In a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, a bipartisan group of House members reiterated concerns previously communicated to his predecessor about new conditions attached by the Trump administration to funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.

The lawmakers, led by Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Claudia Tenney (R-NY), said that the 2026 NSGP application “maintains these concerning new compliance requirements” as well as adds a new provision allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to terminate grant awards “for convenience” if it determines that the grants do not advance the “national interest.”

The conditions about which lawmakers had previously raised concerns would have tied grant funding to cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“This vague and expansive standard gives applicants little guidance about what is expected of them and raises concerns about mid-project terminations without warning,” the lawmakers wrote. “As NSGP requires organizations to front the costs of their security projects, the possibility of mid-award termination and, therefore, no reimbursement, may deter applicants from accepting the grant, leaving their institution vulnerable to attack.”

They noted that they had raised the issue in February with Mullin’s predecessor, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, urging Noem to clarify or waive the new conditions, which they said would “divert limited funds and burden the institutions the NSGP is meant to protect.” 

Noem, they continued, told them the same month that FEMA was working to develop specific guidance for NSGP including particular examples applicable to faith-based nonprofits. But, the lawmakers said, that guidance has yet to be issued.

“We have always believed that NSGP should be as streamlined and effective as possible, with minimal red tape and compliance requirements focused squarely on security,” the lawmakers said. “You rightly expressed this same belief during your confirmation hearing. That is why we urge you to revise the FY 2026 NOFO and issue new guidance that removes or waives terms and conditions unrelated to the security of grant recipients, eliminates the new overly broad termination authority and ensures that the NSGP remains accessible to all eligible faith-based and community organizations.”

The letter highlights the string of attacks on Jewish institutions and Jewish communities in recent years, emphasizing the importance of the funds.

“I’m grateful to partner with Rep. Tenney to push back against onerous new rules that make our synagogues, churches, and mosques less safe. We will continue to root out hate and discrimination in all forms, so everyone can observe their faith safely and without threat of harm,” Schneider said in a statement.

“As threats against houses of worship and community organizations continue to rise, it is important that these institutions have confidence that the program will provide the support they were awarded. Our letter encourages DHS to provide that certainty by ensuring the program remains focused on its core mission of enhancing security for vulnerable communities,” Tenney said in a statement.

The Anti-Defamation League also expressed support for the letter.

“As antisemitism and threats against faith communities remain at historic levels, NSGP is more essential than ever to help at-risk communities protect themselves from threats,” Lauren Wolman, senior director of government relations & strategy at the ADL, said in a statement. “We are grateful to Representatives Schneider and Tenney for their bipartisan leadership in championing this lifesaving program and ensuring organizations can access those resources quickly, with confidence, and without unnecessary delays.”

President Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican Party did not happen at once, and was memorably met with resistance from some lawmakers who would later become his allies. 

Many Republicans, during the rise of Trump, cast mostly party-line votes alongside the president and rarely spoke out publicly when they disagreed. But there were notable times when prominent party leaders used their political capital to stand up for their principles on key issues, such as then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) outspoken advocacy for Ukraine funding or Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-ME) decisive vote against repealing Obamacare. 

There may be a similar political calculus at play for some typically pro-Israel Democrats, who are facing immense political pressure from loud activists in their party base to turn against the Jewish state. Nearly half of the House Democratic caucus voted to cut off aid to Israel last week, a record number that included 18 lawmakers who had previously been endorsed by AIPAC and were seen as strong allies of the U.S.-Israel relationship. 

AIPAC cut off fundraising to their reelection campaigns after the vote, and how these lawmakers will position themselves on Israel policy going forward is now uncertain. 

Not all of the Democrats who supported the amendment have adopted an anti-Israel worldview. Some said that they still support Israel, but wanted to make a statement, via a bill that was certain to fail, that they disagree with many recent actions of the Israeli government. 

It’s also possible that some of them — especially those in districts where they face a credible primary threat from the left — took the vote to attempt to placate anti-Israel activists without making any real change in policy, like the Republicans who would offer an olive branch to their right-wing base by voting contrary to their longstanding beliefs.

For instance, in April 2024, then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) voted against a sweeping foreign aid package for Israel and Ukraine in the face of rising isolationist sentiment in the party, despite their hawkish records. But politically speaking, it helped maintain their credibility with a MAGA base skeptical of any foreign assistance without jeopardizing the funding. 

A similar dynamic appears to be taking place among the generally pro-Israel Democrats who are trying to hold onto their place in the party as anti-Israel voices are on the rise. 

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), for instance, described his “yes” vote as an attempt to “to try to get the attention of the Netanyahu government to force them to change their actions.” He also said he still supports Israel and expressed concern “about the tactics used by those on the far left to advocate for cutting off aid to Israel,” including vandalizing his family’s home. Days later, he spent time on a far-left podcast attacking the host’s anti-Israel views and explaining to her why he’s been such a strong supporter in his career of the Jewish state. 

Far from sounding like an anti-Israel convert, Smith sounded like he wanted to throw the left-wing activists a bone by voting for the symbolic anti-Israel resolution without fundamentally shifting his longstanding views on Middle East policy.

In the liberal Boston suburbs, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) — a Jewish Democrat and strong supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship — surprised many by voting for the amendment. But in an interview with Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod this week, he asserted that the vote was in line with his pro-Israel beliefs.

“I represent a pro-Israel, anti-Netanyahu district and this is a pro-Israel, anti-Netanyahu vote,” Auchincloss said, adding that he believes “a majority of my Jewish constituents would agree with me.” 

How largely pro-Israel Democrats in solidly blue districts such as those represented by Smith and Auchincloss balance the pressures from the base against their longstanding principles will speak volumes about whether the U.S.-Israel relationship can maintain support within their party.

As the Trump administration moves to end the diplomatic isolation of Syria, dismantling decades of U.S. sanctions in the process, lawmakers are offering mixed assessments of whether Washington should have conditioned that relief on steps toward normalizing relations with Israel.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) told Jewish Insider the Trump administration “should be urging” Damascus to improve economic and political relations with Jerusalem in exchange for sanctions relief, “but I would say that you’ve got to have a consistent standard.”

Sherman noted he would “like to see Syria move in that direction,” toward joining the Abraham Accords, “even if they can’t join the accords yet.” However, he cautioned that the administration’s leverage depends on what Damascus is seeking, drawing a distinction between whether Syria is asking for direct U.S. aid or “if they’re simply asking for the same normal treatment” that the U.S. provides to other sovereign nations.

“We need to do everything we can to see Syria succeed and write a new chapter, and our support needs to come with expectations and accountability,” Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) told JI. “The United States has an opportunity to work to bring Syrians and Israelis together to an agreement that will not just improve the lives of people living on each side of the border, but help pave the path towards better stability throughout the region.”

Congress and the Treasury Department lifted the U.S.’ longstanding sanctions on Syria unconditionally in June 2025.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) agreed that the Trump administration should be pursuing normalization as part of its efforts with Damascus, but said the current focus on prioritizing stability is a “worthwhile objective” and “positive” effort. 

“I think a stable, democratic [Syria] may be too much of a hope, but a stable and non-terrorist-supporting Syria is important to the Middle East and to the United States of America and to some type of global stability,” Hoyer said to JI. “Efforts to normalize the government are positive and part of that will ultimately involve normalizing relations between their neighbor Israel and themselves, and I think that will be determined by [Syria’s] performance.”

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), meanwhile, deferred to the White House’s diplomatic strategy. “I would let the administration do the negotiations as it relates to Syria. I’m not part of those discussions, but Trump is trying to make the world a safer and a better place for everybody, and so if he can find a way to cut some deals, I support it.”

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told JI he would like to see relations between Syria and Israel improve, but did not push back on the White House lifting sanctions before that progress was made. 

“No, I just think it’s something we look at. It’s always going to be a variable, but words are cheap, actions are where we got to see it,” Burchett said. “I haven’t trusted Syria as far as I can throw them, so we’ll just see what happens. I’d prefer they normalize relations with Israel, but I mean that fight has been going on since before the time of Christ. I don’t know that we’re going to solve it by signing a piece of paper.” 

Foreign policy experts told JI that normalization between Israel and Syria remains stalled by highly complex territorial and political issues, making it unrealistic to leverage relief on such progress. 

“Normalization between Israel and Syria is not remotely close and shouldn’t even be on anyone’s radar,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum. “Expecting any imminent normalization between Syria and Israel given decades of enmity, an ongoing IDF presence in southern Syria and severe disagreements over Syrian policy toward its Druze and Kurdish minorities is not realistic.”

Koplow explained that the administration is focused on “taking advantage of the end of the Assad regime” to give the nascent government “a chance to succeed,” while pulling Damascus toward Washington and away from hostile regional actors.

“U.S. policy towards Syria should not be judged on whether it is going to normalize with Israel, but over other more pressing and imminent concerns that impact U.S. priorities,” Koplow said.

John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, agreed that normalization with Israel “hasn’t been on the agenda.”

“In Syria’s eyes, and certainly in the eyes of [Syrian President Ahmad al-]Sharaa and the ex-jihadists who came to power with him, normalization without recovering the Golan Heights is an absolute non-starter and would be widely viewed as abject and unacceptable surrender and capitulation,” Hannah said. “Of course, it goes without saying that any discussion about withdrawing from the Golan is equally anathema in Israel. So I just don’t see normalization as being in the cards right now.” 

Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, after capturing the territory from Syria in the 1967 War. The IDF has held additional territory in southern Syria as a security zone since the collapse of the Assad regime.

President Donald Trump reportedly asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month to pull back IDF troops from Syria.

Still, Hannah noted that al-Sharaa has shown “no interest whatsoever in fighting with Israel” since rising to power and has taken positive steps toward Jerusalem. 

“On the contrary, for most of 2025 [al-Sharaa] was practically begging Israel to resurrect, update and strengthen the Israel-Syria disengagement agreement of 1974,” Hannah said. “Indeed, for the first time in 25 years, al-Sharaa, the former Al-Qaida leader, authorized direct Israel-Syria negotiations under U.S. auspices to reach a new security agreement.”

Hannah suggested the U.S. still has an opportunity to “play some hardball” and use rolling back Syria’s State Sponsor of Terrorism designation as leverage. Trump formally initiated the process to lift the designation, which has been applied to Syria since 1979, earlier this month.

The White House could press “for an expansion of security, economic and social relations with Israel,” Hannah said. “That’s separate from a demand for full normalization, which I just don’t see as realistic under present circumstances.”

Al-Sharaa has worked to earn the overtures from Washington by cooperating with U.S. priorities, Hannah argued. 

“He ensured Iran and Hezbollah’s eviction from Syria and has systematically fought their efforts to maintain Iran’s land bridge to Lebanon, engaging in several firefights with Hezbollah units trying to smuggle weapons across the border,” Hannah said. “He directed his security forces to work closely with CENTCOM in combating ISIS, cooperated with the U.N. to come clean on Assad’s chemical weapons program and constrained the ability of Palestinian terrorist groups to operate from Syrian soil.”

Despite these positive security developments, analysts warn that serious issues remain about al-Sharaa’s governance.

“There should be concerns about ongoing extremism within the ranks of Syrian leadership and the military, and the al-Sharaa government’s ties to Turkey and to what extent Syria is going to trade Iranian domination for Turkish domination,” Koplow said. 

Hannah raised similar alarms regarding the internal makeup of the transitional government and its growing reliance on neighboring powers.

“There is definitely a legitimate question of whether Trump surrendered America’s overwhelming economic leverage too cheaply by not demanding even more from Sharaa,” Hannah said. “For example, by requiring the decommissioning of radical jihadist groups that he incorporated wholesale into his new army, holding to account those forces in his service that committed massacres against Alawites and Druze civilians in 2025 and guaranteeing full rights and protections to Syria’s disparate religious and ethnic minorities, including the Kurds who fought alongside the U.S. against ISIS for more than a decade.”

Days after 104 members of Congress voted in favor of a measure that sought to end U.S. aid to Israel, AIPAC will no longer allow donations through its political action committee to 18 lawmakers it endorsed who voted in favor of the legislation. 

The group did not announce the change. But the endorsement page on AIPAC’s political giving portal — where supporters can donate to candidates who have been endorsed by AIPAC — removed the option for individuals to route money to those lawmakers. 

AIPAC now allows its supporters to donate to 72 Democratic candidates in the House and Senate, compared to 178 Republican candidates — meaning 71% of the candidates the group is now actively supporting are Republicans, and just 29% are Democrats. 

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), an anti-Israel Republican who was defeated this year in a GOP primary, introduced the amendment to a State Department funding bill knowing it would fail, which it did: 314 members voted against it.  

He was the only Republican to support it, along with 103 Democrats. Ten Democrats voted present on the amendment, which would have eliminated the $3.3 billion in annual foreign military financing provided by the U.S. to Israel, according to the terms of the 2016 memorandum of understanding between the two countries. 

The 18 AIPAC endorsees who voted in favor of the measure were Reps. Gabe Amo (D-RI), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Julia Brownley (D-CA), Katherine Clark (D-MA), Laura Friedman (D-CA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Josh Harder (D-CA), Steven Horsford (D-NV), Glenn Ivey (D-MD), Julie Johnson (D-TX), Bill Keating (D-MA), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Richard Neal (D-MA), Joe Neguse (D-CO), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Brittany Pettersen (D-CO), Pat Ryan (D-NY) and Adam Smith (D-WA). 

On its website, AIPAC delineates retiring lawmakers, who are no longer raising money, with a brief explanation thanking them for their “ongoing support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.” On the profiles of retiring Reps. Brownley, Pelosi and Johnson, AIPAC removed the line expressing thanks. 

Three AIPAC-endorsed lawmakers — Reps. Shontel Brown (D-OH), Sarah Elfreth (D-MD) and Chris Pappas (D-NH) — voted “present” on the measure. AIPAC is still supporting them. 

The group did not formally rescind its endorsement of any lawmakers after the vote, according to an AIPAC source, even though they are no longer going to receive financial support from the organization. 

An AIPAC spokesperson declined to comment.

A bipartisan group of 58 House members urged the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday to extend the deadline for 2026 Nonprofit Security Grant Program applications, arguing that the current timeline gives states and institutions “insufficient time to complete the application process” and fulfill the program’s goals.

