with Zohran Mamdani, but also in urban contests ranging from Seattle to Somerville, Mass. The antisemitic forces on the far right have been less of a political force, but have gained strength on podcasts and among younger right-wingers, and have been embraced to a greater extent by a few populist lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). 

With the return of the living hostages, Israel’s success in degrading Hamas and additional enemies, and the apparent end of the Gaza war, Jewish optimists can plausibly argue that some degree of normalcy could creep back in the political sphere. Israel should become a less salient issue for low-information scrollers, with the war’s end reducing the constant anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda being fed on so many screens. 

With a ceasefire finally achieved, the anti-Israel forces have been remarkably silent, and have been exposed for the Hamas-sympathizing extremists that they always have been. That faction of the anti-Israel Democratic left is as politically exposed as it’s been since the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023.

There’s also the possibility that, with Israeli elections being held next year, a new Israeli prime minister would get elected, bringing with him or her a new Israeli government that may not be as polarizing to liberal critics of Israel back in the U.S. 

Jewish pessimists also have a plausible case to make. Support for Israel has declined in the past year, with the most significant slippage coming from Democratic Party voters and some independents. It’s hard to imagine it will rebound anytime soon. The youngest Gen Z voters are the most hostile towards Israel and have been even before Oct. 7. It’s reasonable to expect their future growth in the electorate will only grow the pool of anti-Israel voters.  

Furthermore, the rise of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment isn’t happening in isolation; it’s a symptom of the rise of larger illiberal and extreme forces within both parties. The fact that polls show an upward tick in the toleration of political violence, growing antipathy to capitalism on the left, and growing sympathy for authoritarianism on the right is the broader context of the growing hostility Jews are facing, and it’s not showing any signs of abatement.

In the coming year, it will be important to track whether the political outlook for Jews is getting better or whether the trends we’ve seen worsen in the last couple years are accelerating. 

We’ll be debuting an election scorecard next week, examining the most meaningful elections in the coming year that will test the influence of the political mainstream against the extremes. Stay tuned: it will be worth bookmarking and tracking as we approach Election Day this November, and in the runup to next year’s congressional primaries.

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

Political Cover: In The New York Times, Dana Stroul, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the Biden administration, posits that President Donald Trump’s “key intervention” in the Israel-Hamas war “was to give a political lifeline” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had faced threats from the far-right members of his government over efforts to reach a ceasefire. “Many analysts assumed Mr. Netanyahu, constrained by his far-right coalition, would not accept any end to the war without a complete Hamas surrender. Any compromise in which Hamas could reassert itself could have triggered early elections in Israel, costing Mr. Netanyahu the premiership and exposing him to his ongoing trials for corruption. Mr. Trump flipped the script. Mr. Trump lavished praise on his counterpart, extending him the political protection of Trump’s overwhelming popularity in Israel. In return, Mr. Netanyahu agreed to Trump’s proposal to free the hostages and let Hamas survive, for now.” [NYTimes]

JD’s Deflection: The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait considers what Vice President JD Vance’s response to leaked racist text messages sent by Young Republican leaders portends for the future of the party. “Some Republicans, including those who have directly employed the people in these chats, condemned these messages. But Vice President J. D. Vance had a different, and more telling, response. ‘I refuse to join the pearl clutching,’ he posted on X defiantly. … Given Vance’s evident ambitions to succeed Donald Trump as the Republican standard-bearer, his response is revealing. The vice president apparently grasps that openly defending references to Black people as ‘watermelon eaters’ and quips about sending political rivals ‘to the gas chamber’ would hurt his political standing, but he also clearly needs these Young Republican leaders if he hopes to consolidate the Trump base behind him. Deflection is a calculated response.” [TheAtlantic]

Rabbi Hauer’s Chavruta: In eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Rick Jacobs reflects on his friendship with Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the Orthodox Union leader who died earlier this week. “A few years back, Rabbi Hauer sent me a marked-up copy of a statement I had published. My words were covered with his voluminous comments in red ink. He took issue with pretty much every point I had made. Rather than just thanking him for ‘sharing his thoughts,’ I asked if we could sit and discuss his rather extensive rebuttal. How could I not be impressed by the seriousness with which he debated my views about the latest news from Israel? With his characteristic humility, he took me to task, never once raising his voice or dismissing my deeply held convictions. As consummate students of Torah, our session felt like a chavruta, an intense one-on-one learning session with a wise colleague. I thanked him for his thoughtful critique.” [eJP]

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton was indicted by a federal grand jury on a combined 18 counts of transmitting or retaining national defense information, stemming from his keeping and sharing of digital diaries — according to the indictment, more than 1,000 pages of entries, some including confidential information — that detailed his work during the first Trump administration…

Jacob Helberg was sworn in as under secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment…

Rep. Dave Taylor (R-OH) blamed the appearance of an American flag bearing a swastika in his office on an orchestrated “ruse” to distribute such flags that were “initially indistinguishable from an ordinary American flag to the naked eye.” But Politico reported that a staffer from another office that received such a flag in the mail said that “it was plainly obvious to us that there was a swastika on the flag with the naked eye.” Taylor denied any intentional wrongdoing by any of his staff…

California state Sen. Scott Weiner is reportedly planning to announce a bid for the congressional seat held by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)…

Claudia Milne, who served as head of standards at CBS News since 2021, is departing the media company; Milne is the first senior CBS News executive to leave the network following CBS parent company Skydance’s acquisition of Bari Weiss’ The Free Press and installation of Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News…

Warner Bros. Discovery rejected calls for the media company to boycott Israeli film institutions, saying that such a move would run afoul of its nondiscrimination policy…

Pomona College opened an investigation on Thursday after an on-campus event held Wednesday commemorating the second anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks was disrupted by four masked and keffiyah-clad individuals who barged in chanting “Zionists not welcome here,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…

The owners of the Washington-area vegetarian chain Shouk, which served Israeli fare in the capital region for a decade, closed all its locations, citing financial losses resulting from a sustained boycott of the chain; Shouk is co-owned by Dennis Friedman and Israeli entrepreneur Ran Nussbacher…

The New York Times interviews actor Ari’el Stachel about his new one-man, off-Broadway show “Other,” about his conflicting identities as an Arab Jew…

Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria quietly restituted a 17th-century Gerard ter Borch painting to the descendants of Max Emden, a Swiss-German art collector who was forced to sell some of his pieces under financial duress in the lead-up to World War II…

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer ordered a review of antisemitism within the country’s National Health Service, citing “too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively”; 10 Downing Street is also asking the NHS to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…

Starmer also condemned the decision by English Premier League team Aston Villa to prohibit attendance by Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters at an upcoming match in Birmingham and called on Aston Villa to reverse the decision, which the team said was due to “a number of physical and safety factors”; Emily Damari, a British-Israeli former hostage and a fan of Maccabi Tel Aviv, called on Aston Villa to “come to your senses and reconsider”…

A court in Oslo convicted a Norwegian man who worked as a guard at the U.S. Embassy of espionage on behalf of Russia and Iran…

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen confirmed that the terror group’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Muhammad Abdul Karim al-Ghamari, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in August…

The Washington Post spotlights the difficult and traumatic conditions, including beatings, starvation and uncertainty over the fates of their loved ones, that the last group of living Israeli hostages, who remained in Gaza until earlier this week, endured while in captivity…

The Wall Street Journal reports on the challenges in repatriating the bodies of the remaining Israeli hostages, citing both the difficulty in locating all of the bodies as well as Israel’s allegations that Hamas is holding onto some bodies as future leverage…

The New York Times does a deep dive into the whereabouts of former Syrian officials who have fled the country or otherwise evaded officials amid a broader crackdown on Assad-era officials believed to be complicit in the regime’s atrocities…

Michael Ratney, Nimrod Novik, Farah Bdour, Ibrahim Dalalsha, Elisa Ewers, Garrett Nada and Neri Zilber were named as members of a new Israel Policy Forum policy council…

Susan Stamberg, an early employee of NPR who hosted its “All Things Considered” from 1972-1986, died at 87…

Arts journalist Milton Esterow, whose brand of investigative journalism focused on artwork looted by the Nazis, died at 97…

Independent film distributor Toby Talbot, who with her husband operated art-house cinemas in New York City from 1960-2018, died at 96…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participated in a state memorial ceremony on Thursday for the fallen soldiers of the Israel-Hamas war at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl.

Emmy Award-winning film and television music composer, Nicholas Britell turns 45…

FRIDAY: Chair emeritus of the board of directors of NYC’s 92nd Street Y, Jody Gottfried Arnhold turns 82… Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit since 1999, Ronald Murray Gould turns 79… Filmmaker and novelist, Michael L. Tolkin turns 75… U.S. district judge for the District of Connecticut since 1994, he took senior status in 2017, Robert Neil Chatigny turns 74… Movie and television producer, Lawrence Bender turns 68… Rochester, N.Y., resident, Peggy Futerman… Number theorist and professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, he has written a highly critical report on the world’s leading Holocaust deniers, Jeffrey Shallit turns 68… Partner in Becker & Poliakoff, she has been a member of both houses of the Florida Legislature, Ellyn Setnor Bogdanoff turns 66… Rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University, he is a son of professor Isadore Twersky and a grandson of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, he also serves as the rebbe of the Talne Hasidic dynasty, Rabbi Mayer E. Twersky turns 65… Former Northwest regional director of J Street, Andrew Straus… Professor of economics at Harvard, he served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Jeremy Chaim Stein turns 65… Ramsey, N.J.-based licensed professional counselor, Shemsi Prinzivalli… Member of the California state Senate until last November, Josh Newman turns 61… Co-founder of AQR Capital Management, Cliff Asness turns 59… Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, David Halbfinger turns 57… Founder of Maniv Investments in 1997 and Maniv Mobility, Michael Granoff turns 57… U.S. senator (D-NM), Martin Heinrich turns 54… CEO and founder of Crosscut Strategies, a D.C.-based public affairs firm, Kenneth Baer… Rheumatologist and director of the rehabilitation division of Arthritis and Rheumatism Associates in the D.C. area, Dr. Shari B. Diamond… Author and staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, Ariel Levy turns 51… VP and head of U.S. public policy at TikTok, Michael Beckerman turns 47… Los Angeles-based consultant to the beauty industry and former CEO of several companies, Jessica Goldin turns 46… CEO at Citizen AI, Tomer Kagan turns 42… D.C.-based director of federal affairs for New York University, Katharine Nasielski… Co-founder and executive director at the Constructive Dialogue Institute, Caroline Mehl… Member of the Maryland state Senate since early this year following seven years in the Maryland House of Delegates, Dalya Attar turns 35… Staff software engineer at Zocdoc, Adam Greenspan…

SATURDAY: Co-founder and former chairman of Qualcomm, Irwin M. Jacobs turns 92… Former mayor of Amsterdam and leader of the Dutch Labour Party, Marius Job Cohen turns 78… Linguist, he is a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, Victor A. Friedman turns 76… Former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, he is president of the Coalition for a Safer Web, Marc Ginsberg turns 75… Physician and political activist In Henrico County, Va., Dr. Max S. Maizels turns 74… Professor of intelligence and global security studies at Capitol Technology University, Joshua B. Sinai, Ph.D…. Bakersfield, Calif.-based attorney focused on adoption and reproductive law, Marc Dennis Widelock… Television director, writer, producer, composer and actor, Chuck Lorre (born Chaim Levine) turns 73… Film producer and founder and head of Dimension Films, Robert “Bob” Weinstein turns 71… President of the Economic Future Group, a consulting firm, Jonathan Bernard Yoav Tasini turns 69… Award-winning illustrator and writer of books for children, Eugene Yelchin turns 69… Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during almost all of the Biden administration, Gary Gensler turns 68… Retired NFL running back, he writes of his conversion in From Rose Bowl to Rashi: My Unique Journey to Judaism, Leon Calvin (now Yosef) Murray turns 67… Israeli journalist, political commentator and author of two books highly critical of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben Caspit turns 65… Retired in 2021 after 20 years as the director at Rutgers Hillel, followed by a year at Harvard Hillel, Andrew Getraer… Founder of Coalesce Advisors, he is a former president at Birthright Israel Foundation, David Fisher… Professor and director of Jewish studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Steven Phillip Weitzman turns 60… Weather anchor for NBC 4 New York, David M. Price turns 59… Former ESPN television host, sports reporter and anchor, Rachel Nichols turns 52… CEO of Future Today Strategy Group, she is an adjunct professor of strategic foresight at NYU, Amy Lynn Webb turns 51… Fashion designer, stylist and art director, Maryna Asauliuk turns 45… SVP and COO at the American Enterprise Institute, Suzanne Gershowitz… Academy Award-winning screenwriter and author, Graham Moore turns 44… Founding partner and Washington correspondent for Puck News, Julia Ioffe turns 43… Congressional correspondent for The New York Times, Annie Karni… Support team leader at Moovit, Ayal Kellman… Popular Israeli singer, Idan Yaniv turns 39… Staff writer at The New Yorker, Emma Green…