Applications for the program were announced on June 24 and are due to the federal government from state emergency management agencies by July 24. Those state agencies must set their own earlier deadlines for individual institutions to submit applications.

“It is essential that eligible applicants have a fair shot to apply for these funds and fully realize the program’s intended purpose,” the lawmakers, led by Reps. Grace Meng (D-NY) and David Joyce (R-OH), wrote in a letter to acting FEMA Administrator Robert Fenton. “The current timeline imposes significant administrative constraints on both applicants and [state administrative agencies], potentially limiting full and fair participation in this year’s grant cycle.”

The lawmakers argued that organizations would have a short amount of time — potentially just days — to review the program, obtain necessary assessments, develop proposals, gather documents and submit applications. The signatories noted that FEMA has historically provided as many as 80 days from the application announcement to the deadline.

The letter notes that the application period also overlaps state hate crimes grant program application periods in some states, “overburdening” institutions, particularly smaller ones that don’t have large teams to handle grant-writing.

FEMA’s continued delays in releasing 2025 NSGP awards create further issues, the lawmakers explained: “organizations will be applying without knowing their eligibility, creating additional complications since eligibility for this year’s grant is affected by the recipient’s status for last year’s grant.”

The letter urges FEMA to extend the 2026 application deadline, to give state agencies more time to review applications, nonprofits more time to prepare their applications and to guarantee “FEMA receives the strongest possible pool of eligible projects for consideration.”

The Jewish Federations of North America said it organized the letter and was the first to publicize it.

“At a time of rising threats against faith-based communal institutions, Congress has made clear that protecting vulnerable communities is a bipartisan priority,” JFNA CEO Eric Fingerhut said. “Giving state administrative agencies and nonprofit organizations adequate time to complete FEMA’s application process will help ensure these critical security resources reach those NSGP is designed to protect.”

Lauren Wolman, the senior director of government relations and strategy at the Anti-Defamation League, said that “a one-month application window presents significant challenges for the nonprofits that need this funding the most, particularly smaller organizations without dedicated grant writing staff.” 

Wolman added, “Extending the deadline would help ensure every eligible organization has a meaningful opportunity to secure the resources they need to protect their communities.”

Rabbi AD Motzen, the national director of government affairs at Agudath Israel of America, said, “Agudath Israel strongly supports the bipartisan Meng Joyce letter and the request for a longer application period. We have heard from nonprofits that are not sure if they were awarded  the grant from the previous year and have to make a rushed decision whether or not to apply for this year.”

Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, said that the OU also agrees that an extension of the deadline would be “very helpful.”

Separately, 15 Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Fenton, raising concerns about the administration’s handling of various FEMA grant programs including NSGP, accusing them of including language in the application materials “that is confusing, impractical, incomplete, and potentially unlawful.”

The Democrats specifically accuse the administration of “deliberately slow processing” of 2025 NSGP applications, noting the continued delay in announcements of 2025 funding and calling for the outstanding grants to be issued “immediately.”

“At-risk nonprofits are forced to navigate overlapping application cycles without knowing if they even need to apply for the FY 2026 NSGP,” the letter reads. “With the FY 2026 application window already open and set to close in less than a month, FEMA’s internal delays and contradictory directives are creating unnecessary burdens for subrecipients.”

It also criticizes the administration for “conflicting instructions on required documentation” and requirements related to immigration and elections imposed on grant recipients. “Imposing these complex mandates on small, volunteer-run, nonprofit organizations, threatens to penalize the very institutions the program is designed to protect,” the Democrats wrote.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle remain deeply skeptical of President Donald Trump’s plans to lift sanctions on Turkey and revive its participation in the F-35 fighter jet program, but members of a bipartisan Senate delegation attending the NATO summit said Wednesday they could support the move if Ankara resolves longstanding security concerns over its Russian-made S-400 missile defense system.

Trump said at the NATO summit on Tuesday that he’s preparing to remove sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), explaining, “We don’t want to sanction friends.” The CAASTA sanctions block the administration from selling Turkey F-35s until it disposes of an S-400 missile defense system it purchased from Russia.

“Selling one of America’s most advanced fighter jets to Turkey is not in the best interest of the United States,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told Jewish Insider. “It risks compromising critical technology and sends the wrong message to our allies in Europe and the Middle East. Restrictions on the sale of F-35s to Turkey should absolutely remain in place while Erdogan continues to operate Russian S-400s, in accordance with existing U.S. law.”

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) also called on the administration not to allow the F-35 sale to proceed.

“Erdogan has aligned himself with Iran and Russia, harbored Hamas, refused to sanction Russia, undermined American counter-ISIS operations, continues to illegally occupy part of Cyprus, has repeatedly directed illegal military jet overflights above the Greek Islands, and called for the destruction of Israel,” Malliotakis said in a statement to JI. “Additionally, he continues to jail his political opponents and has denied dozens of journalists access to the NATO Summit.” 

“Providing Turkey with our most advanced fighter jet would jeopardize U.S. national security, risk sensitive technology falling into the wrong hands, and endanger our allies in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East,” she continued.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said that lifting CAATSA sanctions or reopening the possibility of F-35 sales would be a “profound mistake” that “would reward Erdogan’s actions toward Israel as well as his domestic strongman behavior, and it would be tantamount to handing [Russian President Vladimir] Putin the blueprints to our technology.”

“Congress imposed these sanctions because Turkey’s acquisition of the S-400 posed an unacceptable threat to U.S. and NATO security, and those concerns remain every bit as valid today,” Sherman said. “Until Turkey permanently disposes of the S-400 system, we should not consider lifting sanctions or returning Turkey to the F-35 program.”

He emphasized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s repeated hostile language toward Israel as well as the threat that operating the S-400 in proximity to the F-35 would pose to sensitive U.S. stealth technology.

“Trump cannot unilaterally authorize the sale of F-35s to Turkey,” Sherman added. The legal process by which the White House could lift the sanctions unilaterally remains unclear. 

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) emphasized that Turkey remains in breach of CAATSA and the sale should not proceed.

“Congress passed CAATSA in 2017, and the law is very clear: it’s illegal to bring Turkey back into the F-35 program so long as it has the Russian S-400 air defense system. This violates the law,” Schneider told JI. “We cannot let President Trump give Putin a backdoor to one of our most technologically advanced aircrafts, just because an authoritarian leader who hosts Hamas flatters him.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit at a press conference on Wednesday morning, members of a bipartisan delegation sounded a more positive note toward Trump’s effort. 

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-chair of the NATO observer group, noted that “[Sen.] Thom Tillis [R-NC] and I wrote the legislation that prohibited, that kicked Turkey out of the F-35 program because of their acquisition of the S-400.” 

“If there is an acceptable way to deal with the S-400 and the threat that that poses to the technology and the F-35 and there is satisfactory agreement on the part of all parties about that, then I think having Türkiye back in the F-35 program would be a positive development, both for Türkiye and for the United States,” Shaheen added. “But we still have questions to answer with respect to what’s being proposed, and we haven’t gotten those answers, so we will wait to see what happens.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), also participating in the press conference, agreed with Shaheen on the matter, saying, “Hopefully it can be resolved. Türkiye is a major NATO contributor, and anything that we can do to provide them with the resources to be an even stronger adversary with regard to incurrences by Russia in Europe, the better off we all are, and one of those is to have that tool of the F-35.”

Asked about the U.S.-Turkey relationship, Shaheen said, “I think Congress views the relationship with Türkiye as positive, and particularly with respect to Türkiye’s role in NATO, there are some concerns about the commitment to democracy and how that is playing out in Türkiye with respect to elections, but I think that there is an appreciation for the importance of the defense industrial base in Türkiye, and how that contributes to NATO, and that that will continue in Congress.”

Rounds added, “we really need to re-energize” the industrial base “among all of the NATO countries.”

“We need what each of our NATO allies can offer with regard to that industrial base, and Türkiye does not stand alone, they stand with everyone else, but they have some real opportunities here for advancements,” Rounds continued. “They were one of the countries selected to participate originally in the manufacturing of the F-35 fighters and that shows a strong competency in technological areas that provided that award to them in the first place, and so we want Türkiye, along with all of our NATO allies, to be able to participate in this growth of an industrial base that makes it easier for us to respond to areas of aggression by Mr. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.…”

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said during the press conference that “the details that have been shared with us do appear to be promising,” with regard to the F-35 and S-400 issues. 

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) added that “the legitimate national security concerns that drove the actions led by Sen. Shaheen … would continue if the S-400 were to be deployed somewhere else, so concerns about the possibility of critical American technology related to the F-35 being misappropriated or sent to Russia would also pertain if there were some resolution.”

Rep. George Latimer (D-NY), however, said that Congress should push to block the sale of F-35s if Trump insists on moving ahead with it.

“President Trump’s inclination for deal-making with dictators like President Erdoğan is grossly neglectful of our national security interests at home and abroad,” Latimer told JI. “This Congress — both houses and both sides of the aisle — needs to speak out against this situation and remain adamant for a Joint Resolution of Disapproval should this administration move to readmit Turkey back into the United States F-35 program.”

Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) and 17 other House Democrats sent a letter to House leaders on Monday urging them to “stand ready to exercise your authority under statute to prevent” the administration from allowing Turkey back into the F-35 program by introducing a joint resolution of disapproval to block the move.

The letter emphasizes that the administration is required to maintain the CAATSA sanctions until such time as Turkey disposes of the S-400 — which Turkey has not. “Beyond the legal question, we are also concerned about the strategic message this decision would send to U.S. partners in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond,” the letter continues, noting Turkey’s aggression against Greece, Cyprus, Armenia and Israel.

“CAATSA was passed by overwhelming bipartisan margins in both chambers precisely to ensure that Congress, not any individual president, retains a meaningful check on decisions to reward adversary-aligned conduct with American military technology,” the lawmakers wrote. “The integrity of that framework and the signal it sends to every country weighing whether to purchase Russian arms depend on Congress being willing to enforce it.”

Actually waiving or lifting the CAATSA sanctions is likely easier said than done, and could spark conflict with Congress. The original legislation provides little wiggle-room, requiring sanctions on anyone or any country that engages in business with the Russian defense or intelligence sectors.

Congress added a modified waiver provision in 2018 that requires the administration to certify that the waiver would not endanger U.S. alliances or adversely affect U.S. operations and that the waiver recipient is actively working to decrease its use of Russian military equipment or is otherwise cooperating with the U.S. on critical matters.

Updated certifications and reports to Congress are required every 90 days.

Under CAATSA, Congress can advance a joint resolution of disapproval to overturn the administration’s decisions on sanctions relief or arms sales, though it’s unlikely that the Republican-controlled Congress would publicly buck Trump on the issue.

Matt Zweig, the managing director for policy at FDD Action and a former congressional staffer who helped craft the original CAATSA bill, told JI, “Lifting these sanctions is generally easy to announce but will likely be hard to execute. The sanctions and the congressional review mechanism are embedded in the law, unwinding them runs straight through the Hill,” 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said on X that he hoped that a report about Trump’s move was “wrong,” following up by sharing information about CAATSA sanctions.

Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) said in a separate statement, “It’s outrageous for Trump to even consider readmitting Turkey to the F-35 program while Erdogan’s government continues to violate U.S. law and threaten our allies. We cannot reward Erdogan’s aggressive and destabilizing activity across the region.”

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) referred JI to a statement that Bilirakis and other Greek-American Republican House members previously released opposing the sale of military jet engines and F-35s to Turkey.

“As Greek American Members of Congress, we are deeply concerned about reports of a proposed military sale of jet engines to Turkey. Turkey continues to be a destabilizing force in the region through its expansive and disputed maritime claims, continued illegal occupation of Cyprus, and rhetorical demonization of Israel,” the lawmakers said, also raising concerns about Ankara’s decision to harbor Hamas leaders and refusal to sanction Russia.

“We are actively engaging with the Administration and House leadership to obtain additional information regarding this reported sale and to express our strong opposition to any prospect of Turkey’s reintegration into the F-35 program without complete compliance with CAATSA requirements,” the statement continued.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), one of the most vocal supporters of Turkey in the House, offered the most unqualified support for Trump’s effort to roll back sanctions.

“President Trump and [U.S.] Ambassador [to Turkey] Tom Barrack have displayed visionary leadership and pragmatism alongside valued NATO ally Türkiye,” Wilson said. “Türkiye has played an instrumental role in assisting Syria’s stabilization after over a decade of mass murder under butcher [Bashar al-]Assad, who correctly fled to Moscow. We don’t sanction friends. We work together for a better future.”

Good Friday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to lawmakers concerned about President Donald Trump’s plans to sell the F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, and have the scoop on the antisemitic social media activity of a newly elected Democratic official in Brooklyn. We look at the role Qatar is playing after Vice President JD Vance’s comments that Doha would serve as a place for CENTCOM and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to “hang out,” and talk to former American Jewish Committee head David Harris about his new book about antisemitism. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Neera Tanden, Mathias Döpfner, and Jonathan Safran Foer. 

Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.

For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: Starmer’s resignation puts Burnham’s record on Israel, antisemitism in the spotlight; Prospective 2028 Democrats rally against Trump’s Iran agreement; and How Ritchie Torres dodged the DSA wave in New York City. Print the latest edition here.

What We’re Watching

• State Department-facilitiated talks between Israel and Lebanon that were slated to conclude yesterday are being extended and are now expected to wrap up today, as the parties remain split on whether the IDF will partially withdraw from southern Lebanon.
• Elsewhere in Washington, the State Department’s two-day Pax Silica Summit continues today. The State Department announced on Thursday that nine new parties had signed on to Pax Silica, the U.S.-led initiative uniting American allies with the aim of developing global supply chains for artificial intelligence and the production of semiconductors, chips, critical minerals and energy sources to reduce global dependence on China. Read more here.
• Texas Democrats are gathered in Corpus Christi for the state party’s convention, which began yesterday. Among the resolutions expected to be voted on before the convention concludes on Saturday are more than a dozen resolutions about Israel.
• The Aspen Ideas Festival is underway in Colorado. This evening, Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer, respectively the national security advisor and deputy national security advisor in the Biden administration, are recording a live episode of their podcast “The Long Game,” alongside foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan, focused on shifting global power dynamics.
• On Saturday in Aspen, Karen Brunwasser, Riman Barakat, Nour Darwish and Noam Helfer are set to speak on a panel titled “The Opposite of War Is Creation: Israeli-Palestinian Artistic Partnership.” Later in the day, Fareed Zakaria, Kim Ghattas, Karim Sadjadpour and Mark Dubowitz will discuss Middle East dynamics and the war with Iran.
  
  

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS

As diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran continues following the adoption of the memorandum of understanding between the two countries last week, Washington is again leaning on Qatar to serve as a critical interlocutor, further cementing Doha’s standing as an intermediary despite the significant setbacks sustained by the Gulf state during the recent war with Iran.

In an interview with UnHerd that was published on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance, traveling back from the Iran talks in Switzerland earlier this week, said that Doha would serve as the location for CENTCOM to meet with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials — despite the IRGC’s designation as a foreign terror organization by the U.S. (a move undertaken by President Donald Trump in his first term).

“One of the things we wanted to come out [of the negotiations]” was a “channel on the Iranian side” to seek conflict resolution, Vance told UnHerd aboard Air Force Two. “Which we did. They were like, ‘OK, fine, we’ll send somebody from the IRGC to go hang out in Doha with somebody from CENTCOM,’ and that’s how we’re going to settle a lot of these disputes,” he said. Read more here.

Doha has long played a role in the back-channel communications between the U.S. and adversaries. But Vance’s comments underscore the degree to which Qatar’s once-quiet intermediary role is now not only public, but a key element of the infrastructure supporting the new regional dynamics.

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

SCOOP

DSA-aligned Brooklyn Democratic leader promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories

An activist that two politicians from the Democratic Socialists of America helped elevate to a leadership position in the Brooklyn Democratic Party on Tuesday posted a vitriolic antisemitic screed to her Instagram last year — declaring as “the truth” a notorious work beloved by Adolf Hitler that describes a Jewish world conspiracy, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.

Brooklyn beat: Although the DSA itself did not formally endorse Charrington for the post of Democratic leader, two of its most important local figures campaigned with her and helped her make the ballot: state Sen. Jabari Brisport and state Assembly candidate Eon Huntley. Reached by JI, Charrington maintained that she was not prejudiced, but also insisted the video “was some facts.” She repeatedly told the reporter to “get your rabbi,” as she intended to hold a future “roundtable” on what she called a “bullying community.”

Read the full story here.

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DIRECT LINE

Vance says U.S. military, IRGC to ‘hang out’ together in Doha

Vice President JD Vance said this week that U.S. military officials are working directly with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. The vice president made the comments after departing Switzerland following the conclusion of talks with Iran that lasted until Monday, Jewish Insider’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports.

What he said: “One of the things we wanted to come out [of the negotiations] with” was a “channel on the Iranian side” to seek conflict resolution, Vance told the outlet UnHerd aboard Air Force Two. “Which we did. They were like, ‘OK, fine, we’ll send somebody from the IRGC to go hang out in Doha with somebody from CENTCOM,’ and that’s how we’re going to settle a lot of these disputes,” he said.

Read the full story here.

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F-35 FRICTION

Bipartisan alarm over Trump’s plan to sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey

U.S. lawmakers across the political spectrum are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s plans to review whether it can sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, arguing that the move would raise national security concerns and that Ankara has not yet fulfilled its obligation to dump its Russian S-400s, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea and Marc Rod report.

Turkey talk: The proposed deal has drawn fierce bipartisan pushback and notable criticism from within Trump’s own ranks. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) told JI, “Turkey has integrated its defenses with the Russian missiles. The F-35 is a technology platform that Russia would love to get information on and we can’t allow that to happen. Turkey has not been the best NATO ally. Its actions in the Eastern Mediterranean have been contrary to U.S. interests and regional interests, so I have real concerns.”

Read the full story here with additional comments from Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Dina Titus (D-NV), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Brian Mast (R-FL) and Greg Meeks (D-NY).  

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PUSHING BACK

Neera Tanden reemerges at CAP, draws red lines against extremists in Dem Party

A decade ago, Center for American Progress CEO Neera Tanden spent her time arguing with the far left on Twitter. Her life doesn’t look too different today: After four years holding senior roles in the Biden administration, Tanden is back at CAP and once again arguing with the far left on X. But Tanden now finds herself fighting a much more solitary battle than before against the ascendant left flank of the party, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Sorry, not sorry: Tanden has called out far-left candidates challenging incumbent Democratic lawmakers for taking positions well outside the party’s mainstream. And at a time when some in the party are calling to make the Democratic tent so wide that it includes even activists and candidates who have flirted with antisemitism, she has taken to X to push back. “Sorry if I think it’s important to state out loud on here my disagreements with a guy who says it’s ok to murder people, Jews are inbred, America was responsible for 9/11 and Russia was right to invade Crimea, amongst other insane things,” Tanden wrote on X in April after “Pod Save America” interviewed Hasan Piker, the far-left, antisemitic political streamer. 

Read the full story here.

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DEM DYNAMICS

Rep. Josh Gottheimer says moderates need to stand up against incoming socialist bloc

In the wake of a trifecta of victories by far-left candidates in New York City primaries on Tuesday — in addition to several other radical insurgents expected to join the House next year — Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), a leading moderate Democrat, said that Democrats of his ilk need to stand firm and push back, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Fighting back: Gottheimer told JI on Wednesday that he’s concerned the incoming DSA-aligned lawmakers will be coming to Washington to “wreak havoc in Congress,” rather than focusing on affordability and protecting national security, and warned that they will try to “hold the party hostage” to their socialist views. “Common-sense Democrats will fight back … when they try to push some part of their socialist agenda, whether that’s anti-cop, anti-American, we’ll stand up and block it. I’m not going to allow the party to be hijacked by a bunch of socialist agenda,” Gottheimer said.

Read the full story here.

On the Hill: The House Education & Workforce Committee advanced three bills to combat antisemitism on college campuses, with minimal or no support from Democrats, at a markup on Thursday.

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bookshelf

In new book, former AJC chief David Harris traces antisemitism’s past — and warns about its present

David Harris spent more than two decades leading the American Jewish Committee, where he navigated crises facing the Jewish community and built bipartisan coalitions to advance the group’s mission of supporting Israel and Diaspora Jewry. His book, Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press last year, is Harris’ attempt to reach beyond the Jewish community — churches, classrooms and the “average New York Times reader.” His goal, he said, is to turn the “silent majority” into the “loud majority,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

Interview with the author: Harris, who quipped that he retired “for about 30 seconds” after serving as AJC’s CEO from 1990–2022, sat down with JI on Thursday to discuss the book at a moment in which he said he has “never been more worried” about antisemitism — yet also remains optimistic about the Jewish future. “I wrote the book over the span of close to two years during the post-Oct. 7 period,” Harris said. “Two things impacted me: the speed and virulence of which history was turned on its head. The worst day in Israeli and Jewish history since the end of World War II had before our eyes suddenly become directed at Jews, Zionists [and] friends of Israel who were suddenly seen as the perpetrators.”

Read the full interview here.

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Worthy Reads

Leaving Iranians Behind: In The Washington Post, Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy in the first Trump administration, raises concerns about Washington’s pledge, in its memorandum of understanding with Iran, to “refrain from interfering” in the country’s domestic affairs. “If the West cares about freedom in Iran, support for dissidents is crucial — for opposition leaders in the country and those in exile, for the millions of Iranians who loathe the regime and for the hundreds of thousands who rise up against it even in the face of murderous suppression. They need and want the moral and political support of democratic societies. Lifting sanctions and unfreezing the mullahs’ assets only make their struggle more difficult.” [WashPost]

Feeling the Heat on Israel: In The Free Press, Mark Halperin examines the degree to which Israel has become a “toxic litmus test” among Democrats. “The anti-Israel left has learned that it can pressure establishment politicians by arousing the grassroots over Israel, which has created an unvirtuous cycle. The more such pressure campaigns work against universities, corporations, and political actors, the more the left returns again and again to the same tactics, strategies, and themes to apply their threats. There is not a Democratic candidate in the country, from places with a lot of Jewish voters to places with nearly none, who is not aware of this dynamic.” [FreePress]

Vance’s Veer: Puck’s Julia Ioffe looks at how Vice President JD Vance, assessing shifting political dynamics, has increasingly staked out a position on Israel that is more critical than it was when he was in the Senate. “In recent weeks, word has spread around town that Vance has been regularly talking to Trita Parsi, the Swedish-Iranian co-founder of the Quincy Institute. The anti-interventionist think tank, which is funded by Charles Koch, bills itself as ‘transpartisan’ and operates in that space between the ends of the political horseshoe — one that, these days, looks increasingly like a circle.” [Puck]

Gulf Positioning: The Wall Street Journal’s Elliot Kaufman reflects on Vance’s appeal to Gulf states as he worked to promote the memorandum of understanding with Iran. “The Gulf states are always hedging with Iran, by virtue of geography. Several opposed the war from the start and denied the U.S. use of local airspace and U.S. military bases. … The Gulf states want their oil exports out and their energy infrastructure safe, and they are glad for the conflict to end. But that doesn’t mean they think this is a strong deal. The collapse of the U.S. position on Iran’s missile program — left out of the memorandum of understanding entirely — has unsettled the Gulf Arabs, and rightly so.” [WSJ]

Word on the Street

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck a Singapore-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursdayin an apparent violation of the ceasefire agreement…

Iran is estimating it will amass some $40 billion annually in revenue from its control over thestrait as an increasing number of ships transit the waterway after it was reopened…

The Wall Street Journal does a deep dive into Washington’s calculus on rebuilding destroyed and damaged U.S. military facilities in the Middle East and relocating assets — including potentially to Israel — as it addresses the significant damage caused by Iran’s attacks on a U.S. Navy base in Bahrain during the war…

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton is expected to plead guilty to a single count of retaining government information when he appears today in federal court; Bolton, who served in the first Trump administration, had previously pleaded not guilty after being accused by prosecutors of sending from his personal email address more than 1,000 pages of “diary-like” recollections to relatives helping him with a book…

In The Hill, former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) considers the takeaways for moderate Democrats following the Democratic Socialists of America’s victories in Tuesday’s primaries in New York…

Republican Bruce Blakeman, who is mounting a gubernatorial bid in New York challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul, suggested that Brad Lander, who won his primary against Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) on Tuesday, “would be a camp guard in the concentration camp if he could,” prompting Lander to respond, “Standing up for Palestinian human rights doesn’t make me any less proud to be Jewish, or any less serious about fighting antisemitism”…

Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner, speaking this week at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London, cautioned that antisemitism had become a “global export” following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, and that antisemitism among younger generations was “the biggest disgrace of our times”…

The New York Times interviews MIT professor Yossi Sheffi about his new book about antisemitism at the university, which he said he wrote in response to administrators’ decision not to thoroughly investigate and report on antisemitism on the campus and efforts to address it…

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the country should reopen its embassies in Iran and Venezuela, noting that having a diplomatic presence “does not mean we endorse the policies of that country”…

The head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian government’s security arm, said that an Australian citizen living in Iran and working for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had orchestrated the firebombing of a 2024 Sydney restaurant, months before an Australian living in Iraq had plotted an attack on a Melbourne synagogue…

The Wall Street Journal looks at how CoinEx became a “major hub” for Iran, which used the cryptocurrency exchange to move nearly $4 billion in illicit funds… 

Wine of the Week

JI wine columnist Yitz Applbaum reviews the Katzrin Cabernet 2021:

Celebrating the Sheva Brachot of a close friend’s daughter in his glorious Jerusalem garden was spiritual, emotional and full of joy, and it settled, for me, an age-old question: Does the wine make the moment, or the moment make the wine? The answer came the instant I opened one of Israel’s greatest bottles, the Yarden Katzrin 2021, as wine and occasion were joined in perfect harmony.

The Katzrin Cabernet 2021 is rich and generous from first sip to last. The opening is layered with tobacco leaf; the mid-palate carries a Bordeaux-style earthiness; and the finish is deep, luscious and unforgettable. This is a wine with 20 years ahead of it. Pour some now, alongside a 14-hour wine-braised brisket, and the marriage will speak for itself.

Purchase a bottle here.

Pic of the Day

Author Jonathan Safran Foer met this week with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, where he presented the pontiff with a sold-out New York Knicks yarmulke days after the team’s NBA championship win. Foer was invited to the Holy See as it celebrated the centenary of the Vatican Publishing House.