SUNDAY: Professor emeritus and first-ever Jewish president of the University of Minnesota, Kenneth Harrison Keller turns 91… CEO of Aramark Corporation for 34 years ending in 2014, he is a past chairman of the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees, Joseph Neubauer turns 84… Founder and former ringmaster of the Big Apple Circus, Paul Binder turns 83… Pulmonologist in Plano, Texas, he is also the author of six mystery novels, Dr. Kenneth L. Toppell turns 83… Writer, scholar and former Israeli ambassador, Yoram Ettinger turns 80… Obstetrician and gynecologist at the Center for Fetal Medicine in Los Angeles, Lawrence David Platt, MD… Retired hospitality executive, Michelle Fischler… Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, she directed the journalism program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until this past July, Deborah Blum turns 71… Founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist turns 69… Retired supervisor for Minnesota’s Pollution Control Agency, David Alan Cera… Israel’s minister of the economy and former mayor of Jerusalem for 10 years, both positions following a successful high-tech career, Nir Barkat turns 66… Co-owner of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and English soccer club Manchester United, Avram A. “Avie” Glazer turns 65… Social psychologist and professor at New York University focused on the psychology of morality and moral emotions, Jonathan David Haidt turns 62… Canadian business executive and board member of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, David Cynamon turns 62… Chief rabbi of Ukraine, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich turns 61… Founder of Global Policy Associates where he is now an advisory board member, he was the White House Jewish Liaison in the Clinton administration, Jay Footlik… Ritual coordinator at Congregation Emanu El in Houston, Shira Kosoy Moses… Actor, director, producer and screenwriter, his television production company is Golem Creations, Jon Favreau turns 59… Former mayor of Portland, Maine, now a non-profit executive, Ethan King Strimling turns 58… Technology journalist and record producer, Joshua Ryan Topolsky turns 48… Film director, screenwriter and producer, Jason R. Reitman turns 48… Chief growth officer at itrek, Evan Majzner… Executive at Nefco, David Ochs… Pittsburgh-based founder and CEO of Mamalux, Lindsay Applebaum Stuart… Founder of iTrade[dot]TV, equities trader and financial marketer, Elie Litvin… Infielder in the Athletics organization, he played for Team Israel in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Zack Gelof turns 26… Jim Vespe…

• In New York today, an event on “Breaking the Chain: Global Action Against Hostage-Taking” will feature the first public remarks from former Israeli hostage Na’ama Levy. Also speaking are a Yazidi survivor of ISIS captivity; Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N.; Dorothy Shea, acting U.S. representative to the U.N.; and Ibrahim Olabi, Syria’s ambassador to the U.N.; among others.
• Chabad at Vanderbilt University will honor Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier with Chabad’s Lamplighter award tomorrow. Read JI’s interview with Diermeier and Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Andrew Martin here. 
• On Saturday, the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream is opening with its flagship exhibition, the “American Dream Experience,” in Washington.
• On Sunday, Charlie Kirk’s memorial will be held at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., where speakers will include President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and far-right podcast host Tucker Carlson, who has advanced conspiracy theories in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder claiming the conservative activist was being pressured by Israel.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH

In Washington, whether a public official or their spokesperson is speaking honestly is usually not fully known until much later. Take Israel’s attack on Qatar last week: the Trump administration claimed not to have known about it ahead of time, but Israeli officials told Axios that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had given President Donald Trump a heads-up.

When a president leaves office, his former staffers tend to get rather loose-lipped — an opportunity for them to rehabilitate their reputation and, perhaps, tell the truth about their views (or at least the narrative they’d like to put forward on their own terms, not those of their boss). 

The past few months have provided such an opportunity to the three architects of President Joe Biden’s Middle East policy team: Secretary of State Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, Biden’s coordinator for the Middle East at the White House. All of them played a crucial role in shaping American policy toward Israel and Gaza after Oct. 7. Each has in recent months written op-eds and made lengthy appearances on podcasts and cable news to comment on developments in the Middle East. 

Looking at where Blinken, Sullivan and McGurk have positioned themselves publicly, without the constraints of government service, is a sign of the options available to Democrats right now, at a moment when the party’s future is up for grabs — with an ascendant anti-Israel wing that is exerting stronger influence than ever, though it remains in the minority.

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

Green Light for Annexation?: Philip Gordon, former national security advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, argues in The New York Times that the international community must pressure Israel to stop any expansion in the West Bank due to the Trump administration’s permissiveness. “The Trump administration has not officially given its blessing to Israeli annexation of the West Bank. But it appears to be doing nothing to stand in Israel’s way. … Given America’s apparent acquiescence, only international action can prevent a coming disaster. It was encouraging that the United Arab Emirates said earlier this month that Israeli annexation in the West Bank would be a “red line,” jeopardizing Israel’s prized relationship with Abu Dhabi. A conference sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia at the U. N. General Assembly next week on the Palestinian issue will be another chance for the international community to put down a marker that most of the world objects to this Israeli government’s agenda. The government of Mr. Netanyahu should know that it can have flourishing relations with the rest of the world, or total control of the West Bank — but not both.” [NYT]

Ellison’s Empire: Former Wall Street banker and founding partner of the Puck media company William Cohan suggests in The New York Times that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s rising profile as a “media magnate,” along with his friendship with President Donald Trump, threatens to reshape American journalism into a more partisan landscape. “Along with his son, David, [Ellison] could soon end up controlling a powerful social media platform, an iconic Hollywood movie studio and one of the largest content streaming services, as well as two of the country’s largest news organizations. Given Mr. Ellison’s friendship with, and affinity for, Donald Trump, an increasingly emboldened president could be getting an extraordinarily powerful media ally — in other words, the very last thing our country needs right now. … No matter their motives, two independent journalistic voices, CBS News and CNN, could soon be combined into something potentially almost unrecognizable, something way too close to what is served up on a daily basis by the Murdochs. And that will put yet another chink in the fragile armor that is America’s democracy.” [NYT]

President Donald Trump said at a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer yesterday that the recognition of a Palestinian state, which the U.K. plans to do this weekend, is “one of [the] few disagreements” between the two leaders. “We want [the war] to end. We have to have the hostages back immediately. That’s what the people of Israel want, they want them back. And we want the fighting to stop,” the president continued…

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to talk today, their second conversation in Trump’s second term, about trade and the framework deal to save TikTok in the U.S…

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa told reporters on Wednesday that Syria and Israel could reach a security agreement “within days”…

Saudi Arabia signed a defense pact with Pakistan on Wednesday, as its leaders are reportedly angry with Washington over Israel’s recent strike against Hamas leaders in Qatar and are seeking alternative defense relationships…

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Joni Ernst (R-IA), John Barrasso (R-WY), Rick Scott (R-FL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Ashley Moody (R-FL) reintroduced the SEVER Act, which would bar sanctioned Iranian officials from entering the U.S. to visit the United Nations…

French President Emmanuel Macron told Israel’s Channel 12 that, despite European attempts to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program, U.N. Security Council snapback sanctions will be implemented at the end of the month, likely on Sept. 27…

Israel’s i24 News reports it has obtained recent audio of Macron speaking to former French parliament member Meyer Habib where Macron is heard saying, “I will not recognize a Palestinian state without the release of the hostages,” contrary to his reported plan to do so next week…

Two Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday at the Allenby Crossing between Jordan and the West Bank by an assailant driving a truck of humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip…

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting that she investigate the organization Doctors Without Borders for terrorism, saying it had proliferated “propaganda continuously pushed by Hamas”…

Former Vice President Kamala Harris reflects on her decision-making in choosing a vice president to run on her presidential ticket in the 2024 campaign in her forthcoming book, 107 Days; she was concerned that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro seemed to be more interested in being VP than in helping her win, according to Politico’s review of the memoir…. 

After several headlines positioned former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as shifting away from his previously full-throated support of Israel, Cuomo told the Forward on Wednesday that his position “hasn’t shifted one iota. I said we want three things: We want killing to stop, because it’s a matter of humanity. We want the hostages returned, and Hamas eliminated. If you don’t eliminate Hamas, you accomplish nothing. This will happen again and again”…

After her endorsement of New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has “pledged to anxious private sector leaders that she will use her power to act as a check on Mamdani’s agenda,” Politico reports…

A man in Texas was arrested for making death threats towards Mamdani over the phone and in writing, including saying in a message, “I’d love to see an IDF bullet go through your skull”…

Trump told reporters he is working to regain control of the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, which is now under Taliban control since the U.S. withdrawal in 2021…

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Canada released a joint statement urging their respective governments to reconsider their plans to recognize a Palestinian state next week…

Former President Barack Obama said that the firing of Karen Attiah — the anti-Israel Washington Post columnist who justified the Oct. 7 attacks and was let go from the Post earlier this week over social media posts on Charlie Kirk’s killing — is “precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent”…

The board of directors of Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded, unanimously named Erika Kirk, his widow, as its new CEO and board chair…

Speaking at a Rosh Hashanah reception at the Israeli Embassy in Washington yesterday, Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., compared congressional efforts to block U.S. weapons transfers to Israel to the antisemitic “blood libel” and he took aim at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for leading the charge, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Author, theater producer, television personality and philanthropist, Candy Spelling turns 80 on Saturday…

FRIDAY: Professor of Jewish history and literature at Yeshiva University, he is the only son of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Haym Soloveitchik turns 88… Member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives until 2022, he has served as synagogue president, Jeffrey Colman Salloway turns 84… Professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law and director of the Innocence Project, Barry Scheck turns 76… Distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, after a 28-year Pentagon career as a Middle East expert, Harold Rhode turns 76… Freelance reporter, he was a writing instructor at Montana State University Billings, Bruce Alpert… Archaeologist and professor of early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Jodi Magness turns 69… Stockton, Calif.-based physician at The Pacific Sleep Disorders Center, Ronald Kass M.D…. Producer of over 40 films in his career and executive producer of the television series Monk, David Elliot Hoberman turns 73… Rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, he is the inaugural rabbinic fellow at the ADL, David J. Wolpe turns 67… Boston-based attorney focused upon Section 529 college savings plans, Mark A. Chapleau… Chairman and CEO of NYC’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, John Nathan “Janno” Lieber turns 64… Bow tie-clad field reporter for Fox Major League Baseball since 2005, he is also a senior baseball writer for The Athletic, Ken Rosenthal turns 63… Inspector general of the Federal Reserve Board and the CFPB, Michael Evan Horowitz turns 63… U.S. senator (R-SC), he chairs the Senate Banking Committee, Tim Scott turns 60… CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, Ron Halber… Author of eight popular business books, former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Mike Michalowicz… Founder and managing director at Two Lanterns Venture Partners, he is also the founder of MassChallenge, John Harthorne… Pole vaulter, she competed for the U.S. in the 2004 Olympics and for Israel in the 2012 Olympics, now an associate brand manager at Kraft Heinz, Jillian Schwartz Dickinson turns 46… CEO of Enduring Cause Strategies, Neal Urwitz… Former MLB player for nine seasons, he was on Team Israel for the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Danny Valencia turns 41… Public affairs director at Elliott Investment Management, Joe Kristol… Singer-songwriter and producer, he frequently wears a Magen David pendant when performing, Charlie Burg turns 29… Former NFL placekicker, his college teammates nicknamed him the “Kosher Cannon,” Sam Sloman turns 28…