Birthdays

Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award-winning actor, movie director, composer and comedian, born Melvin James Kaminsky, Mel Brooks turns 100 on Sunday… 

FRIDAY: Member of the New York State Senate from Queens since 1999, she chairs the committee on higher education, Toby Ann Stavisky turns 87… Partner in the law firm BakerHostetler known for his recovery of $14.5 billion from the Madoff investment scandal, Irving H. Picard turns 85… Retired co-host for more than 30 years of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Robert Siegel turns 79… Rabbi of Congregation Chaverim in Tucson, Ariz., for more than 35 years, Stephanie Aaron… Chair of the Nexus Project and retired lawyer, he was previously chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Alan Solow turns 72… CEO of Emerging Star Capital and the author of a biography of President Bill Clinton, Robert E. Levin… Attorney and Holocaust survivors’ rights advocate, Samuel J. Dubbin turns 71… CEO of ZMC, he was previously chairman of CBS and president of 20th Century Fox, Strauss Zelnick turns 69… Professor of psychology at Loyola University Maryland, she is known for her work on sleep patterns and behavioral well-being, Amy Ruth Wolfson, Ph.D…. Israeli actor and comedian, Anat Waxman turns 65… Once the wealthiest of all Russian businessmen, then a prisoner in Russia and now living in London, Mikhail Khodorkovsky turns 63… First Jewish federal cabinet member to serve in post-WWII Germany, she is minister for education, family, seniors, women and youth, Karin Prien turns 61… Creator of multiple TV series including “Felicity,” “Alias,” “Lost” and “Fringe,” and director and producer of many films, Jeffrey Jacob “J.J.” Abrams turns 60… Novelist and journalist, most notable as the author of the Magicians trilogy, he was the book critic and lead technology writer at Time magazine, Lev Grossman… and his twin brother, author, video game designer and adjunct instructor at NYU, Austin Grossman both turn 57… Head of school at Ramaz since 2025, Noam T. Wasserman turns 57… President and founder of Reut Group, a Tel Aviv-based nonpartisan and nonprofit policy think tank, Gidi Grinstein turns 56… Political commentator, YouTube personality, comedian and talk show host, Dave Rubin turns 50… Head of external communications at Geico, Ross Feinstein… Partner in Mayer Brown’s D.C. office, Michael “Mickey” Leibner… EVP of programming at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Sara Fredman Aeder… CEO at Jewish California (formerly JPAC), David Bocarsly turns 36… Principal at Boston Consulting Group, Asher J. Mayerson… Author, model, media personality and political operative, she was the national spokesperson for the Republican Party, Elizabeth Pipko turns 31… 

SATURDAY: One of the heirs to the Bronfman family fortune, a co-founder of Taglit Birthright, the first chairman of the United Jewish Communities and former owner of MLB’s Montreal Expos, Charles Bronfman turns 95… One-half of the husband-wife screenwriting and television production team, Richard Allen Shapiro turns 92… Technion graduate, he is regarded as the founding father of unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) technology, Abraham Karem turns 89… Brooklyn resident, Meyer Roth… Former member of both houses of the Pennsylvania Legislature, Constance Hess “Connie” Williams turns 82… Former commander of the Israeli Navy, head of the Shin Bet and member of Knesset, Amihai “Ami” Ayalon turns 81… First-ever woman ordained as a rabbi by HUC-JIR, Sally Jane Priesand turns 80… Author of fiction and nonfiction books, she is the founding president of the Mayyim Hayyim mikveh in Newton, Mass., Anita Diamant turns 75… New Jersey resident, Kenneth R. Blankfein… Minority leader of the Florida State Senate, Lori Berman turns 68… 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 67… British historian and award-winning author, he is a great-great-great-nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore, Simon Sebag Montefiore turns 61… Southern California-based accountant, Susan M. Feldman… President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland (Ore.) since 2010, Marc N. Blattner turns 57… South Florida resident, Gordon M. Gerstein… Reporter for The New York Times on the climate desk, Lisa Friedman… Member of Knesset for United Torah Judaism, Yoel Yaakov Tessler turns 53… 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 47… 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 43… Executive talent partner at Greylock Partners, Holly Rose Faith… National security advisor to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Charles Dunst… 

SUNDAY: Laguna Woods, Calif., resident, she is a retired hospital administrator, Saretta Platt Berlin… Owner of NYC’s United Equities Companies and honorary chairman of Berkshire Bank, Moses M. Marx turns 91… Former member of Congress for 16 years and now a distinguished fellow and president emerita of the Wilson Center, Jane Harman turns 81… Political consultant, community organizer and author, he is married to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Robert Creamer turns 79… Novelist, journalist, conservative commentator and senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, Mark Helprin turns 79… Author of crime fiction for both adults and children, Peter Abrahams turns 79… Documentary producer and adjunct associate professor at USC, James Ruxin turns 78… Professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, Kenneth Alan Ribet turns 78… Shareholder in the Tampa law office of Carlton Fields, Nathaniel L. Doliner turns 77… 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 77… Former member of the California State Senate following two terms in the State Assembly, Martin Jeffrey “Marty” Block turns 76… Retired partner at Chicago-based accounting firm of Morrison & Morrison, he has been involved with the leadership of J Street since its inception, Mark Zivin… Volunteer president of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, he served for 17 years as executive director of Maccabi USA, Jed Margolis turns 75… Founding partner of NYC law firm Kasowitz LLP, Marc Kasowitz turns 74… Israeli journalist for Haaretz, she lives in Ramallah, Amira Hass turns 70… Chairman and CEO of Comcast Corporation, a Fortune 50 company that includes NBC Universal, Brian L. Roberts turns 67… Rabbi of the Har Bracha community and rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva there, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed turns 65… U.S. special envoy for Holocaust issues at the State Department, Ellen J. Germain turns 64… Founding member of GPS Investment Partners, Marc Spilker turns 62… Actor and singer, Jessica Hecht turns 61… Former diplomatic correspondent for Al-Monitor, now reporting on Substack, Laura Rozen… Novelist and short story writer, Aimee Bender turns 57… Israeli actor residing in Los Angeles, Ayelet Zurer turns 57… Trillionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, owner of X formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk turns 55… Former member of Knesset as a member of the Labor Party / Zionist Union, Michal Biran turns 48… Toltzy Kornbluh… and her twin sister, Chany Stark… UAE-based businessman and philanthropist who is the founder and CEO of NY Koen Group, Naum Koen turns 45… Associate at Latham & Watkins, she was previously the social secretary to the ambassador of Israel in Washington, Molly Rosen… Mark Winkler…

U.S. lawmakers across the political spectrum are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s plans to review whether it can sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, arguing that the move would raise national security concerns and that Ankara has not yet fulfilled its obligation to dump its Russian S-400s. 

In the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he was considering selling the advanced jet engines to Turkey, stating that he would “do something that’s going to make him [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] very happy.” Vice President JD Vance said the administration is “confirming” that Turkey has fulfilled its obligations under U.S. law in order to receive advanced F-35 fighter jets. 

Ankara has long sought the advanced systems but has been barred from purchasing it since 2020, after it acquired the S-400 air-defense system from Russia. A report published last week by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America suggested that the S-400 system is inactive but still intact in Turkey. 

The proposed deal has drawn fierce bipartisan pushback and notable criticism from within Trump’s own ranks. 

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) told Jewish Insider that he is “very concerned” about the prospect of Turkey acquiring the F-35s, arguing that such a move would raise significant national security concerns due to Ankara’s close security ties with Russia.

“Turkey has integrated its defenses with the Russian missiles. The F-35 is a technology platform that Russia would love to get information on and we can’t allow that to happen,” Schneider said. “Turkey has not been the best NATO ally. Its actions in the Eastern Mediterranean have been contrary to U.S. interests and regional interests, so I have real concerns.”

Schneider also noted that he does not believe Turkey has given up possession of the Russian S-400s, suggesting that Ankara has yet to fulfill the critical obligation that must be certified, in writing, to Congress.

“I have not seen that,” Schneider said. “I’d want to see that in concrete evidence from this administration.” 

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) said on social media that there is “bipartisan opposition” to the move and posted a photo of Erdoğan hand-in-hand with Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. 

“As long as Turkey is under the leadership of Erdogan who aligns himself with Iran and Russia, harbors Hamas & remains the only NATO member to not sanction Russia, Turkey should NOT receive our best jets and military equipment,” Malliotakis wrote. 

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) also criticized the move, saying in a post on X that “Erdogan cannot be trusted” and that the “decision must be reversed.” 

“Turkish President Erdogan has cozied up to Hamas and Putin while threatening our allies in Israel, Greece and Cyprus,” Gottheimer wrote. “Yet, the Trump administration is happy to sell them advanced engines to power fighter jets.” 

Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) said that if Trump continued with the move she would “introduce a joint resolution of disapproval. 

Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) also expressed sharp disapproval, saying, “Absolutely no F-35s to Turkey” in a post on social media. 

“Turkey was kicked out of the F-35 program during the first Trump administration for purchasing Russian S-400 missiles, which it still possesses today,” Pappas wrote. “Since then Turkey has only grown more aggressive against critical American allies such as Greece and Cyprus, increased oppression of its people, and made the region even more unstable.”

“The law is clear: the Trump administration is required to certify to Congress that Turkey is in compliance with our laws before any sale can even be considered. We cannot reward Erdogan’s government while it continues to violate U.S. law and threaten our reliable, democratic allies,” he added. 

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that he expects to receive a classified briefing on the F-35 sale and the status of the S-400 next week.

Asked about the administration’s praise of Erdoğan, Mast said that “Turkey as a whole is a large and important NATO ally.” On Wednesday, the president called the Turkish leader a “very good person,” despite also saying that he would fight “on the Iran side” of the war. 

“I’m not going to go out there and defend Erdoğan in any way, shape or form,” Mast said. “Erdoğan and I don’t have a personal relationship. I think a number of activities by Turkey have been problematic and I have nothing that would make me go out there and personally defend Erdoğan. I have many relationships — that’s not one of them.”

Meanwhile, Schneider expressed concern over Trump’s praise of Erdoğan. 

“I’m worried he [Trump] seems to get close to a lot of leaders who have totalitarian instincts,” Schneider said. “It’s a pattern.” 

Mast’s Democratic counterpart, Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), said he opposed the sale of F-35s to Turkey, warning of its impact on other U.S. allies in the region such as Greece and Cyprus, and also expressed criticism of Erdoğan personally while calling Turkey an important ally with which to maintain conversations.

But Meeks said he’s open to the sale of advanced jet engines to Turkey “if I get my questions answered by the administration,” and expressed frustration that Trump is speaking publicly about the sale without communicating with him as the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a break with precedent.

Sinan Ciddi, director of the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that while Trump appears intent on making the sale, it is likely to meet significant hurdles. For instance, Ciddi confirmed that Turkey still possesses the S-400 defense system, which would not fulfill the obligations required under law to lift the sanctions. 

“Turkey does still maintain the S-400 defense system,” Ciddi said. “We’re not talking about one or two missiles. I believe in total Turkey holds up to 200 air defense missiles that were sold to them by the Russians back in 2019. They are presently sitting under lock and key in Turkish warehouses.” 

Ciddi noted that Turkey has not deployed the S-400s it currently holds as a precautionary measure because it would have “resulted in additional U.S. sanctions against Turkey.” 

He said a major area of concern of selling Turkey F-35s while it still maintains the S-400s is the ability for sensitive information to be shared with U.S. adversaries. 

“The concern is if they don’t get rid of those and the F-35 was delivered to Turkey, or became operational in Turkey, those S-400 systems could collect sensitive information about their stealth capabilities and share them with adversarial powers, such as the Chinese, the Russians, as well as the Iranians.” 

“There’s been a relative consensus in opinion in congress, as well as political administrations, that you want to keep Turkey out of the F-35 program,” he added. 

Ciddi also discussed Trump’s closeness to Erdoğan, arguing that the U.S. has not held Turkey accountable on key issues such as support for terrorism and the Muslim Brotherhood, due to Ankara’s role in helping mediate talks between Israel, Iran and the U.S. as well as in the Russia-Ukraine war. 

“In Trump’s own words, he seems to admire and essentially have a strong affinity for Erdoğan,” Ciddi said, noting that another explanation is that Trump is listening closely to U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack on Turkish issues rather than “what he needs to hear from a variety of voices within his administration.” 

Elliott Abrams, a former Iran envoy during the first Trump administration, also cautioned against the move and Trump’s “soft spot” for Erdogan.

“President Trump has a soft spot for Erdoğan for reasons that no one can understand, but that is no reason to risk American military secrets,” Abrams said. “Turkey has not abandoned the S-400 and therefore should be excluded from the F-35 program. This ought to be simple, because U.S. law is clear.” 

Ciddi also expressed concern on what the potential move might mean for Israel and suggested that Turkey holds considerable military prowess even without the F-35s, although he noted that Israel holds an advantage having operated the F-35s for a longer period of time and also maintaining more sophisticated models. 

“The Israelis are really concerned,” Ciddi said. “The acquisition of an F-35 would be a game changer, but there are significant hurdles ahead of that. Israel already has F-35s and operates them, and the Israeli variant of the F-35 is one of the most advanced and unique versions of the F-35 that is operated, and it’s unique to Israel – no other country possesses and operates the F-35 that has the boutique suite of operating capabilities that the Israelis have, so Israel does maintain a significant qualitative military edge.”

He said that even if the Trump administration authorized the sale, it would likely take years to come together and “would not be an immediate delivery of F-35 units beyond the six that Turkey already purchased back in 2019, which are essentially sitting in U.S. warehouses here and collecting dust.” 

Lawmakers and Middle East analysts are expressing support for Washington’s reported agreement to help Oman strengthen its maritime intelligence and monitoring of transit through the Strait of Hormuz, saying the move could help secure free access to the critical waterway and deter Iranian influence.

Intelligence Online reported that Oman requested U.S. assistance to strengthen its maritime intelligence and provide surveillance on the Strait of Hormuz to protect shipping during the current ceasefire. The Pentagon received the request last month from the Royal Navy of Oman, sources told the outlet, and Washington has agreed to fulfill it by sending a defense contractor to address the immediate surveillance needs.

Throughout the conflict between the U.S. and Iran, Oman has stated it is maintaining its traditional position of neutrality. However, Washington has heavily criticized Muscat for its ongoing backchannel diplomacy with Tehran, calling on the Gulf nation to sever ties and pick a side. 

U.S. officials have also chided Oman for refusing to directly condemn Tehran for drone attacks on regional infrastructure in the Gulf, and the Trump administration previously threatened military action if Muscat cooperated with Iran to impose fees or controls on shipping in the strait. Oman hosted Iranian officials to discuss the “administration” of the strait as recently as Tuesday.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) expressed support for the agreement, assessing that U.S.-Omani cooperation in the strait advances Washington’s interests.

“That would help America,” Kennedy told Jewish Insider. “Therefore, I’m for it. I think it’s great.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that while he did not have independent knowledge of the specifics, he believed closer cooperation is a welcome step.

“Any action that can ensure the strait remains open certainly ought to be welcome,” Blumenthal said. “If the United States can really use Oman’s help, or any other of the Gulf nations, it would be welcome.”

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), however, struck a more skeptical tone.

“Trust but verify,” Burchett said. “I have a hard time trusting anybody in the Middle East right now, so that’s all I can say.”

When asked whether the joint monitoring arrangement could successfully deter Iranian influence or keep the crucial passageway toll-free, Burchett remarked: “I would be wishful for that.”

“The lines change and they get blurred so fast over there,” Burchett added. “I think there’s a new sense of collaboration over there, because a lot of Muslim-leaning countries supported us in our efforts in Iran, so I think they’re sick of the fighting too.”

Analysts said the arrangement is not unusual given the decades-long U.S.-Oman intelligence partnership, but argued it could help repair the countries’ ties, which were strained during the conflict with Iran.

“It’s perfectly in keeping with the Trump administration’s cognitive dissonance to criticize and cooperate with Oman in the same breath,” Jonathan Ruhe, a director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said. “Oman hasn’t been America’s closest Gulf partner, but it long depended on the United States to defend Hormuz against Iran.”

Simon Henderson, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued that “any policy which helps maintain and improve the ties [between the U.S. and Oman] deserves encouragement.”

“The U.S. needs Oman as an ally if it is to make sure that Iran does not dominate the Strait of Hormuz,” Henderson said. “It will be interesting to see whether the current tension is reparable. Oman is very sensitive to U.S. criticism and may well judge that the future represents a different relationship and direction.”

Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted that the arrangement yields intelligence benefits for Washington.

“The U.S. will expect to receive all of the intel generated by the Omani navy on the strait,” Fitton-Brown said. “It also keeps Oman, along with Qatar and Pakistan, as a mediator in future conflicts. Above all, the U.S. ability to manage future negotiations and crises in the strait will be enhanced, and it is likely to be able to dictate what stance Oman adopts in such negotiations and crises.”

Fitton-Brown added that while Oman has tried to behave neutrally, its core relationship of trust remains with the U.S. This assistance gives Muscat “reassurance that the U.S. still has confidence in it as an ally masquerading as neutral.”

“[Oman] was worried during the U.S.-Iran conflict that it might be forced to make an overt choice between the U.S. and GCC, which would have antagonized Iran,” Fitton-Brown noted. “Now Oman expects that it will be able to continue its cordial relations with Iran, and continue to host the Houthis, without angering the U.S.”

Ruhe added that the U.S. may be eager to assist due to the Trump administration’s focus on “anything that restores oil flowing from the Gulf and reverses the war’s economic costs here at home.”

Furthermore, analysts emphasized that enhanced surveillance capabilities allow Oman to safeguard its own sovereignty against Iran’s aspirations in the strait.

“Oman probably seeks to ensure that it is at least an equal partner with Iran in arrangements over the passage through the strait,” Henderson said.

Fitton-Brown agreed, noting that the Omanis are “trying to understand the future status of the strait and need all the help they can get.”

“The focus is the Strait of Hormuz, which is likely because of Iranian assertiveness in the strait which infringes upon Omani national security,” Fitton-Brown said. “The Omani navy does not lack capability but is looking for enhancement, particularly in the fields of real-time surveillance and fusion of data from different forms of intelligence collection, including open source. The requirement will be for a training program, which can be provided by a U.S. contractor with an intelligence background.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are expressing frustration that President Donald Trump directed Jay Clayton, his nominee to be director of national intelligence, not to appear at a scheduled confirmation hearing on Wednesday afternoon, upending plans for the Senate to quickly confirm Clayton and renew lapsed federal surveillance authorities.

“It’s regrettable that the president has directed Jay Clayton not to appear at his confirmation hearing today,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on X, announcing the hearing was postponed after initially indicating he planned for it to continue despite Trump’s objections. “Mr. Clayton is a patriot and a highly qualified nominee, as the president has said repeatedly. While today’s hearing is now unfortunately postponed, I look forward to proceeding with his confirmation in the near future.”

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said he agreed with Cotton, while Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said that if Trump was aware of the consequences of his decision to pull Clayton from the hearing and went ahead anyway, “he made a colossal mistake.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that she was “surprised” by Trump’s decision to upend Clayton’s confirmation and “concerned that this slows down the renewal of FISA, which is vital to our national security,” referring to foreign surveillance authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) said that it’s Trump’s “prerogative” to pull Clayton from the hearing “but it complicates” matters on the Hill.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-ND) said he was still confident that the nomination would move through eventually, but “it may take a little bit longer, it may delay some things, it puts the country at risk, because FISA 702 is really important.”

“If that goes dark on us because we don’t have it extended, that’s a serious problem that our Democrat colleagues have got to wrestle with,” Rounds continued. “So they need to come around on this particular issue. But at the same time, the sooner we get Jay Clayton, who is absolutely the right guy for the job right now … that takes care of a lot of the other issues.”

The Senate had been attempting to confirm Clayton before Friday, when federal housing chief Bill Pulte, whom lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized as unqualified for the position of DNI, is set to take the reins at the agency.

At a press conference, Senate Democrats blasted Trump for again interfering in bipartisan plans and said they’re unclear whether Clayton’s nomination will proceed.

“It’s on our Republican colleagues to work with us to find a capable director, not someone who’s a menace, and second, then to work with us on renewing FISA,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, demanding that that Senate Republicans “have the courage to buck the president who clearly doesn’t want a DNI director and doesn’t want FISA renewed, all he wants is Pulte.”

Asked for clarity, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, told Jewish Insider that he is “not sure whether Jay Clayton has simply been postponed or withdrawn. I wonder whether Jay Clayton knows whether he has been postponed or withdrawn.”

Warner said that “‘debacle’ [is] an understatement” to describe the current state of play, and warned that having Pulte in the role could further endanger intelligence sharing by U.S. allies, which he said has already been put at risk by outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Schumer warned that providing Pulte with further authorities by renewing Section 702 would be “dangerous to America.”

President Donald Trump’s declaration that the U.S. “must, of necessity, respond” to Iran’s downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter off the coast of Oman on Monday evening received support from GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, several of whom called for a powerful military retaliation.

U.S. officials confirmed to CNN that the attack helicopter — whose pilots Trump said were successfully rescued — was brought down by an Iranian one-way attack drone. The high-stakes incident marks the most serious uptick in direct hostilities between Washington and Tehran in weeks, occurring amid diplomatic efforts to end the regional war and begin negotiations to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.

“I agree with the president, there should be significant consequences,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Jewish Insider.

“Enough is enough,” Cruz later wrote on X. “President Trump and our Armed Forces decimated Iran militarily, but the Iranian regime has been trying to rebuild and now they’ve taken down an American Apache. President Trump is absolutely right. There is a pressing necessity for the U.S. to respond to this attack.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, also called for a powerful response, urging Trump to look at “meaningful options.”

“We need to vigorously respond,” Rogers said. “We can’t let anybody shoot down one of our helicopters and it not be responded to.”

Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) similarly pushed for “decisive action” in order to put the looming Iranian threat “behind us.”

“I think America would be in a better place if we had this behind us and clear, decisive action that would bring an absolute end to this so we don’t have to do it again,” Budd told JI. “They [Iran] cannot persist to threaten us and then develop nuclear weapons. … They should never ever have a nuclear weapon.”

While some regional experts agreed that the Iranian attack necessitates a firm U.S. military reaction, they argued that any such response is likely to be limited in scope and is not anticipated to trigger a return to full combat operations, nor is it expected to derail ongoing negotiations given the president’s focus on a diplomatic exit.

“If information is correct, that Iran shot down a U.S. helicopter, then the president is correct, the United States does need to respond,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who later served as deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Biden administration. “That’s a very serious attack, which thankfully did not seem to take the lives of the two aviators, but it needs a response.”

Shapiro noted that while U.S. action is necessary, the retaliation will likely be calibrated to avoid escalation, as Trump remains intensely “motivated” to secure a broader deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“U.S. Central Command will be able to give [Trump] options that will include a meaningful response against an Iranian military target, but one that does not necessarily produce a strong Iranian response that leads to an escalatory cycle,” Shapiro explained. “If he wants to succeed in negotiations, say, on the war, he needs to respond, but do it in a way that leads to a de-escalation.”

Alexander Gray, who served as chief of staff on the National Security Council during Trump’s first administration, also anticipates a precise, “proportional blow against key Iranian targets.”

“The president has responsibly maintained considerable American military power in the vicinity of Iran, both conducting the U.S. Navy’s successful blockade, but also being held in reserve should the need arise to continue kinetic military operations,” Gray said. “The president will likely strike a proportional blow against key Iranian targets, while keeping in mind the broader American strategic imperative of concluding this conflict with a diplomatic solution that advances American interests in the region.”

Steven Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, agreed that failing to respond would be a political and strategic impossibility for the White House.

“It would be hard for the president not to respond, though I suspect that this is not a return to combat,” Cook observed. “Trump will likely direct CENTCOM to take out one or several high-value targets.”

Analysts noted that the exchange is unlikely to impact the high-level talks or alter the calculations of either side, as negotiators continue to work out an agreement.

“It doesn’t necessarily push a deal further off the table,” Shapiro said. “It sounds like negotiators are close to a deal. Until there is a deal, though, exchanges in a ceasefire that has seen numerous violations of it are not surprising, but if both sides are motivated to get a deal, this will not prevent it from happening.”

Cook said that a minor strike could solidify Tehran’s perception of American vulnerability.

“I don’t believe that a tit-for-tat exchange will significantly alter Iran’s view that it has time on its hands and that the president is desperate for a deal,” Cook said. “It seems clear that the president does not want anything to upset negotiations and the chances of a negotiated way out of the conflict. The Iranians do not seem willing to give him anything that he could call a victory, however. The result is likely to be a continued stalemate.”

Iran has similarly appeared to prefer a diplomatic exit over renewed escalation. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Tuesday said that Iranian leaders “prefer language of diplomacy but speak other languages too.”

“Foreign forces in proximity to our territory are at constant risk on account of their own human errors, plain accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire,” Araghchi posted on X following the incident. “To reduce risk, best solution is for them to leave.”

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former State Department negotiator, said the incident reflects a “manifestation of how emboldened [the Iranians] are and how willing they are to take risks.”

While Miller warned against a heightened response, he noted that even restrained exchanges could lead to eventual escalation if a final diplomatic breakthrough is not reached soon. 

“If [Trump] doesn’t [limit the response], then what he’s going to trip into is a very hard response if he goes after directly Iranian targets on the mainland,” Miller warned. “The longer this goes on without having an agreement, it’s inevitable that this is going to escalate.”

The core parameters of a potential deal have been “evident for quite some time,” Miller added, but concluded it will ultimately require a painful political calculation from both Washington and Tehran. 

“Both sides must be prepared to accept a situation in which they’re going to perceive to have given something up,” Miller said. 

Senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod contributed reporting

As the Trump administration prepares to submit a proposed civil nuclear pact with Saudi Arabia to Congress, U.S. lawmakers are raising concerns about the potential agreement while nonproliferation experts and former Trump administration officials are sounding the alarm, warning that the pact abandons traditional safeguards and could ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Last month, the Trump administration proposed the pact to assist Saudi Arabia with its development of civilian nuclear power, following indications last year that it would pursue such an agreement to strengthen bilateral diplomatic ties. Experts say the White House is looking to construct and operate a uranium enrichment plant within Saudi Arabia, safeguarding the facility through a bilateral framework.

The pact is currently undergoing final review before President Donald Trump can formally submit it to Congress. Once the president signs the agreement and transmits it to Capitol Hill, both chambers will have 90 days to pass resolutions of disapproval to block the deal. Otherwise, the pact will automatically go into effect, permitting the U.S. to share civilian nuclear power technology with the kingdom.

Experts told Jewish Insider that the agreement in its current form would not require Riyadh to adhere to the nonproliferation “gold standard” – a commitment to forgo domestic uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing. Other regional partners, such as the United Arab Emirates, accepted this stringent safeguard in past U.S. deals specifically to prevent military or illicit nuclear activity. 

The proposed pact would also exempt Riyadh from accepting the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) “additional protocol.” This accord helps rule out clandestine military activities by granting international inspectors the authority to conduct sudden, unannounced visits to nuclear facilities. While the U.S. maintains numerous nuclear cooperation agreements globally, it rarely establishes them with nations that reject these baseline oversight protocols.

Democrats across the ideological spectrum have previously indicated concern over the potential civil nuclear pact, reflecting a historical trend in which Congress has typically supported a stringent nonproliferation policy toward Saudi Arabia that includes robust safeguards.

In May, a dozen Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking that the administration follow strict U.N.-backed protocol, including IAEA inspection. However, in a letter from the State Department to Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA), the administration only indicated that the agreement would require the two sides to commit to a “bilateral safeguards agreement,” and did not make a mention of the “gold standard,” according to Reuters. 

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) told JI he was concerned about the administration pushing forward the agreement without safeguards, saying that “there’s only one reason not to have non-militarization safeguards and that’s militarization.”

“The idea that allowing Saudi Arabia to move toward a nuclear weapon defies history,” Sherman said. “A Saudi nuclear weapon leads to worldwide proliferation. Egypt and Turkey would feel that they need to match that, and then where’s Argentina and Brazil going to be?”

Sherman emphasized that Saudi Arabia should follow an agreement that mimics a 2009 nuclear agreement between the U.S. and UAE, in which the vital safeguard standard was followed.

“The UAE signed the good agreement. Why the hell can’t the Saudis sign the same agreement?” he said, noting that UAE would likely follow and “get out of the gold standard too,” in the event the pact goes through. 

In February, Sherman, a longtime opponent of nuclear cooperation between the U.S. and Riyadh, announced that he would be introducing legislation to require an affirmative congressional vote prior to the administration finalizing any nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. 

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said he had heard about the discussions, but declined to comment on whether he would support the agreement in its current format. The Florida lawmaker, however, expressed little concern over the U.S. sharing civilian nuclear power with Riyadh or other regional players, calling the subject “fair to discuss.” Though he noted that such a deal should ultimately be tied to the “Abraham Accords framework.”

“I think it’s something that is fair to discuss, but also that’s why Iran not getting a nuclear weapon is such a big deal, because that will start a nuclear arms race,” Moskowitz said.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) declined to comment on whether he had reviewed or would support the potential pact, but expressed a firm desire to limit the expansion of nuclear weapons in the region.

“We can’t have anybody else over there [in the Middle East] with nuclear weapons,” Burchett said.

When asked about the potential deal by JI, several Senate Republicans indicated they were unfamiliar with the plan. Other lawmakers, including Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), also noted they had not yet heard much regarding the potential agreement, stating they would need to look into the matter further.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), however, said he was not concerned about the agreement breaking the “gold standard.”

“I don’t necessarily assume that would break the gold standard on it,” Lankford said. “The biggest issue is where is the uranium coming from and who’s actually producing it, and where are they stored?”

While it was previously thought that a civil nuclear agreement would be linked to Saudi normalization with Israel, the Trump administration has notably uncoupled the two initiatives. In May 2025, a group of nine Jewish House Democrats wrote to Trump to voice their displeasure over the separation of the two objectives.

Meanwhile, analysts continue to express deep concern over the arrangement in its current format, citing that the lack of safeguards could create severe risks to national security and set a poor precedent for current and future U.S. nuclear cooperation frameworks. 