SATURDAY: Wealth management advisor, he won four Super Bowls with the Steelers during his eight-year career as a tight end, C. Randy Grossman turns 73… Dean of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky turns 72… Senior chairman of Goldman Sachs since 2019, prior to which he served as CEO there for 13 years, Lloyd Blankfein turns 71… Co-founder and board chair of Broadcom and owner of the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks, Henry Samueli turns 71… Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel since 2017, Yosef Elron turns 70… Insurance agent in Tulsa, Okla., Lawrence M. Schreier… Real estate developer, sports agent and boxing promoter, Marc Roberts turns 66… Former rabbi of Congregation Beit Torat Chaim of Jakarta, Indonesia, Rabbi Tovia Singer turns 65… Emergency medicine physician in Austin, Texas, he was the goalkeeper for the U.S. field hockey team at the 1984 Summer Olympics, Randolph B. “Randy” Lipscher turns 65… Civil rights attorney, author and legal analyst on “The Today Show,” “NBC Nightly News” and MSNBC, Lisa Bloom turns 64… SVP of marketing and communications at BBYO, Deborah Gavin Shemony… Former member of the Knesset for the Likud party, Keren Barak turns 53… Founder of PFAP Consulting and COO of PizzaIDF, Melissa Jane Kronfeld… Senior advisor to the under secretary of defense for research and engineering, James Mazol… Deputy news team lead at Bloomberg Law, Drew Singer… Principal at Blue Laurel Advisors, Emily Grunewald… Climate activist in Oakland, Calif., Carter Lavin… Senior director of strategic initiatives at Sony Music Entertainment, Alison Bogdonoff… VP of marketing at Cumulus Coffee, Zoe Plotsky Rosen… Isabel Eliana Tsesarsky… Actor, best known for his leading role as young aspiring filmmaker Sammy Fabelman in Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film “The Fabelmans,” Gabriel LaBelle turns 23… Theater, film and television actor, Jason Ian Drucker turns 20… Lauren Ackerman…

SUNDAY: One of the highest-grossing Hollywood box office producers of all time, plus the producer of many commercially successful TV shows, Jerry Bruckheimer turns 82… Chairman of the board of JDC, The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Mark B. Sisisky turns 75… Immediate past chair of the Board of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Cheryl Fishbein… Professor at Harvard Law School, following a three-year stint in the Obama White House, Cass Sunstein turns 71… and his wife, with whom he shares a birthday, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Biden administration, Samantha Power turns 55… Immediate past president of the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, Debbi Kaner Goldich… Owner of Total Wine & More, the largest alcohol retailer in the U.S., he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-MD) until January, David Trone turns 70… Member of the Knesset for the Likud party since 1998, he serves as Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz turns 70… Professor of political science at Tel Aviv University and professor emeritus at Georgetown, Yossi Shain turns 69… One-half the renowned filmmaking team of the Coen Brothers, Ethan Jesse Coen turns 68… Attorney, author of 10 books and Fox News host of “Life, Liberty & Levin,” Mark R. Levin turns 68… Retired managing director of equity trading at Goldman Sachs, Andrew Berman… Co-founder of the private investment firm Centerbridge Partners, he is a former board chair of Johns Hopkins University, Jeffrey Aronson turns 67… Russian businessman who fell out of favor with President Vladimir Putin, now living in Israel, Leonid Nevzlin turns 66… Co-founder of Wisdom Without Walls, she is the author of a series of courses for the Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning, Sandra Lilienthal… Director of the Board of Jewish Education of Metropolitan Chicago, Alissa C. Zuchman, Ph.D…. Janet Bunting… Senior partner at polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Anna Greenberg, Ph.D…. Emmy Award-winning talk show host, actress and producer, Ricki Lake turns 57… Guitarist and music producer in Israel, Nachman Fahrner turns 53… Managing editor of the New York Jewish Week, Lisa Keys… Member of the Maryland House of Delegates, Marc Alan Korman turns 44… Associate professor of radiology at Duke, he is an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, Dr. Benjamin M. Wildman-Tobriner turns 41… Former program director for strategic engagement at B’nai B’rith International, now a senior manager at Meridian International Center, Sienna Girgenti… COO of TAMID Group, Nathan Gilson… Lecturer in expository writing at UMass Boston, Mia Appelbaum… Member of the Michigan House of Representatives since 2023, Noah Jeremy Arbit turns 30… Global director of communications at Gallagher Bassett, Scott Frankel…

• President Donald Trump will be interviewed on “Fox & Friends” today at 8 a.m. ET.
• This evening, the president and special envoy Steve Witkoff are slated to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, who arrived in the U.S. days after an Israeli strike in Doha killed several senior Hamas officials. Al-Thani is scheduled to meet this morning with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington.
• The U.N. General Assembly is set to vote today on a resolution calling for a two-state solution, the release of the remaining hostages and an end to Hamas’ rule in Gaza.
• In Sacramento, Calif., we’re keeping an eye on amended legislation targeting antisemitism in K-12 schools that passed out of committee earlier this week. The bill, AB 715, still needs to pass through both chambers today, the last day of session, before heading to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. The bill’s passage had been stalled amid pushback from the California Teachers Association and anti-Israel groups. Read more from JI’s Gabby Deutch on the legislation.
• On Sunday, the Capital Jewish Museum is holding its annual gala in Washington. This year’s event will honor Carlyle Group Chairman David Rubenstein and Esther Safran Foer.
• In Israel on Sunday, Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman and his wife, technologist Neri Oxman, will each receive honorary degrees from the University of Haifa at a gala dinner. Earlier in the day, Oxman and Ackman will deliver “master classes” on “material ecology and computational design” and leadership, respectively.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR

We’re well into September, and the state of play in the New York City mayoral race hasn’t changed much in the last couple months, despite the many eye-catching developments. But a new New York Times/Siena poll released this week showcases an in-depth picture of the city’s electorate — one that is clearly wary of Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani’s brand of socialism, even as he remains the clear favorite to become the next mayor.

As has always been the case, the divided field of Mamdani opponents is the far-left candidate’s biggest asset. Mamdani leads former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by 15 points among registered voters, 41-26%, with all the candidates on the ballot. But in a head-to-head matchup, Cuomo pulls narrowly ahead, 46-45%.

The results continue to underscore how the splintered field is the biggest reason Mamdani is favored. Hardly any of the supporters of Mayor Eric Adams, running as an independent, or Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa would support Mamdani over Cuomo if their candidate dropped out. Indeed, among those not supporting Mamdani, over half (52%) said they would never support him for mayor — higher than any other candidate.

Working in Mamdani’s favor is the relatively respectable favorability rating he holds with New York City voters, especially in comparison to his rivals. Nearly half (49%) of respondents viewed Mamdani favorably, with only 35% viewing him unfavorably. That means that despite holding a record far to the left of past New York City mayors, many voters aren’t (yet) holding that against him. But there’s been no significant outside advertising effort against Mamdani, as you would typically expect in the run-up to a high-stakes contest.

Without any effort to remind voters about his far-left record, it’s no surprise that the fresh-faced political newcomer has a respectable image. 

Cuomo, on the other hand, has an underwater favorability rating, with 42% viewing him favorably and 51% viewing him unfavorably — largely a result of the ethical scandal he faced that forced him to resign as governor. 

But on the issues, it’s easy to see how Cuomo remains competitive in a one-on-one matchup. Crime is the top issue for New York City voters, with 26% naming it as the most important problem facing voters, slightly ahead of affordability at 24%. One of Mamdani’s biggest vulnerabilities is his long record of public comments supporting defunding the police and others critical of the NYPD.

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

Violent Streak: The New York Times’ David French reflects on the assassination this week of commentator Charlie Kirk. “When I speak on college campuses, I’m often asked what single thing worries me most about American politics and culture. I have an easy answer — it’s hatred. Even vast political differences can be managed when people acknowledge the humanity and dignity of their opponents. At the same time, however, small conflicts can spiral into big ones when hatred and vengeance take away our eyes and ears. Every threat, every assault, every shooting, every murder — and certainly every political assassination — builds the momentum of hate and fear. … Assassination can cost us our country. We lose it when we stop seeing our opponents as human, when we crave vengeance more than peace, when the motivation for our political engagement stops being the common good of our constitutional Republic (or even just the security of our families), but is rather inflicting pain and anguish on our political enemies.” [NYTimes]

9/11 Reconsidered: The Free Press’ Niall Ferguson considers the evolution of his views about the Sept. 11 attacks, which he now sees as a clash of civilizations rather than a confluence of historical trend lines. “Over the past 24 years, I have valiantly tried to see 9/11 differently—not as a civilizational clash between Islam and ‘the West’ but as something that fit better into my own secular frame of reference. Raised an atheist, trained as an economic historian, I felt obliged to look behind what I took to be the facade of religious zealotry. … In short, comparing the world today with that of 24 years ago, I am tempted to say that bin Laden lost the war on terror but is winning the clash of civilizations. That’s not to say his particular brand of Salafist jihadism is winning; it can even be argued that it’s in decline. Bin Laden’s creed was always too uncompromising to form alliances of convenience. By contrast, the pro-Palestinian ‘global intifada’ is much more omnivorous, and can easily absorb the old left (Marxism and pan-Arabism) and the new (anti-globalism and wokeism).” [FreePress]

Blowing Up Assumptions: In The Wall Street Journal, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh posit that the outcome of the 12-day war between Israel and Iran and U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities is markedly different than previous presidential administrations had warned. “This isn’t how many American officials expected the Islamic Republic to behave after being bombed. When selling his Iran nuclear deal, President Barack Obama dismissed those who thought that ‘surgical strikes against Iran’s facilities will be quick and painless.’ His deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes was more damning. ‘The default view in Washington is that if there’s a challenge in the Middle East, the U.S. has to solve it,’ he said. ‘Our basic point has been, no, sorry, we learned the opposite lesson from Iraq. It’s not that more U.S. military engagement will stabilize the Middle East. It’s that we can’t do this.’ … However much Americans incorrectly forecast the war’s results, the shock in Iran—the failure of strategic imagination—was far worse.” [WSJ]

The U.S. joined the rest of the U.N. Security Council in signing onto a statement condemning Israel for its attack on Hamas officials in Qatar earlier this week…

President Donald Trump said he will posthumously award Charlie Kirk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom…

The Pentagon announced its approval of a $14.2 million aid package to Lebanon to assist Beirut in disarming Hezbollah…

Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) accused House Republicans of having an “antisemitism problem” after Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said in a social media post directed at Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), who had just given a speech arguing that plastic surgery is “gender affirming care,” that she has “a good surgeon if you ever want to get your nose done”…

The House Foreign Affairs Committee released a series of bills aimed at reorganizing and reforming the State Department, ahead of a committee meeting next week where the lawmakers are expected to debate a host of amendments related to foreign policy and national security issues across the globe, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports… 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams signaled in a meeting with business leaders this week that he is open to dropping his reelection bid if he does not see a credible pathway to victory over front-runner Zohran Mamdani…

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with Mamdani on Thursday; Bloomberg had spent upward of $8 million opposing Mamdani’s primary bid earlier this year…

Mamdani said he would apologize for social media comments he made in 2020 calling the NYPD “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety”…

Josh Kraft dropped his Boston mayoral bid after a preliminary election showed him trailing incumbent Mayor Michelle Wu by 49 points…

Nadine Menendez, who earlier this year was convicted for her role in a corruption scheme involving her husband, former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison…

The University of California, Berkeley submitted to the Trump administration more than 150 names of students and faculty with “potential connection[s]” to antisemitic activity…

A Queens College Zoom lecture featuring an Israeli academic was disrupted by some attendees shouting antisemitic threats and displaying violent and sexually explicit images…

Amazon suspended a Seattle-based engineer who criticized the company’s business ties to Israel…

Paramount Skydance is reportedly moving toward making a majority cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery that would merge the parent companies of HBO Max and Paramount+…

Jon Kelly’s Puck news company is finalizing an agreement to acquire Graydon Carter’s Air Mail…