“The U.S. should be helping other countries with nuclear power but should strongly avoid helping them learn the fuel cycle and move closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon,” Elliott Abrams, an Iran envoy under the first Trump administration, said. “The gold standard remains our agreement with the UAE, where they agree not to enrich uranium. There is no reason the Saudis have to enrich uranium and the U.S. should not agree to it.”

Abrams called it “ironic” that the U.S. would remain locked in a confrontation with Iran over the threat of its nuclear weapons program while simultaneously considering “helping one of its neighbors enrich uranium.” He noted that the fallout from such a deal would inevitably compromise existing agreements and future negotiations with other Arab partners.

Experts also worry the concessions could undermine Washington’s strategic partnership with Abu Dhabi and incentivize other nations to pursue similar proliferation pathways.

“If we agree to this in the Saudi case, we will be abandoning a longstanding position and every deal we do after that will have to allow enrichment,” Abrams said. “In fact, we will have to renegotiate the UAE agreement as well.”

Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), similarly expressed that the format of the deal could “undermine cooperation” with the UAE even as the Gulf state emerges as “America’s most valuable partner in the Gulf.”

He also cautioned that the pact could “threaten the global nonproliferation regime and raise the risks of a regional proliferation cascade.” Other experts joined in warning that bending established rules for Saudi Arabia could shift the calculus of neighboring states, prompting a rush to acquire enrichment and reprocessing capabilities.

“The fear is that other countries – Egypt, Turkey and the UAE – would use enrichment technology to develop the potential to make a nuclear weapon,” Simon Henderson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said. Additionally, while the UAE has already agreed to the “gold standard,” Henderson said that commitment could “change if other regional countries obtain the technology.”

Critics have also argued that Saudi Arabia could eventually seek to manufacture a nuclear weapon of its own. While Riyadh is a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) — which legally obligates the kingdom not to manufacture or acquire nuclear arms — several Saudi officials have explicitly stated in recent years that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the kingdom would follow suit.

Andrea Stricker, director of the nonproliferation program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), said that the current U.S. approach “undermines decades of U.S. nonproliferation policy” and could allow Saudi Arabia with “the option to make fuel for nuclear weapons.”

“If the Saudis have access to the technology, and combined with weak IAEA inspections, they could build parallel covert capabilities. There is also little to stop Riyadh from ejecting U.S. officials from a plant and taking over,” Stricker said. “President Trump should stop this historic mistake before it is finalized, and if not, Congress should block the agreement.”

Ruhe shared similar concerns about Saudi Arabia’s potential long-term intentions. 

“Such a deal raises real concerns that the kingdom would one day decide to slip free of the U.S. deal and enrich uranium on its own, either openly or secretly,” Ruhe said. “Given its past ties, this could include covert cooperation with Pakistan or China.”

Saudi Arabia has previously entered into several bilateral civil nuclear arrangements with foreign nations, including Argentina, France, Hungary, Kazakhstan, and South Korea. Of greater concern to Washington, however, are Riyadh’s active agreements with Russia and China. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has steadily expanded its nuclear cooperation with Beijing. The two U.S. adversaries are capable of providing similar nuclear products to Riyadh without the same strict demands and nonproliferation commitments.

“Washington appears to want to sell civil nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia rather than allow a country like Russia or China to do so,” Henderson said. “The fear is that Saudi Arabia already has enrichment technology obtained from Pakistan and doesn’t want to give it up. Since Iran already has enrichment technology, Saudi Arabia thinks it deserves the same.”

U.S.–Saudi nuclear cooperation has historically remained limited. The two nations entered into a memorandum of understanding in 2008 that provided for low-level nuclear energy cooperation and later signed a nuclear safety cooperation memorandum of understanding in 2022. 

“With Iran’s enrichment program degraded due to U.S. and Israeli strikes, it would be far sounder policy to continue rolling back Tehran’s efforts and insist the Saudis rule out enrichment and reprocessing and maintain control of the spread of this sensitive technology in a proliferation-sensitive region,” Stricker said. “The United States should also remind the Saudis of extensive economic, military, and defensive support that Washington provides, assistance which should not be available if Riyadh tilts toward China.”

Some lawmakers are warning that the past terrorist ties of Adam Hamawy, the Democratic nominee in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District expected to be elected to the House in November, could pose a national security risk and that he should be barred from serving on sensitive committees working on national security issues.

Hamawy was an associate of convicted terrorist mastermind Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the Blind Sheikh, and testified in Abdel-Rahman’s defense when he was on trial for his involvement in a series of terrorist attacks in New York City. Hamawy also volunteered for the Benevolence International Foundation, a charity operating in Bosnia that was later shuttered as an al-Qaida front.

He also volunteered at the European Hospital in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas, denying when he returned that there was any terrorist activity at the hospital or any tunnels underneath it. Israel killed Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar in a tunnel system under the hospital.

Members of Congress are exempt from usual security clearance vetting procedures applied to other federal officials, and all members are able to access certain House-wide classified briefings.

But members serving on several key committees touching on national security and foreign policy, such as the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, have more regular access to a much wider range of classified briefings and information. Caucus leadership is responsible for assigning committee posts.

Some of Hamawy’s potential future colleagues — largely Republicans — say that Hamawy should be barred from those committee postings if he’s elected. As a military veteran and having focused much of his campaign on foreign policy issues, Hamawy would ordinarily be a likely candidate for such committee assignments.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the former chair of the Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees and a former U.S. attorney focused on counterterrorism and national security, told Jewish Insider that Hamawy “should be barred from any national security committee.”

“The Blind Sheikh, Ramsey Youssef, the ‘93 World Trade Center bombing — the original plot was to hit 12 Jewish synagogues simultaneously, symbolic of the 12 tribes of Israel,” McCaul said, “and so anybody that’s tied to that should never be elected to Congress, and if he is, I think should never serve on a national security committee — because then you get access to classified information.”

In a statement to JI, a campaign spokesperson said, “Hamawy’s entire career and life have been defined by his patriotism and deep love of this country,” and emphasized that he was in the military during the time of the Blind Sheikh trial.

“As a witness, he performed his civic and legal duty to testify truthfully under oath and contribute to the system of laws and justice he defended while serving our country in the Army,” the statement, similar to ones the campaign has provided in the past, continued. “At the time, the man in question was one of very few religious figures in what was then a very small Muslim community in New Jersey — he saw him speak in religious settings in his early 20s. Dr. Hamawy condemns that man’s violent rhetoric and actions, and all violence, hatred, and terrorism — and he will always. Dr. Hamawy had no contact with this person after they were arrested.”

The campaign also dismissed reporting on his relationship with the Blind Sheikh as “bad-faith, guilt-by-association attacks” started by a “designated hate [group].”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said that Hamawy’s eligibility for national security posts “obviously … has to be a conversation we’ll have to have once we get past the general election.”

He also referenced his concerns about state Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democratic nominee in Philadelphia, and said that Democrats should hold Rabb to the same standard as former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — after she shared “false flag” theories about the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting — for sharing a false flag conspiracy theory about the mass shooting at a Hanukkah gathering at Sydney’s Bondi Beach last December.

Rabb has disavowed and condemned the Bondi Beach post shared by his Instagram account, attributing it to a campaign contractor who has since been dismissed.

“We want to win elections, we want to win the House, we want to win the Senate,” Moskowitz said. “But expanding the tent to the point where we’re taking people in that don’t really share our values, I think, is a long-term mistake.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told reporters he has “significant concerns when you have somebody who affirmatively testified for the defense in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and volunteered for an organization that was a front for al-Qaida.”

He said that Hamawy’s past “raises significant questions that, frankly, I think he has not adequately addressed,” and that if Hamawy is elected, “there needs to be an investigation into his ties to these incidents and organizations, and that’s something that I don’t think people should take likely.”

Lawler stopped short of saying that Hamawy should be disqualified from service on any national security committee, saying again that there should be a “thorough investigation” and that he “certainly would have significant concerns about him serving on any committee, let alone in Congress.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) said on X that “there is no way [Hamawy] can have a security clearance. National security risk.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who congratulated Hamawy on Tuesday evening for his victory — as he traditionally does for Democratic House nominees around the country — told The Free Press on Wednesday that he hasn’t yet had a conversation with Hamawy about his past affiliations, but planned to speak to him some time on Wednesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on X, “Not even ties to terrorists are too extreme for the modern day Democrat Party.”

A series of largely Democratic lawmakers painted an unusually dire portrait of the state of rising antisemitism and threats to the Jewish community in remarks at an Anti-Defamation League reception honoring Jewish American Heritage Month on Capitol Hill on Tuesday evening.

Several emphasized the need for those in the audience, many of them young Jewish congressional staffers and Washington professionals, to continue speaking out and fighting for the Jewish community in a time of crisis.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the retiring former No. 2 House Democrat, said that antisemitism has escalated to the point that Jews are no longer guaranteed safety in the United States.

“There were two places in the world where Jews felt really safe. One, of course, was Israel, and the second was the United States of America,” Hoyer said. “That’s not true today, and that is a sad statement of what’s going on in the country today. So you all need to be involved. You all need to when you see something that’s not right, not fair, not just stand up, speak up and make a difference.”

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA) emphasized that efforts to fight antisemitism have often been met with additional hostility.

“It is a very scary time for the Jewish community,” Friedman said. “And to make matters worse, when we express that we’re scared and that there’s this rising level of hatred directed towards the Jewish community, we’re often met with people telling us that we’re not allowed to feel that way. And how dare we even say that there’s anything wrong with treatment towards Jews in this country?”

She offered as an example of “how bad it’s gotten” that her synagogue was graffitied this year with a swastika, and that she ended up in an argument online with local activists “who were trying to tell me why it was appropriate for people to put swastikas on the sides of buildings in the Jewish part of Los Angeles, where there are Holocaust survivors still living, why they thought that was OK and not antisemitic.”

Friedman used as another example a recent ad created by a super PAC backing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in his reelection race attacking a Jewish conservative donor, Paul Singer, who is supporting Massie’s opponent, which prominently featured a graphic of a Jewish star alongside the Singer’s face.

“A super PAC thought it was totally fine to do a hit on a candidate by showing one of their donors and by flashing a Jewish star behind that donor to let everyone know that, ‘Hey, if everything else we’ve said about this candidate isn’t convincing enough, they have a donor who’s Jewish,’” Friedman said.

“I don’t think anyone can sit this one out and you all being here is part of that effort, so thank you … for showing up, thanks for the work you do,” she concluded.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who is running for Senate in Michigan and has faced attacks over her support for Israel and ties to the Jewish community, said that she would not “sugarcoat” the situation, explaining that “the faces of hate in this country have morphed into violent extremism,” with an increasing pace of violent attacks targeting the Jewish community, including in her own district.

“Extremist words matter. They absolutely matter,” Stevens said.

She also maintained that she is “unequivocal in declaring that I am very much a proud Zionist” in spite of facing attacks for that stance. “When I show my face in my community, every so often [I] get chased out because of violent extremism, because people feel so emboldened to shout at me that I am a ‘Zionist pig.’ That cannot be acceptable.”

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), whose congressional district was recently carved up by Tennessee Republicans, likely ending his career, warned that prejudice is still a real and very active problem. 

He recounted a story of when he ran for governor in 1994: “I went to a little radio station in Dixon, Tenn. — one person radio station, gravel road. [I] came in, talked to the man for a while and he said, ‘Son, you Jewish?’ I said, ‘Yes sir.’ He said, ‘Good luck,’” Cohen recounted. “It ain’t changed a lot since then. Be careful. There’s a lot of mamzers out there. They don’t know us, but they don’t like us,” he said, using the Hebrew word for bastard.

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) said that it is “obviously a very bad time” for the American Jewish community and “in my opinion, it’s going to get a lot worse.” He urged the crowd “to lead through such difficult, chaotic, awful times.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) lambasted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as emboldening and encouraging antisemitism.

“We see a mayor in New York City who has, in many respects, OKed his supporters engaging in antisemitic hate, engaging in conduct that threatens Jewish students and Jewish lives,” Lawler added. “We see these protests happening outside places of worship — these are real issues that we have to combat.”

He also emphasized that antisemitic influencers like Hasan Piker, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have been using antisemitism as a “grift” and playing on hatred to “make a buck” and create further division. 

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) said that it is “unacceptably scary to be a Jew in the United States” and that the country is “violating the core promise that George Washington made” to the Jewish community in Rhode Island in 1790 that the country would be one of religious freedom and pluralism.

Auchincloss highlighted his efforts in Congress to combat antisemitism on social media, describing platforms as having become “failed societies online. It’s become so toxic, it’s become so rotten on these platforms that antisemitism is mushrooming as a symptom of something that is deeply rotten underneath.”

Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA) said that Jews are “all feeling so threatened right now” and emphasized the need for broader understanding of antisemitism.

“They need to understand that anti-Zionism is kind of a new iteration [of antisemitism], if you don’t want another country wiped off the map,” Schrier said. “And I just think we all need to recognize that we all need to call it out, whether it’s in our party or another party.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that “antisemitism and racism are the gateway to the destruction of liberal democracy” and that “the extremism, the fascism, the racism and the antisemitism” are infecting politics in the U.S. and around the world.

He praised Hungary as an example of a country that had been able to buck such trends, ousting its longtime right-wing government.

Several of the lawmakers who addressed the group also offered remembrances about Abe Foxman, the former longtime ADL leader who died last weekend.

“We’re all thinking about Abe Foxman right now, who looms over this room in a powerful way and taught us so much,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said. “I think what he taught us most was to be courageous, to fight, to never back down. That’s my ask of you. It’s tough out there, by the way. The harder they hit us, the more fight I feel.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said that Foxman was “a giant, a hero of mine, hero of so many, and really built this organization practically from the ground up.” She said she’d been stunned by his death, having spoken to him at a Holocaust remembrance event at the Capitol just weeks ago.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also urged those in attendance to follow Foxman’s model, and emphasized the need for additional funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.

In a statement, Lauren Wolman, ADL’s senior director of government relations and strategy, said the group was “honored to host our annual Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM) reception celebrating Jewish Members of Congress and congressional staff.”

“At a time when many of these dedicated public servants are navigating rising antisemitism and growing challenges on Capitol Hill, the reception served as an important opportunity to celebrate their work and create a space for Jewish professionals to come together in community, connect with one another, and feel supported,” Wolman continued.