An Iranian man living under a new identity in Central Florida is facing a $225 million lawsuit from three former political prisoners who allege the 89-year-old served as the head of the secret police during the reign of the shah of Iran before he was deposed in 1978…

Jewish Voice for Peace is suing the City of Miami Beach as well as its mayor and a city commissioner, alleging that the group’s First Amendment rights were violated by the passage of an ordinance on public protests…

The Mount Kisco [N.Y.] Recreation Commission reversed its denial of a permit to Chabad of Bedford to use a town park for the annual tashlich ceremony; the town originally cited a ban on the use of parks for religious purposes…

Relatives of Raphael Lemkin, a writer and lawyer who coined the term “genocide,” are pushing the Pennsylvania-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, which accused Israel of genocide 10 days after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, to stop using his name, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports…

Ireland’s public broadcaster said the country will opt out of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is permitted to participate…

Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel told the country’s parliament that the government plans to implement a boycott of products from Jewish settlements in the West Bank…

Former English soccer player and BBC “Match of the Day” presenter Gary Lineker won the U.K. National Television Awards’ prize for best TV presenter, months after he left the broadcaster amid widespread criticism over his sharing of a social media post that compared Zionists to rats…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on a plan to move forward on a proposed E1 settlement expansion plan that would cut through the West Bank…

Two people were injured in a stabbing attack at a kibbutz hotel outside of Jerusalem…

Russian-Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov was reunited with family in Israel, days after being freed by an Iran-backed Iraqi militia that kidnapped her in Baghdad more than two years ago…

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Tehran and Paris were nearing a prisoner exchange that would release detained French nationals in exchange for an Iranian woman who was arrested in France earlier this year on charges of promoting terrorism online…

Senior officials in Jordan warned that Iran is increasingly posing a security threat in the Hashemite Kingdom…

David Halbfinger, who served as New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem from 2017-2021, is returning to the role following the departure of Patrick Kingsley; longtime NYT correspondent Isabel Kershner was promoted to senior correspondent for the bureau…

Israeli President Isaac Herzog (left) met on Thursday with U.K. Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis in London during Herzog’s trip to the country, where he met with Jewish leaders as well as Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

President emeritus of the Democratic Majority for Israel, Mark S. Mellman turns 70… 

FRIDAY: 2020 Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, Harvey James Alter turns 90… Chairman at Waxman Strategies, he served for 20 terms through 2015 as a Democratic congressman from Los Angeles, Henry Waxman turns 86… 2017 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, University of Chicago behavioral economist, Richard H. Thaler turns 80… Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Obama White House, he was previously lieutenant governor of Kentucky and mayor of Louisville for 20 years, Jerry Abramson turns 79… Former president of AIPAC, Amy Rothschild Friedkin… Denver Jewish community leader, Sunny Brownstein… U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom during the Trump 45 administration, he was governor of Kansas and a U.S. senator, Sam Brownback turns 69… Miami-based chairman of American Principles Super PAC, Eytan Laor… Former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, he is now the global chair of the litigation department at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, Geoffrey Steven Berman turns 66… SVP of government and public affairs at CVS Health, Melissa Schulman… Internet entrepreneur and a pioneer of VoIP telephony, Jeff Pulver turns 63… Chair of ADL’s Board of Directors, Nicole G. Mutchnik… Attorney specializing in the recovery of looted artworks during the Holocaust and featured in the 2015 film “Woman in Gold,” E. Randol (Randy) Schoenberg turns 59… Senior paralegal and contract manager at The St. Joe Company, Sherri Jankowski… Senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Max A. Boot turns 56… Screenwriter, producer and director, he won three Emmy Awards for episodes of “Robot Chicken,” Douglas Goldstein turns 54… Chief advocacy officer at the Defense Credit Union Council, Jason Stverak… Israeli singer, songwriter and musician, Idan Raichel turns 48… Founder of the Loewy Law Firm in Austin, Texas, Adam Loewy… Venture capitalist and one of the co-founders of Palantir Technologies, Joe Lonsdale turns 43… AIPAC’s area director for Philadelphia and South Jersey, Kelly Lauren Stein… Actress, director and singer, she directed and starred in the 2022 Peacock miniseries “Angelyne,” Emmanuelle Grey “Emmy” Rossum turns 39… Former advisor to the prime minister of Israel for foreign affairs and world communities, now a venture capitalist, Sara Greenberg… Manager of operations communications at American Airlines, Ethan Klapper… National political correspondent at Politico and the author of The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power, Ben Schreckinger… Product manager for pixel watch at Google, Natalie Raps Farren… Film and television actress, Molly Tarlov turns 33…

SATURDAY: Retired motion picture editor, Avrum Fine… Columnist, author and etiquette authority known as Miss Manners, Judith Perlman Martin turns 87… Chairman of global brokerage at CBRE, a worldwide commercial real estate services company, Stephen Siegel turns 81… Folk artist, photographer and writer focused on European Jewish history, Jill Culiner turns 80… Retired after 57 years as a D.C. reporter for many print and broadcast media, he now writes a Substack focused on antisemitism and the Middle East, Richard Pollock… Ice dancer, who, with her partner Michael Seibert, won five straight U.S. Figure Skating Championships between 1981 and 1985, Judy Blumberg turns 68… Former executive director of the Maryland/Israel Development Center, Barry Bogage turns 68… Founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, he is the author of 16 books, Rafael Medoff turns 66… Executive director of Aspen Digital, part of the Aspen Institute, Vivian Schiller… Senior lecturer in Talmud at Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Rabbi Chaim Kosman… Comedian known as “Roastmaster General” for his Comedy Central celebrity roasts, Jeffrey Ross Lifschultz turns 60… Governor of North Carolina, one of three Jewish governors named Josh, Joshua Stein turns 59… Member of the Los Angeles City Council, Robert J. Blumenfield turns 58… Founder of United Hatzalah of Israel and president of its U.S.-based support organization, Friends of United Hatzalah, Eli Beer turns 52… Israel’s minister of health until this past July, he is a member of the Knesset for the Shas party, Uriel Menachem Buso turns 52… VP of state and local advocacy for the Anti-Defamation League, Meredith Mirman Weisel… Former nine-year member of the Colorado House of Representatives, Jonathan Singer turns 46… Advocacy strategist with experience in opinion research, Gary Ritterstein… Senior editor and elections analyst at the Cook Political Report focused on the U.S. House of Representatives and redistricting, David Nathan Wasserman turns 41… Founder and president of Reshet Capital, Betty Grinstein… Director at Finsbury Glover Hering, Walter Suskind… Policy associate at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Sierra DeCrosta… Senior software engineer at Capital Connect by J.P. Morgan Chase, David Behmoaras… Managing director at Page Four Media, Noa Silverstein…

SUNDAY: Actor, writer and director, first known for his role as Chekov in the original “Star Trek” television series, Walter Koenig turns 89… The only basketball head coach to have won both an NCAA national championship and an NBA championship, Lawrence Harvey (Larry) Brown turns 85… Executive chairman of MDC Holdings (parent company to Richmond American Homes) until last December, and the principal supporter of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem, Larry A. Mizel turns 83… San Diego-based attorney, a specialist in mass torts, Frederick A. Schenk turns 72… Mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniella Levine Cava turns 70… Born in Chicago as Robert Francis Prevost, Pope Leo XIV turns 70… Plastic surgeon and television personality, Dr. Terry Dubrow turns 67… Chairman and chief investment officer of The Electrum Group, he is the world’s largest private collector of Rembrandt’s works, Thomas Scott Kaplan turns 63… Founder of Mindchat Research, Amy Kauffman… Founder of Vermont-based Kidrobot, a retailer of art toys, apparel and accessories, and Ello, an ad-free social network, Paul Budnitz turns 58… British secretary of state for defence until 2024 and knighted earlier this year, he was a national president of BBYO, Sir Grant Shapps turns 57… President of Strauss Media Strategies, during the Clinton administration he became the first-ever White House Radio Director, Richard Strauss turns 56… Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Ketanji Brown Jackson turns 55… Managing director at Gasthalter & Co., he is a past president of the Young Israel of New Rochelle, Mark A. Semer… Comedian, television actor, writer and producer, Elon Gold turns 55… Managing partner of Berke Farah LLP, his clients include SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas, Elliot S. Berke… Senior White House reporter for CBS News, Jennifer Jacobs… CEO of San Francisco-based Jewish LearningWorks, Dana Sheanin… Senior booking producer at CNN’s Inside Politics with Dana Bash, Courtney Cohen Flantzer… Governor of Florida and former 2024 POTUS candidate, Ron DeSantis turns 47… Israeli-American actress, Hani Furstenberg turns 46… Artist, photographer and educator, Marisa Scheinfeld turns 45… Staff writer at The Atlantic since 2014, Russell Berman… Co-founder and co-executive director of the Indivisible movement, Leah Greenberg… Los Angeles based attorney working as a contracts supervisor at MarketCast, Roxana Pourshalimi… New York Times reporter since 2011, now focused on in-depth profiles, Matt Flegenheimer… EVP at Voyager Global Mobility, Jeremy Moskowitz… Founder and owner of ARA Capital, a British firm with holdings in e-commerce and energy, Arkadiy Abramovich turns 32… MSW graduate this past May at Yeshiva University, Julia Savel… Artistic gymnast, she represented Israel at the 2020 (Tokyo) and 2024 (Paris) Summer Olympics, Lihie Raz turns 22…

• Today marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are slated to meet today in Alaska for talks aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
• The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute’s National Jewish Retreat wraps up this weekend in Washington. Weekend speakers include journalist Dan Raviv, Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin and Amb. Stuart Eizenstat.
• An anti-Israel protest slated to take place in New York City tomorrow is expected to draw thousands of participants, the largest protest of its kind in the city in months.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR

Watching several nationally ambitious Democrats, under pressure from the activist left, shift away from their measured support of Israel is reminiscent of watching the party’s 2020 presidential candidates rush to embrace a panoply of hard-left positions that turned politically costly in the long run. 

The biggest flip-flop under pressure came from former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who, in a recent appearance on the “Pod Save America” podcast, tried to maintain some support for the U.S.-Israel alliance while criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for being responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 

That nuanced, largely-critical-of-Israel reaction, nonetheless, drew widespread opprobrium from the loudest anti-Israel voices within the party, including the former Obama administration operatives who host the show.

Within days, Buttigieg backtracked in favor of embracing a more hostile view towards the Jewish state. He came out against re-upping another long-term agreement to secure military aid to Israel — the type of deal that former President Barack Obama last secured before leaving office in 2016. He said he would have supported anti-Israel resolutions championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to cut off some military aid to Israel. And he called for recognition of a Palestinian state, a position held by only the furthest-left Democratic lawmakers in Congress.

Buttigieg’s rapid reversal does him little good in advancing his national political interests. As a presidential candidate whose appeal was centered in his thoughtful pragmatism, his rush to pander to the far flank of his party threatens to undermine his more-moderate brand.  

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), to a lesser extent, is feeling similar pressure from the base as he hints at an interest in presidential politics. The swing-state senator, who has been critical of his party’s far-left, came out squarely against Sanders’ anti-Israel resolutions. But as anti-Israel activists aired an ad in Iowa targeting his position (he missed the actual vote in the Senate), he responded by saying his view on Israel is “evolving.”

And it wasn’t lost on the pro-Israel community that among the 26 Senate Democrats who voted with Sanders on the anti-Israel resolution was Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), a pragmatic Democrat who nonetheless is watching the radical strains within the party grow in influence within her state. Klobuchar is also expected to consider another presidential campaign, after experiencing surprising success in her first run — running as a centrist.

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

Classroom Conversation: In The Wall Street Journal, Claremont Consortium professors Jon Shields and Yuval Avnur reflect on the results of their recent study demonstrating anti-Israel biases in academia. “We also looked at the most assigned texts that narrowly focus on the history of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. We found that the most commonly assigned works were sharply critical of Israel. Those that show sympathy for Zionism are less popular and rarely paired with more critical texts. … More of us should follow the minority of professors who teach the real controversy — not only the dominant texts but also work that is critical of them. Doing so is good for developing citizens and for maintaining the public trust of the university. It’s hard for us to see a path toward restoring public confidence in the university that doesn’t involve curricular reform. If we shut out the views of half or more of the population, we shouldn’t be surprised when the democratic process leads to the diminution of our subsidies and other privileges.” [WSJ]

All Politics is Local: The Atlantic’s David Frum considers the domestic political motivations behind the recent decisions by French, British, Canadian and Australian leaders, whom he describes as “centrist politicians” who “regard themselves as strong friends of Israel,” to recognize Palestinian statehood. “If they’re investing their prestige in a seemingly futile gesture, they must have good reason. They do. All four men lead political coalitions that are fast turning against Israel. Pressure is building on the leaders to vent their supporters’ anger, and embracing the French initiative creates a useful appearance of action. … Now here we are again, after another failed Palestinian terror campaign, and there is only one idea energizing Western foreign ministries: That thing that failed before? Let’s try it one more time. But this time, the hope is not to bring peace to the Middle East. They hope instead to bring peace to their own streets.” [TheAtlantic]

Taiwan Talk: In The Washington Post, Vincent Chen spotlights what he calls the “hypocrisy” of Western recognition of a Palestinian state while denying Taiwan the same recognition. “Many Western democracies lining up to recognize a Palestinian state are in the process of conferring legitimacy on something that, legally speaking, doesn’t yet exist. Meanwhile, an economically crucial and politically functional democratic state that Western leaders have vowed to aid in case of outside aggression — Taiwan — remains unrecognized. This kind of hypocrisy invites trouble. Those trying to will a Palestinian state into being are doing so to constrain Israel’s ability to intervene. And yet no such moves are being contemplated on Taiwan’s behalf vis-à-vis China. By recognizing one entity and not the other, Western leaders are signaling to Beijing that its commitments to Taipei should not be taken too seriously. Tragic miscalculations are likely to follow.” [WashPost]

A Time to Choose: In Sapir, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren reflects on the “chosenness” of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. “Today’s anti-Zionists, much like the Jew-haters of the past, adduce our wholesale demonization as proof of our inherent wickedness. After all, those countless keffiyeh-clad college students chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ can’t be all wrong. In response, Israelis could assert, as our ancestors did, that the world’s hatred of us is a sign of our chosenness — that accusations of genocide, like the earlier ones of deicide, indicate that we remain, even as a secular state still yearning for normalcy, chosen. … Whether on the battlefield or in the Israeli streets where opposing protests sometimes clash, it is a status we must always strive for and a title we must relentlessly earn. Israel, built by the chosen people on the chosen land, must prove it is chosen not by suffering and enduring hate, but by showing strength, seeking justice, and embracing peace. Not only to the world but to ourselves, Israelis must affirm that chosenness is, in fact, our normal.” [Sapir]

President Donald Trump said he would “like to see” Israel grant access to foreign journalists to enter Gaza… 

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) is holding off on making an endorsement in the New York City mayoral race, saying he “what actions and concrete steps [Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani] takes to address the significant concerns of the 1.3 million Jews in New York City who are justifiably and understandably very afraid given the most recent hate crime statistics that came out”…

A Massachusetts man who pleaded guilty to making threats against area synagogues and Jewish community members, as well as placing dozens of menacing calls to the Israeli Consulate in Boston, was sentenced to 26 months in prison…

Israel’s Foreign Ministry funded a trip to Israel for MAGA-aligned social media influencers in an effort to bolster GOP support amid party divisions over the war in Gaza and the U.S.-Israel relationship…

The New York Times reports on the surge in settler attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank since the beginning of the year…

Mossad head David Barnea met in Doha yesterday with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani for the highest-level talks in weeks aimed at reaching a ceasefire and hostage-release deal…

The Financial Times looks at how Israel has become “increasingly criticised, sanctioned and isolated” over its war against Hamas in Gaza…

Recent Western intelligence reportedly indicates that Beijing may be preparing to assist Iran in rebuilding its ballistic-missile program…

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Cairo was moving forward with plans, in partnership with Jordan, to train thousands of Palestinian police officers in preparation for administration in a post-war Gaza Strip…

The defense ministers of Turkey and Syria signed an agreement this week for Ankara to send weapons and other military equipment to Syria…

Thousands of people attended the second annual Nova Healing Concert last night in Tel Aviv’s HaYarkon Park to remember and commemorate 22 months since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led massacre at the Nova music festival in Re’im.

Pennsylvania’s two U.S. senators, John Fetterman (D-PA) and David Harold McCormick (R-PA), celebrate their birthdays this weekend. Fetterman turns 56 today, and McCormick turns 60 on Sunday.

FRIDAY: Philadelphia resident, Irvin Farber… Retired associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Stephen Breyer turns 87… Investment banker, businessman, Republican politician, economist and historian, Lewis Lehrman turns 87… Former CFO of The Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg turns 78… Founder and chairman of the Executive Committee of Limmud FSU, he has also served as treasurer of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Chesler turns 76… Economist, CPA, investment advisor and founding member of wealth advisor RVW Investing LLC, Selwyn Gerber… Colorado resident, he is an artist and avid mountain biker, William Crary (“Bill”) Weidman… Chairman of Benj. E. Sherman & Sons, he is the chair of Israel Policy Forum, David A. Sherman turns 65… Orthopedic and trauma surgeon in Rome, Dr. Dario Perugia turns 63… Co-founding rabbi of Congregation Or Hadash in Sandy Springs, Ga. (he made aliyah in 2020), Rabbi Mario Karpuj… Emmy Award-winning actress, she played Grace Adler on the 11-season sitcom “Will & Grace,” Debra Messing turns 57… Chief development officer for the Birthright Israel Foundation, Margot (Atlas) Ettlinger… Board chair of Holocaust Museum Houston, Elyse Spector Kalmans turns 56… Co-CEO and chairman of the entertainment production company Propagate, Benjamin Noah Silverman turns 55… Associate justice of the California Supreme Court since 2019, Joshua Paul Groban turns 52… Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-VA) for four years ending in 2023, Elaine Goodman Luria turns 50… Real estate and business law attorney in the Baltimore law firm of Rosen Neuberger Lehmann, Meir Neuberger… Senior director at Teva Pharmaceuticals, he was an international model for Armani and appeared in the Israeli versions of “The Amazing Race” and “Dancing with the Stars,” Raz Meirman-Baruch turns 48… National college football reporter for ESPN, Adam Rittenberg turns 44… Former executive director of New York’s Transit Innovation Partnership, now chief of staff at Los Angeles-based Bedrock, Rachel Sterne Haot turns 42… Computer scientist at MIT and podcaster with 867 million YouTube views, Lex Fridman turns 42… Career counselor, Rachel Spekman… Member of the Alaska House of Representatives until 2023, now mayor of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, Grier Hayden Hopkins turns 42… VP of global brand and communications at AI-powered data security platform Cyera, Yael Wissner-Levy… Contemporary jazz and classical recorder player, vocalist, composer and educator, Tali Rubinstein turns 41… Co-founder of Irenic Capital Management, Adam Jason Katz… Freelance designer, Talia Siegel… MLB pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds in 2015 and 2016, he played for Team Israel in the 2020 Summer Olympics, he is now an associate for a private equity firm, Jon Moscot turns 34… VP of technology policy at Retail Industry Leaders Association, Justin Goldberger… Founder and managing partner at Ezra Venture Group, Ezra Mosseri… Joe Farry… David Summer…

SATURDAY: Solicitor general of New York State, Barbara Dale Underwood turns 81… Member of Congress (R-NJ) from 1991 to 1997, Richard Alan “Dick” Zimmer turns 81… Retired judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, she is currently of counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner, Shira Ann Scheindlin turns 79… Sportscaster who is known as the “Voice of the Dallas Cowboys,” Brad Sham turns 76… President and CEO of the Business Roundtable, he was previously the White House chief of staff in the Bush 43 administration, Josh Bolten turns 71… Secretary of the Maryland Department of Aging from 2015 until 2023, Rona E. Kramer turns 71… Gerald Platt… Media consultant, Sol Levine… Former commander of the Israeli Air Force and later CEO of El Al, Eliezer Shkedi turns 68… Senior partner in the Denver office of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and an AIPAC board member, Steven C. Demby… Founder of Value Retail Plc and co-owner of the NHL’s New York Islanders, his sister is married to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Scott David Malkin turns 67… Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Associated Press, Martha Mendoza turns 59… Founder of Walk Swiftly Productions, she spent 17 years on-air at ESPN/ABC and CBS covering the Super Bowl, NBA playoffs and MLB playoffs, Bonnie Bernstein turns 55… Johannesburg-born model, actress and singer-songwriter living in NYC, Caron Bernstein turns 55… Senior staff writer for Politico Magazine and editor-at-large of The Agenda, Michael Grunwald… Lieutenant governor of Vermont until this past January, David E. Zuckerman turns 54… Member of the Knesset for the Yesh Atid party, Vladimir Beliak turns 52… Mayor of Ramat Gan, he served as a member of the Knesset and as Israel’s ambassador to the OECD, UNESCO and the Council of Europe, Carmel Shama-HaCohen turns 52… Board member of the Torah School of Greater Washington, Kami Troy… Chairwoman of Profitero and board member of Campbell Soup Company, Sarah Hofstetter… Co-founder and co-CEO of The Creative Counsel, South Africa’s largest advertising agency, Gil Oved turns 50… Political and public relations consultant based in Albuquerque, Jonathan Lipshutz… Emmy Award winner in 2016 and 2018, he is a supervising producer at CBS, Matthew J. Silverstein… Chief political analyst for “The Upshot” at The New York Times, Nathan David “Nate” Cohn turns 37… VP at BlackRock, Julian Olidort… Studio manager at Barre3 Bethesda and founder of Atom, LLC, Anna Dubinsky… Founder and CEO at Project Healthy Minds, Phillip Schermer… Argentine professional tennis player, he has ranked as high as 8th in the world, Diego Schwartzman turns 33… Rachel Berman… Associate in the D.C. office of Eversheds Sutherland, Katherine Dolgenos O’Donnell… Member of AJR, an indie pop multi-instrumentalist trio, together with his two brothers, Jack Metzger turns 28… Managing director and head of the London office of Tier One Rankings, she was the executive assistant to the ambassador at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, Galit Tassi Imbo… Director of public affairs at J Street, Cooper Boyar… Ellen Weissfeld… Marshall Cohen… Dave Jacobsen…

SUNDAY: Leader of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, Rabbi Baruch Dov (Berel) Povarsky turns 94… Former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, David B. Cornstein turns 87… Co-founder of Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison turns 81… Head of Drexler Ventures and 16-year board member of Apple until 2015, Millard “Mickey” S. Drexler turns 81… Former U.S. senator from Minnesota, his family name was originally Goldman, Norm Coleman turns 76… Partner in Katten Muchin Rosenman, he represented Jonathan Pollard, Eliot Lauer… Audiologist and disability activist in the Boston area, Louise Citron… Senior U.S. District court judge for the southern district of California, Barry Ted Moskowitz turns 75… Retired special education teacher with an interest in Holocaust studies and human rights education, Sharon Taksler… Former chairman, president and CEO of Continental Airlines and then United Airlines, Jeffery Alan “Jeff” Smisek turns 71… Associate justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey until 2024, Lee A. Solomon turns 71… Founder and managing partner of SBNY, he is a past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Buffalo, Jordan Levy… Co-owner and founding partner of The Jackal Group, a television and film production firm, Gail Berman turns 69… Communications coordinator at Temple Beth El in Longmeadow, Mass., Deborah Kessner Peskin… Former member of Knesset for the Zionist Union and Labor parties, she is a leading Israeli criminal defense attorney, Revital Swid turns 58… Former MLB baseball player, now an insurance advisor in Baltimore, Brian Kowitz turns 56… Arab affairs correspondent on Israel’s i24 News, Zvi Yehezkeli turns 55… Emmy Award-winning documentary film director and producer, Judd Milo Ehrlich turns 54… Special assistant for baseball operations at Major League Baseball, Glen Caplin… Partner in the white collar and securities litigation groups at Proskauer Rose, Hadassa Robyn Waxman… Former Obama White House staffer, now a podcaster and comedian, Jon Lovett turns 43… Chief impact officer at Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez, Elyse Cohen… Comedian, writer, producer and actor, Raphael “Raizin” Bob-Waksberg turns 41… Technology reporter at Punchbowl News, Ben Brody… One of the Sprout Brothers from Great Barrington, Mass., Ari Meyerowitz… VP of government affairs at the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Aaron Taxy… Project manager of real estate at BDT & MSD Partners, Amanda Horwitz Langer… Israeli marathon and half marathon runner who represented Israel at the 2016, 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics, Marhu Teferi turns 33… Eli Diamond… Gabriel Berger… John Kohan…

• We’re keeping an eye on IDF moves in Gaza this weekend, following a late-night Israeli Security Cabinet vote to move forward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to take over Gaza City. More below.
• Vice President JD Vance is in Kent, England, today, where he is slated to meet with U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
• Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are in Washington for meetings with senior Trump administration officials, including a trilateral meeting with the president this afternoon during which time the leaders will sign a peace deal ending decades of conflict. Yesterday, Aliyev met with Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff.
• The Jewish National Fund’s Our Jewish Roots conference kicks off today in Carlsbad, Calif.
• Hadassah’s National Conference begins on Sunday in Aventura, Fla.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement on Thursday that Israel plans to take control of additional parts of the Gaza Strip before handing it over to an unspecified Arab governing authority is being met with hesitation from even some of Israel’s most stalwart defenders. The Security Cabinet voted early this morning to take over Gaza City, stopping short of the full occupation of the Strip previously discussed.