Lawmakers said that the United Arab Emirates’ decision to withdraw from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could yield positive economic benefits for the U.S. and is a sign that the regional alignment of the Gulf countries is shifting.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told Jewish Insider that the recent move shows “the continued fragmentation of the Gulf Cooperation Council and of the relations between our Gulf partners as Saudi and the Emirates are pursuing different security paths.”

“I think it is a reminder that the Gulf is under enormous pressure because Iranian attacks have knocked out a fair amount of oil and gas production capability,” Coons said. “The closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues to threaten the stability of their economies, and some of the underlying tensions between our allies and partners in the region are becoming more evident.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told JI he was “trying to understand” what the move would mean, noting that if the UAE “wouldn’t be limited in terms of what they can produce into the world’s oil supply,” it would be a positive development.

“That would probably be a good thing in terms of increasing the supply and hopefully bringing down prices,” Cornyn said. “I think all they [OPEC countries] care about is themselves. As long as they can make money, they’ll do it. And they’re a cartel. We call them a cartel for a reason, but I think right now, more supply would be good and hopefully bring down gas prices.” 

OPEC, which coordinates production policies among major oil producers to influence global supply and prices, is de facto led by Saudi Arabia with members including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela and Algeria.

Cornyn added that he believes Iran has, through the course of the war, “done an amazing thing, which is to unify a bunch of countries in the Gulf that used to try to fight each other.”

“I’m hopeful after the Strait of Hormuz is open — which I think President [Donald] Trump should not stop until that happens — that we’ll hopefully see an increased normalization of relationships between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” Cornyn said. “And it looks to me like it could end up being a really positive thing in the long run.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also said that Abu Dhabi’s departure from OPEC “may signal that the cohesion of OPEC is splintering and its power may be lessening … and there may be a freer market ahead.” 

Experts said that the UAE has considered making such a move in the past, but it was the ongoing war with Iran that accelerated Abu Dhabi’s decision to break from the bloc and chart a more independent path. 

Analysts also conveyed that the shift reflects both long-standing economic frustrations within OPEC and a broader geopolitical recalibration following the conflict — one that is likely to strengthen the UAE’s ties with the United States and Israel while widening its divide with Saudi Arabia.

“The political and economic predicates for this move have been building for a while, and events of the last two months accelerated the decision,” said Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

Ruhe noted that the UAE had long been constrained by OPEC production quotas, often “bearing the brunt” of cuts while other members failed to comply.

“All of this foregone revenue could have been spent on further diversifying the Emirati economy and pursuing ambitions to be a world leader in AI and other technologies,” Ruhe said, adding that tensions were compounded by political strains with Saudi Arabia over regional issues including conflicts in Yemen, Sudan and Israel.

“The UAE’s spare production capacity is at an even greater premium now, and it can bypass the Strait of Hormuz with some of these seaborne exports. And with no production cap, it can invest more in additional Hormuz bypass routes,” he added. 

While those pressures have existed for years, experts said the Iran war proved to be a turning point. Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the UAE was “dismayed” by the lack of response from regional organizations during the conflict, particularly after Iranian strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure.

“The UAE was expecting at least some sort of move by OPEC to denounce all the strikes against energy facilities from a fellow OPEC member [Iran], and this didn’t happen,” Abdul-Hussain said, with a similar dynamic occurring in the Arab League. 

Experts said the fallout from the war is also expected to bring the UAE closer to Washington and Jerusalem. Abdul-Hussain pointed to reports that Israel deployed an Iron Dome battery to the UAE during the conflict — a potential sign that the nations could share increased goodwill moving forward.

“The UAE has been adamant on saying that they will not forget those who took their side in the war, and they will not forget those who didn’t take their side,” Abdul-Hussain said. “On Israel, I think [their ties] … will grow much, much stronger moving forward.”

Beyond shifting regional ties, Abdul-Hussain said the move is likely to be welcomed by Washington, noting that in “the United States, regardless of who’s in the White House, we don’t like OPEC.” 

“We call them an oil cartel,” he added. “They try to regulate oil prices and not always in our favor. So we’ll be happy to see the market play its role without having someone putting their thumb on the scale.”

Abdul-Hussain also noted that Saudi Arabia was “always trying to control the price of the market.” He said that the UAE’s decision “undermines the positions of both Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

“Before the war with Iran broke out, a schism had shown between the Saudis and the Emiratis,” Abdul-Hussain said. “Some thought that the war would bring them closer together, but I think the war didn’t, because you could see that the posture during the war and after the war was completely opposite.”

Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, echoed that “differences over strategy confronting Iran is driving the Gulf states in different directions.” She added that the UAE is willing to chart its own path, free from deference to Saudi Arabia. “I expect this will extend to other Arab and Islamic multilateral organizations as well.”

Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Abu Dhabi’s decision is a reflection of a broader regional realignment underway in which there will be “roughly two different blocs.” He noted in a statement that one such bloc might consist of “Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Kenya, Greece, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Somaliland, maybe Lebanon and Egypt,” with another consisting of “Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.”

“You have discussions among the Turks, Saudis, Egyptians and Pakistanis for a security pact. This is a long-held dream among Turkish Islamists and the others seem interested. On the other hand, the Emiratis, Israel and the rest are drawing closer to each other,” Cook said. “This does not bode well for regional integration that the Saudis, Americans, Israelis and others have been seeking, but CENTCOM will hold the GCC Plus and Israel together on security issues so it won’t be a total split,” Cook said.

Saying that funding to protect synagogues and other religious-based nonprofits “has not kept pace to meet the moment,” 41 senators — almost entirely Democrats — wrote to leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee urging members to provide $750 million in funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program in 2027.

That figure amounts to a substantial increase in funding over current levels, as well as over Senate lawmakers’ request from last year.

The program was funded in 2025 at $274.5 million, which has not yet been disbursed, and the still-stalled 2026 Homeland Security funding bill includes $300 million for the program. Yet, in 2024, the program fulfilled just 43% of requests, even with additional funding provided through a national security supplemental bill that year. Jewish and interfaith groups, as well as House lawmakers, have been pushing for up to $1 billion for the program.

Last year, 33 senators requested $500 million for the program, a record-high request at the time. This year’s request represents a new high-water mark, both in terms of the funding requested and the number of lawmakers who signed the bipartisan letter in support.

“The threat of violence is unfortunately increasing at places of worship across our country at alarming rates. In the past few years, there has been an increase in hoax bomb threats and attacks against houses of worship that are intended to interrupt services and intimidate worshippers. In particular, there has been an increase in antisemitic incidents across the country following the October 7th attack on Israel,” the senators wrote. “Nationwide, there have been countless acts of violence against religious communities.”

The lawmakers also urged the Appropriations Committee to “maintain separate line-items for this program,” amid reports that the administration has been pushing to convert Federal Emergency Management Agency grant programs, under which NSGP falls, into a broad state-by-state block grant.

The administration also called for cuts to non-emergency FEMA grants, a category that includes NSGP, without making any specific line-item request for the NSGP.

“[F]unding has not kept pace to meet the moment,” the lawmakers added, highlighting a litany of attacks on religious institutions and the funding shortages in 2024.

The letter was led by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), James Lankford (R-OK), Gary Peters (D-MI) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV). Only two Republicans other than Lankford joined the effort: Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Josh Hawley (R-MO).

“As we continue to work with Congress to secure Jewish communities, the bipartisan consensus in the Senate around $750 million for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program is a monumental step toward our community’s $1 billion goal,” Eric Fingerhut, the CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said. “At a time of rising antisemitism and an escalating security crisis facing vulnerable communities across the country, demand continues to far outpace available funding.” 

Fingerhut said that JFNA plans to bring Jewish activists from across the country to lobby Congress on the issue next month “and urge them to act with urgency and resolve to ensure at-risk institutions have the resources they need before the next incident, not after.”

Lauren Wolman, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior director of government relations and strategy, said, “At a time of sustained and evolving threats, this program remains a critical lifeline for houses of worship and nonprofit institutions working to protect their communities. Demand continues to far outpace available resources, and we urge Congress to ensure funding levels reflect the reality on the ground.”

Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, said, “The need for increased NSGP funding remains critical. We are thankful to the large bipartisan group of Senators who signed onto this letter.”

“OU Advocacy will keep pressing on all fronts to deliver the funding our Shuls and schools need to stay safe,” Diament continued.

The first round of direct talks between Israel and Lebanon has been received positively by diplomats, pro-Israel lawmakers and experts, who see it as a sign of Hezbollah’s waning influence in Lebanon. But despite the optimism surrounding the discussions, experts caution that disarming the terrorist group remains a daunting obstacle that stands in the way of any meaningful change — one that would require a significant shift from the Lebanese government and its armed forces.

On Tuesday, Israeli and Lebanese leadership convened at the State Department in Washington for the highest-level direct discussions in more than 30 years, aiming to outline a framework for “lasting peace” and a “permanent end” to Hezbollah’s influence, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) told Jewish Insider that “it is great” that talks are taking place, expressing hope that “the Lebanese government, the United States and the Israeli government make a deal, and collectively, they push Hezbollah out.”

“That way the Lebanese people can be freed from the Iranian extremism that they have in their country,” Moskowitz said. “The Lebanese people are being held captive by the Iranian government because of Hezbollah. It’s obviously good for the United States, it’s good for Israel, but more importantly, I think it’s good for the people of Lebanon. I think disarming Hezbollah is obviously key to all this.”

Moskowitz added that while the Lebanese government appears to want to disarm Hezbollah, “they probably need help.”

“It’s not going to happen overnight, but I think it’s historic, and this is what the entire region wants,” he said. “This is what the Gulf states want. Everybody wants to come out of the extremism and the terrorism that Iran is trying to spread in the region.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) similarly told JI that Hezbollah disarmament is an important factor in talks. 

“Why would you have talks if they [Hezbollah] are not going to disarm?” Scott said. “I’m not the prime minister of Israel but my condition would be that Hezbollah has got to disarm.”

Scott dismissed the notion that the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Armed Forces have not done enough to disarm the group, stating that the main problem is “not caused by Lebanon or by the military of Lebanon, it’s caused by Hezbollah.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that disarming Hezbollah should be a “red line” for Israel in talks. He added that Israel “needs a buffer zone so Hezbollah can’t continue to rain down terror on Israelis.”

“Hezbollah has historically been the best trained, best equipped opponents to Israel,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said. “Israel’s done a great job with them over the last two years, but they’re hardcore fervent believers in destroying Israel.” 

Experts similarly described the talks as a meaningful development. John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, called the discussions an “important breakthrough” and a sign of Hezbollah’s diminishing influence.

“Everyone should welcome the opening of a direct political dialogue between Israel and Lebanon,” Hannah said. “The fact that [the talks are] occurring at all is an important sign of Hezbollah’s declining hegemony over the Lebanese state.”

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, described the talks as a “win-win-win” in a social media post, adding that Hezbollah emerged as a “big loser.”

“Today is a day to celebrate — we all saw a glimpse of what is possible after so much violence and conflict,” Satloff wrote on Tuesday. “That is a very good thing.”

Still, experts say disarming Hezbollah, which parties agree is necessary for any lasting piece, remains highly difficult and uncertain.

Even before Tuesday’s opening round of discussions, Hezbollah senior member Wafiq Safa said Hezbollah is “not bound” by any deals reached between Israel, Lebanon and the United States.

“It’s hard to be an optimist when it comes to the core question of Hezbollah’s disarmament,” Hannah said. “Even after all that’s been done over the past few years to weaken the group and its Iranian sponsors — including the loss of its legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of Lebanese — it’s not at all apparent that the raw balance of forces inside Lebanon has shifted sufficiently to favor Hezbollah’s near-term demise.”

Hannah described disarming Hezbollah as “worth trying,” but ultimately a “long shot.”

“Since the war against Iran broke out on Feb. 28, Hezbollah has shown through its sustained attacks on Israel that, while much diminished, its forces retain far more significant capabilities than many believed,” he said. “And in the wake of its battle against Israel, Hezbollah is making clear that if push comes to shove, it’s prepared to burn down the state before surrendering its weapons.”

Blaise Misztal, JINSA’s vice president for policy, said the task cannot be accomplished through Israeli military action alone and will ultimately depend on whether Lebanon and the LAF are willing to act.

“[Disarming Hezbollah] can only be fully done by a strong and committed Lebanese government,” Misztal said. “Israel can secure southern Lebanon with ground operations and strike Hezbollah sites in Beirut or the Bekaa Valley, but that will merely distance and degrade the threat, never fully remove it.”

“The question is whether the Lebanese government is, or can be convinced to be, strong and committed enough to take on the task of asserting its control over its own territory,” he added. “Thus far, it has failed to demonstrate either the political will or military capability to do so.”

Hannah similarly noted that “Israel is rightly unwilling to pay the necessary cost in blood, treasure and diplomatic opprobrium” required to fully dismantle Hezbollah, leaving the responsibility to Lebanon and its armed forces.

“The factor that has truly held Lebanon back from disarming Hezbollah has been Hezbollah’s retention of, as far as we can tell, overwhelming support among Lebanese Shiites,” David Daoud, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. “Having retained that popular support, it can deter the government from pursuing forcible disarmament by dangling the threat of civil war.”

But experts weren’t optimistic that the Lebanese government and LAF are capable — or willing — to take on that role. Hannah said Lebanon’s military “doesn’t appear to have the stomach to truly confront Hezbollah and dismantle the group’s armed wing,” noting that it has already “failed” to disarm the group in southern Lebanon, “much less the rest of the country.”

“It seems even less likely than before the Iran war that the LAF would now be willing to take on the risk of massively confronting Hezbollah,” he said, “in spite of the misery Hezbollah’s unilateral decision to enter the conflict on Iran’s behalf is now inflicting on the rest of Lebanon.”

David Daoud, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also said Beirut “ultimately holds the key” to resolving the issue of Hezbollah’s disarmament. He said that while Lebanon has taken “immense and commendable” steps in “proscribing Hezbollah’s military activities,” the country’s “unwillingness to act against Hezbollah has been missing from the equation” and has “allowed the group to regenerate in the past.”

He added that Hezbollah still “retains enough military strength to make disarmament daunting” for Lebanese forces and the LAF, and that the group continues to wield significant political power.

“The factor that has truly held Lebanon back from disarming Hezbollah has been Hezbollah’s retention of, as far as we can tell, overwhelming support among Lebanese Shiites,” Daoud said. “Having retained that popular support, it can deter the government from pursuing forcible disarmament by dangling the threat of civil war.”