Throughout much of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, the Israeli public broadly supported the military effort, even as progressive lawmakers such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) painted the war as “Netanyahu’s war,” and the Israeli prime minister as the bogeyman-in-chief. 

But in recent months, public sentiment in Israel has shifted noticeably. With most of Hamas’ senior military leadership eliminated, growing numbers of Israelis have begun to question the feasibility of Netanyahu’s goal of “total victory” over Hamas, given the terror group’s hold on the Gazan population and a lack of clarity on what’s left to accomplish militarily. Instead, polling shows that a large majority of Israelis prefer prioritizing a diplomatic resolution that secures the release of the remaining hostages, rather than expanding the military occupation of Gaza in hopes of complete surrender.

Netanyahu’s plan this week to take over more of Gaza has begun to sap Israel’s political capital even among some of its closest allies on Capitol Hill, not to mention the isolation the Jewish state is facing from less-friendly European capitals. Even within the American Jewish community, as the war drags on into its 23rd month and with mounting IDF fatalities and no living hostages having been released since May, splits have emerged over the wisdom of Netanyahu’s double-down strategy.

Indeed, while the official Israeli position on its war against Hamas in Gaza has hardened, the approach in the Diaspora, both from Jewish groups and leaders and elected officials, has also shifted — in the opposite direction.

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

Gloom in Khartoum: Reporting from Sudan, The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum examines how the myriad challenges facing the country have brought about the “end of the liberal world order” in the war-torn African nation. “Turkish, Egyptian, Saudi, Emirati, Qatari, Russian, Iranian, and Ukrainian interests intersect and overlap on this final layer of cellophane, helping make Sudan, like Yemen and Libya, a place where antagonists from around the planet fund violent proxy wars, at the expense of the people who live there. … Meanwhile, the countries that might once have banded together to stop the fighting have lost interest or capacity. The institutions that might once have helped broker a cease-fire are too weak, and can’t or won’t help. ‘We live in a very interesting, many people call it, new world order,’ [Abdalla] Hamdok, the former Sudanese prime minister, told me. ‘The world we got to know — the consensus, the Pax Americana, the post–Second World War consensus — is just no more.’” [TheAtlantic]

Not Joe’s Party: In the New York Daily News, Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, reflects on the Democratic Party’s shift away from the previously “mainstream” positions of “foreign policy hawkishness and outspoken support for Israel” in the 25 years since Sen. Joe Lieberman, then a Democrat, was announced as former Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 running mate. “This is a stunning change for a party that elevated and embraced Lieberman 25 years ago. Could it happen again today? Many American Jews wondered as much when Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was under consideration to be [Vice President Kamala] Harris’ VP. We will never know why Harris didn’t pick Shapiro, but we all saw the concerted antisemitic campaign against him in social media and the press. … The Democratic Party once drew Jews to its cause because it was seen as the party of tolerance and equal opportunity. This was a natural home base for immigrant Jews fleeing the ghettos and pogroms of Europe. Today, the Democratic Party is battling to redefine itself in the wake of its failures in the 2024 election. A growing portion of the left wants it to be a party Lieberman could no longer call home.” [NYDN]

Saving Navalny: In a piece adapted from their upcoming book SWAP: A Secret History of the New Cold War, Wall Street Journal reporters Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson look at the efforts to free Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in February 2024. “To this day, a debate continues over whether the U.S. missed a chance to save Navalny, or whether back-channel efforts to free him inadvertently precipitated his demise. One camp believes he could have been exchanged if the Biden administration had moved faster, before he was sent to the harsh arctic prison in Dec. 2023. They place particular blame on Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, who was simultaneously assembling a complex, multinational agreement to save Navalny and jailed Americans and juggling an unmanageable set of geopolitical threats, including wars in Ukraine and Gaza.” [WSJ]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied as “total fake news” an NBC News report that a conversation with President Donald Trump about concerns over the humanitarian situation in Gaza “devolved into shouting.” … 

The U.S. facilitated a meeting between Gaza Humanitarian Foundation head Johnnie Moore and senior U.N. aid officials; Morgan Ortagus, who joined the U.S. mission at the U.N. in June, was reportedly part of the meeting, the first direct engagement between the international body and the GHF since it began operations in May…

The Treasury Department announced sanctions against 18 entities and individuals tied to Iranian sanctions evasion and revenue generation…

Trump plans to nominate Stephen Miran, the head of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, to the vacant seat on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors…

Katie Miller, who served as a senior advisor to Elon Musk during and after his time in the Trump administration, is departing her role and plans to launch a podcast focused on reaching conservative women…

Former Secretary of State Tony Blinken is joining the Center for American Progress’ board of directors…

Florida Republicans are hoping to redraw three congressional districts in their favor, according to Punchbowl News, targeting two of the most pro-Israel Democrats in Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), as part of the partisan redistricting effort…

Puck’s Julia Ioffe examines the growing divide in the Republican Party over support for Israel…

The Department of Education announced an investigation into Baltimore City Public Schools following a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League that numerous schools in the district failed to act to address antisemitism in classrooms…

Police in Baltimore County are investigating the vandalism of a kitchen design store that displayed Israeli and American flags at its entrance…

Actress Gina Carano settled a lawsuit against Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Co. after she was fired from “The Mandalorian” in 2021 over a social media post comparing the treatment of conservatives in America to Jews in Nazi Germany…

U.K. officials arrested two men in connection with an incident in Manchester in which the men allegedly used water guns to spray a visibly Jewish man and children walking down a street in the city; video of the incident posted by one of the alleged assailants, which went viral, was paired with a rendition of “Hava Negila”…

Israel’s NewMed Energy announced that the partners in Israel’s Leviathan offshore oil field signed a $35 billion deal to supply natural gas to Egypt through 2040; the agreement marks the largest export deal in Israeli history…

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Berlin will halt future arms sales to Israel following the Israeli government’s plan to take over Gaza City…

As American Jewry overall has experienced an increase in Jewish engagement in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, in what has been deemed “The Surge,” the largest rise has been seen among those connected to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, outpacing all other denominations and among unaffiliated Jews, according to survey data from Jewish Federations of North America that were provided exclusively to eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross…

Yarden Bibas (second from right) and Dana Silberman-Sitton (far right), respectively the husband and sister of Shiri Bibas, on Thursday cut the ribbon outside the Bibas Family Playroom at Schneider Children’s Hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel. The children’s room, a project of Toys for Hospitalized Children, was dedicated to the memories of Shiri, as well as her sons Ariel and Kfir, who were killed by their captors in Gaza after being taken hostage from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023.

Bibas wore a shirt with the Batman logo in homage to Ariel’s love of the superhero, while the ribbon he and Silberman-Sitton cut was orange in tribute to the boys’ hair color.

Read eJewishPhilanthropy’s coverage of the efforts to build the center here.

Israeli actor, best known for his role as Yanky Shapiro in the 2020 Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox,” Amit Rahav turns 30 on Saturday… 

FRIDAY: Actor and director, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1980 for “Kramer vs. Kramer” and in 1989 for “Rain Man,” Dustin Hoffman turns 88… Arlington Heights, Ill., resident, Elizabeth Gordon… Dutch diplomat and politician, he served as the speaker of the Dutch House of Representatives, Frans Weisglas turns 79… Greenwood Village, Colo., resident, Robert M. Schwartz… Tampa, Fla., resident, Roy D. Pulliam… Retired U.S. Army four-star general, who then served as the secretary of defense during the Biden administration, Lloyd James Austin III turns 72… Vancouver, Wash., resident, Juliana E. Miles Bagherpour… Former U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Melech Friedman turns 67… Former CEO of BusinessGhost, Michael Graubart Levin turns 67… Managing general partner of MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays, Stuart L. Sternberg turns 66… Chess grandmaster, once ranked eighth in the world, he is the director of the Brooklyn Chess Academy, Leonid Yudasin turns 66… White House chief of staff for the first two years of the Biden administration, Ron Klain turns 64… Film director whose works include nine Disney films, Jon Turteltaub turns 62… Chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court until earlier this year, she continues to serve as a justice, Elissa F. Cadish turns 61… Digital strategist, he is the founding partner of Fuse consultancy, Jonah Seiger… Director of Jewish media, publications and editorial communications for the Orthodox Union, Rabbi Gil Ofer Student turns 53… Lead guitarist of the mathcore band the Dillinger Escape Plan, also playing rhythm guitar with the crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies, Benjamin A. Weinman turns 50… Film and television actress, Lindsay Sloane turns 48… MLB pitcher for 13 seasons and now chief baseball officer of the Boston Red Sox, Craig Breslow turns 45… Author, freelance writer and editor, she is a former dancer with the New York City Ballet, Sophie Flack turns 42… Managing principal at Rocktower Capital, Bara Lane… Canadian film, television and stage actor, Jacob Benjamin “Jake” Goldsbie turns 37… Director of operations and strategy at UNC Chapel Hill’s Winston Center, Sarah Garfinkel… Founder and managing partner at Avid Ventures, Addie Lerner Katz… Director of marketing and communications at Alpha Epsilon Pi, Zachary Pellish… Creative producer for Airbnb, Morgan Furlong… Internet celebrity and fitness model, Jennifer Leigh “Jen” Selter turns 32… Jack Baum… Rob Schwartz…

SATURDAY: Prominent Sephardic rabbi in Tel Aviv, he was a member of the Knesset for the Shas party, Rabbi Moshe Maya turns 87… Physicist and venture capitalist, co-founder and general partner emeritus of New Markets Venture Partners, Donald M. “Don” Spero, Ph.D. turns 86… Comedian, actor, writer, director and author, son of a rabbi, he appeared 130 times on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” David Steinberg turns 83… Romance novelist with 22 books on the NYT bestseller lists, Barbara Delinsky (born Barbara Ruth Greenberg) turns 80… Author of 36 Jewish themed books and an ordained rabbi, Seymour Rossel turns 80… Telecommunications consultant based in Chattanooga, Tenn., Mark Shapiro turns 79… Psychologist and bestselling suspense novelist, Jonathan Kellerman turns 76… Southern California resident, Faith Schames… Brigadier general (IDF reserves) in the Israeli Air Force, Amir Abraham Haskel turns 72… Executive director of the Steinhardt Family Foundation in Israel and deputy chair of WZO, Tova Dorfman… U.S. senator (R-KS), Roger Marshall, M.D. turns 65… Member of the Minnesota State Senate since 2007, Ronald Steven “Ron” Latz turns 62… Professor of French at Yale University, he is the inaugural director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, Maurice Samuels turns 57… Chief of staff for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) for 25 years, she started a consulting practice in 2024, Amy Beth Rutkin… Founder and CEO of AFC Gamma and Sunrise Realty Trust, Leonard M. Tannenbaum turns 54… Two-time Grammy Award-winning operatic soprano, songwriter and actress, Hila Plitmann turns 52… Assistant secretary for inter-departmental data integration for the Maryland Department of Human Services, Kirill Reznik turns 51… Reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, Kenneth P. Vogel turns 50… Democratic political strategist, Rebecca Kirszner Katz… Chair of JEWELS (Jewish Education Where Every Level Student Succeeds), Jules Friedman turns 50… Drummer, popular on YouTube with 361 million views, Meytal Cohen turns 42… CEO of the Israel on Campus Coalition since 2013, Jacob Baime… Real estate investor based in Cleveland, Amanda Isaacson… Associate at Ropes & Gray LLP, Isaac Lederman… SVP at Dezenhall Resources, he was previously communications director for the Republican Jewish Coalition and an RNC alum, Fred Brown… Elise Aronson… Dan Zimerman…

SUNDAY: CEO at Royal Health Services in Beverly Hills, Robert N. Feldman… Professor of biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Shimon Schuldiner turns 79… NYC-based real estate developer, he is the founder and principal of Clipper Equity, David Bistricer turns 76… Former Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, the first woman to hold that position, Gill Marcus turns 76… Conservative rabbi who served as president of the Interfaith Alliance, Rabbi Jack Moline turns 73… Retired co-leader of the securities litigation practice at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, he is the co-president of NYC’s Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, Joseph S. Allerhand… Certified registered nurse anesthetist for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Edward Salkind… Author, media consultant and former film critic for The New York Post and The New York Daily News, Jami Bernard turns 69… Former director of the Jewish Museum of Vienna, Austria, she was a founder of the German-language magazine Nu devoted to Jewish politics and culture, Danielle Spera turns 68… Member of the California state Senate until this past November, Steven Mitchell Glazer turns 68… Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel and Rishon LeZion since 2024, Rabbi David Yosef turns 68… Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-MI-9), now a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Andy Levin turns 65… Professor of physics and astronomy at Tel Aviv University, Yaron Oz turns 61… Tech entrepreneur, he served as a Washington State senator until 2023, Reuven Michael Carlyle turns 60… Former member of the Florida State Senate, he authored a book about his time as one of the first employees of Yahoo, Jeremy Ring turns 55… Deputy attorney general of Israel, Sharon Afek turns 55… Regional chief technology officer in the South Texas office of Technologent, Jason P. Reyes… Senior director of development for the NYC-based Tikvah Fund, Eytan Sosnovich… Senior group manager of social media and influencer marketing at Eventbrite, Sophie Vershbow… SVP of commodities compliance at Citibank, Jacob Cohen…

• We’re keeping an eye on the unfolding dispute regarding humanitarian aid in Gaza, as Israel and the U.N. accuse each other of holding up distribution efforts in the enclave amid broader concerns of worsening malnutrition among the Strip’s most vulnerable. 
• In Istanbul, Turkey, today, France, Germany and the U.K. are holding nuclear talks.
• And in Washington, the Israel on Campus Coalition’s National Leadership Summit kicks off on Sunday afternoon in Washington.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH

With a unanimous vote last week rejecting a measure that would’ve cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, the board of directors of the National Education Association extended an olive branch to frustrated Jewish educators and parents who are concerned about creeping antisemitism within the union’s ranks. 

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told Jewish Insider earlier this week that he was “pleased” to see the NEA reject the anti-ADL measure. But, he added, the union still has a “long way to go” toward making clear that it respects the Jewish community. 

Greenblatt’s lingering concern is a sign that the NEA — the largest teachers’ union in the country, with more than 3 million members — has not entirely placated Jewish communal stakeholders. In fact, additional questions have continued to emerge in light of an NEA document that encourages teaching the “Nakba” and that erases antisemitism from the history of the Holocaust. 

The Washington Free Beacon reported this week on the NEA’s 2025 handbook, a 434-page report outlining the organization’s “visionary goals” and “strategic objectives.” Among the items included in the dense document are dozens of measures that passed at last year’s “representative assembly,” a convening of the organization’s top leaders from around the country — the same group that, this year, voted to censure the ADL. Several of them have raised eyebrows in the Jewish community.

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

• Senior administration officials are slated to hold a classified briefing with House lawmakers on the Israel-Iran war, a day after senators met for a similar briefing.
• The Senate will vote this evening on Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-VA) war powers resolution.
• At the Aspen Ideas Festival tomorrow, The New York Times’ Tom Friedman is slated to speak in a session about diplomacy in the modern age, and again later in the day at a plenary that will also feature Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. On Sunday, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Dina Powell McCormick will speak about their recently released book, Who Believed in You? Later in the day, former Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger, former CIA Director David Petreaus and Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) will speak on a panel about the future of warfare. Also Sunday, former National Security Advisor John Bolton will speak about energy security amid a shifting geopolitical landscape, and the Carlyle Group’s David Rubenstein will speak in a sessions titled “Economics, Leadership and Legacy.”
• Today is the deadline for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to exit the New York City mayoral race and remove himself from the November ballot, following his loss to presumptive Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Cuomo is expected to stay on the “Fight & Deliver” line he created months ago as a contingency plan.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR

Mainstream political and business leaders in New York City, including the organized Jewish community, will soon need to decide whether to coalesce against far-left presumed Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani — by rallying behind the candidacy of scandal-plagued Mayor Eric Adams despite his significant political baggage.

Adams, who is running as an independent in the race, appears to be the only alternative candidate capable of putting together a campaign rallying anti-socialists across the city to stop Mamdani. It won’t be easy, given Adams’ own low approval ratings and record of alleged corruption, but the makings of an anti-Mamdani coalition are there — at least on paper.

For Adams to win plurality support in a general election, it would require most Republicans to put partisanship aside and vote for Adams to stop the socialist, and hold onto most of the Black, Jewish voters and moderate Democratic voters who voted in large numbers for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary. Adams benefits from the name recognition of incumbency, and the potential to receive support from outside centrist groups spending on his behalf.

Keeping a bipartisan coalition of that nature will be challenging, especially given the mayor’s own unpopular record. It would require a number of lucky breaks, from Cuomo opting not to run in the general election (he appears to be staying on the ballot without an active campaign) to Republicans effectively nudging their voters to back Adams when there’s a Republican already on the ballot. But if the campaign is less about Adams and more about stopping left-wing radicalism on crime, the economy and antisemitism, it’s not implausible to see a campaign coalescing around a “block socialism, vote Adams” type of message.

Here’s the political math: Adams would have to win over most New York City Republicans — President Donald Trump won 30% of the citywide vote in 2024 — while remaining competitive with Democrats and winning over independents who weren’t eligible to participate in the Democratic primary. 

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

Palestinian Rights, Palestinian Wrongs: In The Atlantic, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib looks at the ways in which the Palestinian rights movement has been damaged by its support for Iran. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will never cease its meddling in the Palestinian issue, because Tehran needs the conflict to feed its propaganda machine. The reality is that a secure, stable, independent Palestine will remain a remote possibility as long as the Islamic Republic exists in its current form and is allowed to maintain its pro-Palestine pose. Only by calling out this evil regime and distancing from it can the pro-Palestine movement hope to be effective. … Many Iranians inside Iran today view Israel as their only hope of overthrowing the mullahs. Unfortunately, but understandably, many Iranians have come to resent the Palestinian cause — precisely because the regime has used it as a pretext to squander the country’s precious resources on its militia proxies in the name of fighting Israel.” [TheAtlantic]

The B-2s That Bind: In The Jerusalem Post, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee reflects on the U.S. role in attacking Iran’s nuclear program. “Like many others living in Israel, including some 700,000 Americans, we slept for an entire night for the first time in almost two weeks, not rousted from slumber by the piercing sounds of sirens or the booms of Iranian ballistic missiles flying in with the intention of fulfilling an Iranian promise to ‘wipe Israel off the face of the earth.’ They failed in THEIR promise. President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu succeeded in fulfilling THEIR promise that Iran would never have a nuclear bomb. Israel and America, and their two unflappable leaders, delivered more than a good night’s sleep to the people living in Israel. They delivered the gift of a humbled Iran to the world and celebrated in the capitals of every sane nation on earth. And they launched something bigger than destructive bombs. They launched what will be a realignment of the Middle East.” [JPost]

The Case for Raw Power: The New York Times’ David Brooks considers the ways in which the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian military and nuclear facilities were a “force for good” in the region. “For decades, both Israel and the United States were willing to tolerate the noose. Dismantling it seemed too hard and risky. That changed on Oct. 7. Israel learned, to its shock and dismay, that it lacked the capacity to anticipate and prevent murderous attacks. Suddenly the looming noose began to appear intolerable. … Occasionally I see lawn signs asserting that ‘war is not the answer,’ but here was a circumstance in which war was the answer. Here was a circumstance in which the raw power really mattered. Israel was able to beat the once feared Hezbollah because it is more effective and more powerful. Iran has responded feebly to the bombing raids not because of the kindness of its heart but because it is ineffective and less powerful.” [NYTimes]

Corbyn on the Hudson: The Jewish News’ Daniel Sugarman compares the ascension of Zohran Mamdani in New York to that of former U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and delivers a message to American Jews about what the future may portend. “Mamdani is a brilliant public speaker and a natural media performer; Corbyn is the opposite. Corbyn always appears fundamentally uncomfortable when speaking to those who do not agree with him; Mamdani, by contrast, seems to have an ability to connect with almost any audience – even a hostile one. But for the purposes of the Jewish community, the similarities hold. An anti-Zionist with a history of deeply troublesome public statements has won an important internal party contest. They have done so despite the publicly aired concerns of many Jews. If they win a forthcoming election, they will have a great deal of influence over aspects of day-to-day life.” [JewishNews]

President Donald Trump threatened to sue CNN and The New York Times over the publication of a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that said the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran only set the country’s nuclear program back by a few months…

The Atlantic looks at the increasing divide between Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, finding that the former Hawaii congresswoman “has so alienated Trump that she may be endangering the existence of her office altogether”…

The Wall Street Journal profiles Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who played a key role in the U.S.’ weekend strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities…

Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) introduced a bill to suspend assistance to South Africa and impose sanctions on South African officials over the country’s antisemitic and anti-Israel activity…

Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ashley Moody (R-FL) introduced a resolution honoring the four-year anniversary of the building collapse in Surfside, Fla….

Reps. French Hill (R-AR), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) introduced a bill to create a new designation for countries or non-state entities that wrongfully detain Americans, and require the administration to consider sanctions and other measures to respond…

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is preparing to launch a campaign for governor of New York as polling shows her leading the Republican primary field…

The New York Times reports on preliminary partnership talks that took place earlier this year between Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization, and the owners of a hotel in Tel Aviv’s Sarona neighborhood; the neighborhood, located near Israel’s Defense Ministry headquarters, suffered damage during Iran’s ballistic missile attack on June 13…

France confirmed that it participated in efforts to intercept Iranian drones fired at Israel earlier this month…

The Wall Street Journal explores the “dramatic realignment” of the Middle East following Israeli and American strikes on Iran…

The New York Times looks at the U.S.’ Logistical Support Area Jenkins in Saudi Arabia, a little-known base in the Red Sea that has seen an influx in activity over the last year…

Israel’s Finance Ministry estimated that the 12-day war with Iran caused $3 billion in damage, largely costs associated with rebuilding or repairing damaged buildings and paying compensation to affected businesses…

“We Will Dance Again,” a documentary about Hamas’ attack on the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, won the Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary at the 46th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards…

The State Department approved $30 million in funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation; the newly created aid group tapped Israeli restaurateur Shahar Segal as its Israeli media spokesperson…

The Sweden Democrats party apologized for its past Nazi affiliations and “clear expressions of antisemitism” as it seeks to align itself with mainstream parties ahead of next year’s national elections…

Karen Paikin Barall, who was previously vice president of government relations at the Jewish Federations of North America, is joining the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law as chief policy officer…

The New York Times spotlights the wedding of Jackie Hornung and Ben Jacob, childhood sweethearts who met at summer camp, whose dog, Lumi, has become an internet sensation…

Ad man Mortimer Matz, the co-founder of Nathan’s annual hot dog eating contest, died at 100…

Young adult author Susan Beth Pfeffer, whose more than six dozen books included themes about sensitive subjects for teenagers, died at 77…

Elon Gold (left), Hilary Helstein, Lorna Wolens, Jay Leno and Jonah Lees attended the opening night gala premiere last night of “Midas Man” at the 20th Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, Calif.

British historian and award-winning author, he is a great-great-nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore, Simon Sebag Montefiore turns 60… 

FRIDAY: Co-founder of Taglit Birthright, the first chairman of the United Jewish Communities and former owner of MLB’s Montreal Expos, Charles Bronfman turns 94… One-half of the husband-wife screenwriting and television production team, Richard Allen Shapiro turns 91… Technion graduate, he is regarded as the founding father of unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) technology, Abraham Karem turns 88… Brooklyn resident, Meyer Roth… Former member of both houses of the Pennsylvania Legislature, Constance Hess “Connie” Williams turns 81… Former commander of the Israeli Navy, head of the Shin Bet and member of Knesset, Amihai “Ami” Ayalon turns 80… First woman ordained as a rabbi by HUC-JIR, Sally Jane Priesand turns 79… Author of fiction and nonfiction books, she is the founding president of the Mayyim Hayyim mikveh in Newton, Mass., Anita Diamant turns 74… New Jersey resident, Kenneth R. Blankfein… Minority leader of the Florida State Senate, Lori Berman turns 67… Managing director at Osprey Foundation, Louis Boorstin… and his twin brother, principal at Panther Works and senior advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group, Robert O. Boorstin, both turn 66… Southern California-based accountant, Susan M. Feldman… Creator of multiple TV series including “Felicity,” “Alias,” “Lost” and “Fringe,” and director and producer of many films, Jeffrey Jacob (J.J.) Abrams turns 59… President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland (Oregon) since 2010, Marc N. Blattner turns 56… South Florida resident, Gordon M. Gerstein… Reporter for The New York Times on the climate desk, Lisa Friedman… Member of the Knesset for the United Torah Judaism alliance, Yoel Yaakov Tessler turns 52… Senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, Ilya Shapiro… Israeli judoka, best known for his default victory at the 2004 Summer Olympics when his Iranian opponent refused to fight him, Ehud Vaks turns 46… Director of stakeholder advocacy at Ford Motor, Caroline Elisabeth Adler Morales… Singer and musician, best known for being Avril Lavigne’s lead guitarist, Evan David Taubenfeld turns 42… Executive talent partner at Greylock Partners, Holly Rose Faith… National security advisor to U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Charles Dunst…

SATURDAY: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award-winning actor, movie director, composer and comedian, born Melvin James Kaminsky, Mel Brooks turns 99… Laguna Woods, Calif., resident, she is a retired hospital administrator, Saretta Platt Berlin… Owner of NYC’s United Equities Companies and retired chairman of Berkshire Bank, Moses M. Marx turns 90… Former member of Congress for 16 years and now a distinguished fellow and president emerita of the Wilson Center, Jane Harman turns 80… Political consultant, community organizer and author, he is married to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Robert Creamer turns 78… Novelist, journalist, conservative commentator and senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, Mark Helprin turns 78… Author of crime fiction for both adults and children, Peter Abrahams turns 78… Documentary producer and adjunct associate professor at USC, James Ruxin turns 77… Professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, Kenneth Alan Ribet turns 77… Shareholder in the Tampa law office of Carlton Fields, Nathaniel L. Doliner turns 76… Rabbi and historian, he is the author of a 2017 book Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: From Brandeis to Kagan, David G. Dalin turns 76… Former member of the California state Senate following two terms in the state Assembly, Martin Jeffrey “Marty” Block turns 75… Retired partner at Chicago-based accounting firm of Morrison & Morrison, Mark Zivin… Founding partner of NYC law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres, Marc Kasowitz turns 73… Journalist for Haaretz, Amira Hass turns 69… Chairman and CEO of Comcast Corporation, Brian L. Roberts turns 66… Rabbi of the Har Bracha community in the Shomron and Rosh Yeshiva of the hesder yeshiva there, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed turns 64… U.S. special envoy for Holocaust issues at the State Department, Ellen J. Germain turns 63… Principal of GPS Investment Partners, Marc Spilker turns 61… Actress and singer, Jessica Hecht turns 60… Former diplomatic correspondent for Al-Monitor, now reporting on Substack, Laura Rozen… Novelist and short story writer, Aimee Bender turns 56… Israeli actress residing in Los Angeles, Ayelet Zurer turns 56… Centibillionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, owner of X, Elon Musk turns 54… Former member of Knesset as a member of the Labor party / Zionist Union, Michal Biran turns 47… Toltzy Kornbluh… and her twin sister, Chany Stark… Founder and CEO of NY Koen Group, Naum Koen turns 44… Associate at Latham & Watkins, Molly Rosen… Mark Winkler…

SUNDAY: Baltimore area gastroenterologist, he is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Marshall S. Bedine, M.D…. Chairman of Carnival Corporation and owner of the NBA’s Miami Heat, Micky Arison turns 76… Rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Brisk in Jerusalem, Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Soloveitchik turns 76… Former assistant surgeon general of the U.S. and deputy assistant secretary of HHS for women’s health, Susan Jane Blumenthal, M.D. turns 73… Former SVP and counsel at Columbus, Ohio-based L Brands, Bruce A. Soll… CEO of two firms including Aliya Marketing Group, Joshua Karlin… Israeli actress, screenwriter, playwright and film director, Hanna Azoulay-Hasfari turns 65… Attorney general of Israel from 2016 to 2022, Avichai Mandelblit turns 62… Founder and president of Medallion Financial Corp., Andrew Murstein turns 61… Screenwriter, director and producer, he has won nine Emmy Awards for his work on AMC’s “Mad Men” and HBO’s “The Sopranos,” Matthew Hoffman Weiner turns 60… Senior rabbi of Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Congregation, Rabbi Steven C. Wernick turns 58… Theater, film and television screenwriter, his credits include the 2017 film “Wonder Woman,” Allan Heinberg turns 58… Israeli political consultant and former chief of staff to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ari Harow turns 52… Consultant, facilitator, trainer and coach, Nanette Rochelle Fridman… Rabbi of The Young Israel of Bal Harbour (Florida), Gidon Moskovitz… Film and television director and writer, she is known for writing and directing the films “Obvious Child” and “Landline,” Gillian Robespierre turns 47… Former member of the UK Parliament for the Labour party, she is now a member of the House of Lords, Baroness Ruth Smeeth turns 46… Israeli actor and model, Yehuda Levi turns 46… President and dean of Phoenix-based Valley Beit Midrash and author of 28 books, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz… Partner at FGS Global, Andrew Duberstein… Pitcher for Team Israel in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, he then played in the Mexican League until last month, Charles Irvin “Bubby” Rossman turns 33… Campaign finance consultant, David Wolf… Steven Kohn… Sara Sansone… Fred Gruber…

• We’re keeping an eye on the fallout following yesterday’s clashes between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, which escalated over a period of several hours as both men took to their respective social media platforms to attack the other.
• The Boulder chapter of Run For Their Lives will hold its weekly walk on Sunday to raise awareness for the remaining 56 hostages in Gaza, a week after a terror attack in which an Egyptian national firebombed marchers, injuring 15. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum as well as nearby Run For Their Lives chapters will send representatives to Sunday’s march.
• Brilliant Minds is holding its annual confab in Stockholm.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH AND JOSH KRAUSHAAR

Another week, another round of evidence showing that a growing faction of isolationist-minded foreign policy advisors — or, in the parlance of some on the MAGA right, the “restrainers” — are slowly but surely gaining influence in the Trump administration’s second term.

If personnel is policy, it suggests the second Trump term will feature a markedly different approach to the Middle East than his record from 2017-2021, which included the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab countries, the elimination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader Qassem Soleimani and the withdrawal from former President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

We reported this week that the Senate will soon consider the nomination of Justin Overbaugh to be deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. Overbaugh is just the latest of several senior Pentagon nominees who come from Defense Priorities, a Koch-backed think tank that has generally argued the U.S. should scale back its involvement in global conflicts, including in the Middle East. 

It’s not just at the Defense Department. A senior State Department official told Jewish Insider that at Foggy Bottom, too, the “restrainers” are ascendant. Morgan Ortagus, an Iran hawk who has been serving as deputy Middle East special envoy under Steve Witkoff, plans to depart the office. At the National Security Council, top officials focused on Israel and the Middle East were pushed out last month as President Donald Trump seeks to centralize foreign policy decision-making in the Oval Office. 

This story is more than just a gossipy tale of White House palace intrigue. This factional foreign policy battle is set to have major global consequences. The impact is already clear: Trump is pursuing nuclear negotiations with Iran, led by Witkoff, that may result in a deal — one that reportedly could allow Iran to at least temporarily continue enriching uranium, a position that would have been unimaginable in Trump’s first term.

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

For Pete’s Sake: The Atlantic’s Missy Ryan and Ashley Parker report on relations between the White House and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which began to fray after Hegseth offered former White House advisor Elon Musk a high-level briefing in March. “Many at the Pentagon question how long the president’s backing for their boss will last. During his first term, Trump cycled through four defense secretaries and four national security advisers. … Although the president appears to appreciate Hegseth’s pugnacious public style, he may require more from his defense secretary over time, as the administration faces pressure to deliver on a set of complex and interlocking goals, including fixing a byzantine military-procurement system, reviving a diminished defense industry, and strengthening America’s response to China’s military rise.” [TheAtlantic]

Dems Missing the Revolution:The New York Times’ David Brooks posits that Democrats are misgauging the political shift underway in American society. “Trump has taken the atmosphere of alienation, magnified it with his own apocalypticism, and, assaulting institutions across society, has created a revolutionary government. More this term than last, he is shifting the conditions in which we live. Many of my Democratic friends have not fully internalized the magnitude of this historical shift. They are still thinking within the confines of the Clinton-Obama-Biden-Pelosi worldview. But I have a feeling that over the next few years, the tumult of events will push Democrats onto some new trajectory.” [NYTimes]

The State Department announced sanctions on four International Criminal Court judges, calling the body “politicized” and alleging that the sanctioned judges “actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel”… 

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appointed a close ally to sit in the office of the inspector general of the intelligence community…

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee delayed an anticipated vote on Thursday on Joel Rayburn’s nomination to be assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs as he faces opposition from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which could imperil his nomination, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) accused the search firm that oversaw the failed nomination of former University of Michigan President Santa Ono to lead the University of Florida of not properly vetting and disclosing the candidate’s record, in comments to Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs… 

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said he’ll force votes as soon as next week on resolutions to block U.S. arms sales to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates…

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink estimated on Thursday that the costs of retrofitting a Qatari plane that Doha intends to gift to the White House for use in the Air Force One fleet will be less than $400 million…

The Defense Department informed the Senate and House Armed Services committees that it will divert anti-drone technology allocated to Ukraine to positions in the Middle East…

Six members of Colorado’s House delegation introduced a resolution condemning the Boulder attack and the rise of antisemitism in the United States…

The NYPD is investigating as a hate crime an attack on a 72-year-old Jewish man who was putting up hostage posters on Manhattan’s Upper East Side; the assailants reportedly shouted “Free Palestine” at the man before the attack…

A federal judge in Massachusetts ordered a temporary halt to a Trump administration directive banning Harvard from enrolling international students…

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck is opening a public affairs shop led by Campbell Spencer and Max Hamel…

Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone confirmed that she is being treated for thyroid cancer; a spokesperson for Redstone said her prognosis is “excellent” as she receives radiation treatment for the cancer, which was discovered two months ago…

The Washington Post reviews poet Edward Hirsch’s memoir My Childhood in Pieces, calling it a “vibrant, moving portrait of mid-century Jewish communities in Chicago and Skokie, Illinois, and of a particular middle-class Middle America”…

eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross interviews outgoing Jewish Federations of North America Chair Julie Platt about her tenure with the organization, which began just prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and continued through the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel and ensuing war in Gaza…