Daoud also raised concerns about Lebanon’s intentions in negotiations, arguing that Beirut may not truly be seeking meaningful change.

“A good test will be the extent to which the LAF fulfills the Lebanese government’s order from early April to put all of Beirut under its full control,” John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said. “Will the LAF truly confront and disarm Hezbollah in the capital or simply repeat the phony disarmament it claimed to have completed in the south?”

“Lebanon is seeking to use the negotiations to return to the status quo, and is willing to ‘pay the price’ of a joint photograph with an Israeli ambassador to achieve that objective,” he said. “This is because the situation in Lebanon is indeed dire — economic collapse compounded by war, the direct impact of the war itself and the emergence of sectarian tensions that could boil over into full-on conflict.”

If those dynamics remain unchanged, he warned that Hezbollah could indefinitely delay disarmament and eventually rebuild its strength.

“A good test will be the extent to which the LAF fulfills the Lebanese government’s order from early April to put all of Beirut under its full control,” Hannah said. “Will the LAF truly confront and disarm Hezbollah in the capital or simply repeat the phony disarmament it claimed to have completed in the south?”

Satloff said the challenge will ultimately require translating diplomacy into “practical steps,” including a shift in how the Lebanese military approaches disarmament.

“While some of this can happen in the negotiating room when the parties meet again, nothing can substitute for strong measures by the Lebanese state to isolate, weaken, delegitimize and disarm Hezbollah while promoting the idea of peace,” he said.

He suggested that turning Beirut into a “true weapons-free zone” is necessary “but not sufficient,” pointing to additional steps such as removing Hezbollah officials from government, expelling Iranian operatives from the country and shutting down the group’s financial and institutional networks.

A group of six additional Senate Democrats plan to file new war powers resolutions this week to halt the war in Iran, a move that would allow Democrats to continue forcing votes on the war for the foreseeable future. 

Previously, a different group of six Democrats introduced similar resolutions, and Democrats have called up two of them thus far, with plans to call up a third this week. So far, the resolutions have all failed along mostly party lines, with all senators remaining consistent in their votes.

The latest group of lawmakers includes Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Andy Kim (D-NJ). 

The array of lawmakers involved in the latest effort spans from staunch progressives and critics of Israel to generally more pro-Israel members. 

“President Trump chose to start a war knowing it was going to raise gas prices on Americans already struggling to get by,” Gillibrand said in a statement. “The president, and his party, just don’t care about anyone other than themselves. They lie, cheat and steal to enrich themselves and leave regular folks with the bill. It is long past time for Republicans in Congress to stand up and do their job.”

House Democrats also plan to call up a war powers resolution this week, which may pass given that some Democrats who previously opposed a war powers effort and a handful of Republicans have indicated they plan to change their votes.

The latest set of six resolutions will not be eligible for floor votes immediately, but Democrats can call up the other four resolutions introduced previously at will. Senate Democrats are also likely to force votes on matters related to the Iran war during the upcoming reconciliation process, which Republicans aim to use to fund immigration enforcement and other priorities.

Lawmakers are largely keeping an arm’s length from the administration’s reported discussions with Kurdish leaders in Iraq about supporting an armed offensive against the Iranian regime, as an on-the-ground force aligned with U.S. interests in the ongoing American and Israeli air campaign.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that President Donald Trump has had discussions with Kurdish leaders about the U.S. base in northern Iraq, but denied that Trump agreed to support a Kurdish offensive. 

Multiple outlets reported Wednesday that Kurdish forces had begun a ground push into Iran from Iraq.a spokesperson for the government in Iraqi Kurdistan said no Iraqi Kurds had crossed the border  — not directly addressing the question of Iranian Kurds, thousands of whom live in Iraq and have been at the center of the recent rumors.

Many Republican senators indicated Wednesday that they knew little about the effort. Some seemed broadly supportive, while not commenting on the specifics of the reported moves.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Jewish Insider he couldn’t comment on the subject due to classification issues, but said generally that “the Kurds know how to fight — you don’t want to tangle with the Kurds.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said broadly that “there are a lot of people in Iran that don’t like the current government, that have been oppressed by the current government for a long time. I don’t have a comment on anything the administration may or may not be doing here, but there are a lot of people that live in Iran, that lived under the oppression of that regime that would love to be able to have a taste of freedom.”

At least some of the Iranian Kurdish forces in question have been living inside Iraq.

Several other Republican senators said they knew nothing about the alleged plan, and that it hadn’t come up in the classified briefing that senators received from the administration on Tuesday.

Democrats are generally skeptical of the reported plan.

“I am struck by the hypocrisy of pulling the rug out from under the Kurds in Syria and then asking them to fight again for Iran. Kurds deserve better,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said.

Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) told JI on Tuesday that supporting a Kurdish insurgency would belie the administration’s recent assertions that its focus is on Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and nuclear program.

“I’ve worked on these issues with Kurds. … The fact that this administration is having those types of conversations — I don’t know the full extent of it — but you wouldn’t be having those conversations if you weren’t thinking about maybe getting different actors on the ground,” Kim said. “It very much feels like they are fomenting potentially different groups on the ground to start to get engaged in what will essentially be what happened in Syria before, what happened in Libya before. [If] they are trying to start a civil war, this is a very good way to go about it.”

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who is generally hawkish on Iran but plans to support the war powers resolution in the House to halt the war on constitutional grounds, said, when asked about the Kurds, that he has yet to hear a clear strategy for the conflict.

“I’ve heard rumors. I don’t know any details,” Schneider said. “I have yet to see a coherent strategy articulation of what the end game is, or strategy for achieving our goals in the long run.”

The plan has also drawn skepticism outside of the Hill.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, the senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warned that the Kurds would be the “main victims” of the plan, becoming primary targets for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

He said also said that he “couldn’t think of a better gift to the Islamic Republic,” and that a Kurdish armed force wouldn’t be able to counter the Iranian regime militarily, would spook “protesting Iranians who have increasingly embraced nationalism” and would burn goodwill of Iranians toward the U.S. given the risk of sparking a civil war.

Amb. Daniel Shapiro, who served in senior roles at the State and Defense Departments under the Biden administration, also expressed caution. 

“Past history of U.S. efforts to support those kinds of insurgencies have been quite spotty in terms of effectiveness,” Shapiro, now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, told JI. 

He said that “you could make an argument for trying to stir up that kind of internal clash” as a supplement to the Israeli and American operations, in addition to potential strikes by European and Gulf states.

“But overall, the management of this operation has been, at the political level, very spotty, and the goals have been inconsistently described,” Shapiro continued. “It leaves me very skeptical that untested militia groups being deployed as an extra lever of pressure is going to be any more successful than it’s often been in the past. And it could even indicate there’s kind of a flailing around for additional ways of what’s not being accomplished sufficiently through the military campaign.”

A brief issued Wednesday by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, however, offered support for engaging Kurdish partners.

“If the United States wants Operation Epic Fury to produce more than a temporary setback for Iran’s nuclear program, it needs organized partners on the ground — and it needs to arm, engage, and protect them now. The most capable candidates are Iran’s Kurdish political and armed movements,” the report’s authors, Giran Ozcan, a JINSA fellow for Kurdish Affairs, and Jonah Brody, a JINSA policy analyst, wrote. 

“Three concrete U.S. actions are necessary: arm the Kurds; help defend them against Iranian airstrikes; and pair military support with political engagement.”

But they warned that the U.S. will need to overcome mistrust from the Kurds generated by U.S. acquiescence to the Syrian government offensive against the U.S.’ Kurdish allies in that country, requiring the U.S. to offer “real and credible commitments of support for Iranian Kurdish aspirations, commitments that it will honor. At the same time, Iranian Kurdish groups must be realistic about what they can achieve and what the United States can deliver.”

Washington reporter Matthew Shea contributed reporting.

Republicans lawmakers continued to dismiss this week the idea that a nuclear deal with Iran is achievable, despite comments by President Donald Trump over the weekend. 

Trump said that the talks with Iran, held in Oman last Friday, had been “very good,” that Tehran “wants to make a deal very badly” and that he is in “no rush” to move ahead. He also said that the Iranian demand that the talks be only focused on nuclear weapons “would be acceptable” — an apparent softening of the U.S. position that any potential agreement should also address Iran’s ballistic missile stockpiles and its support for regional terror proxies. The talks did not appear to touch on the Islamic Republic’s recent violent crackdown on nationwide protests.

Asked about Trump’s comments about a nuclear-only deal, Republicans largely dismissed the idea that any deal would actually be forthcoming.

“Iran’s not going to make a deal with us. They’re going to stall and re-stall to buy time, but they’re not going to make a deal,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Jewish Insider. “The ayatollah is [as] crazy as a bed bug. And he’s never going to give up any hope that he has of nuclear weapons. He’s never going to stop killing his people and drinking their blood out of a boot, and he’s never going to stop funding Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Kennedy predicted that military action is both necessary and forthcoming.

“You’re going to have to give them a curbstomping, but you don’t want to start a regional war doing it,” Kennedy continued. “My guess is that’s what the president is talking to [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio and the military guys with a bunch of their flags in their office [about] right now.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) agreed that the Iranian regime is not genuinely interested in making an agreement with the United States. 

“There won’t be a deal,” Scott told JI. “They’re not going to do a deal.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said he hadn’t seen Trump’s comments but he does not “trust the word of the regime, at all.”

“They have not proven trustworthy with their word in the past, and so you have to have a way to be able to verify everything,” Lankford continued.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), meanwhile, told JI on Monday that he would delay a vote on a war powers resolution he introduced with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blocking military action against Iran pending the ongoing talks with the regime. 

The resolution would theoretically be eligible for votes by the full Senate later this week, should Kaine and Paul wish to call it up.

The Virginia senator told JI that he and Paul are in discussions about timing for votes, and that he hasn’t yet made a decision on when to call the bill up.

“We have to check each day to see where [the talks] are. I don’t think calling it up in the middle of discussions that have some chance to it — that’s not the right time — but we’ll just see where we are,” Kaine said.

A bipartisan group of 82 House lawmakers wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday urging her to roll back new conditions placed on applications for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program amid rising antisemitic attacks.

The bipartisan support for the letter is particularly notable given that, while Democrats have been raising concerns about the conditions for months, Republicans have, publicly, been comparatively quiet.

“We are writing to you today to express our desire to ensure that the NSGP is adequately funded and unimpeded by new requirements that are unrelated to the security of grant recipients and their communities,” the letter, led by Reps. Max Miller (R-OH), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Michael McCaul (R-TX), reads. “Insufficient funding or unnecessary obstacles to obtaining grants could undermine the right of every religious community to freely and peacefully worship and congregate without fear.”

The letter states that new conditions issued by DHS in April 2025 “create new compliance requirements for recipients that will divert limited funds and restrict the religious conscience of synagogues, schools, and other institutions pivotal to our communities.”

The new conditions may compel religious institutions to cooperate with immigration enforcement activities and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“We encourage DHS to work to make compliance with NSGP requirements as simple and streamlined as possible. We also request that DHS ensures NSGP remains a program designed to protect the security of houses of worship, not to reinforce other policy priorities,” the lawmakers wrote. “In this time of rising antisemitic terror attacks and violence against diverse faith-based institutions, we believe it is crucial that NSGP remains a critical resource for all who seek to worship in safety and free from partisan politicization.”

They called on Noem to issue new guidance that “waives any terms and conditions that do not directly relate to the grant’s purpose, which is to help qualified institutions improve their security against increasing threats.”

The lawmakers emphasized the clear need for and lifesaving impact of NSGP funds in a time of increased hate-motivated violence. They also thanked Noem for her “ongoing support” for the program.

DHS has not yet awarded grants from the 2025 grant cycle, and lawmakers have accused the administration of withholding critical information about which institutions have received funding under separate grant rounds. Democrats have alleged the department is mismanaging the program.

Funding for the grants in 2026 — thought to be finalized just weeks ago — was again thrown into question last week when lawmakers agreed to reopen negotiations over the Department of Homeland Security funding package for the year following the deadly shootings by immigration agents of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

“The Nonprofit Security Grant Program is one of the most vital programs protecting the Jewish community. We continue to encourage every Jewish institution with heightened security needs to apply for these funds,” Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut said. “We have also heard from our community that the current terms and conditions have had the unintended effect of deterring some organizations from applying, which is why we believe they should be updated appropriately.”

“At a time of rising violence and hatred targeting houses of worship, NSGP is an essential lifeline for synagogues and other faith-based institutions seeking to protect their congregants,” said Lauren Wolman, ADL’s senior director of government relations and strategy. “We are grateful for the bipartisan effort to ensure DHS requirements remain clear, consistent, and focused on what matters most — helping at-risk nonprofits protect themselves from threats. Organizations must be able to access these resources quickly, with confidence, and without unnecessary delays.”

“Jewish and other communities facing violent threats deserve to know that the government is prioritizing their safety, not politicizing it,” Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said. “Yet the chaos created by these new terms and conditions has only created more vulnerability for communities, who are worried that they’ll be forced to choose between their core religious beliefs and their basic security — a concern we’ve been raising for months.” 

“We appreciate Reps. Miller and Gottheimer for helping lead this important bipartisan call to clarify that NSGP should not be used for anything other than the security of our communities,” Spitalnick continued.

Lawmakers and expert witnesses pushed back at a Helsinki Commission hearing on Tuesday on efforts to reimpose sanctions on the Syrian government for its assault against the Kurds and other minorities, and pushed for the U.S. to facilitate a diplomatic arrangement between Israel and Turkey that would allow for a greater Turkish presence in Syria — in part as a counterweight to Russia.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced legislation last week to reimpose sanctions on the Syrian government, in response to Damascus’ attacks on the Kurds, which for years had been backed by the U.S. as the minority group fought the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, Israel has remained deeply skeptical of the new Syrian government and is resistant to an expanded Turkish presence in Syria, given Ankara’s open hostility toward Israel in recent years, which has included threats to invade, and ambitions for regional dominance.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and leading advocate for sanctions repeal in the Senate, criticized colleagues who were pushing to re-impose sanctions, arguing that the repeal of the sanctions has been “successful,” suggesting that their reimposition would push Syria into Russia’s hands.

“The empirical record shows that countries that we’ve sanctioned and tried to coerce, if they are strong enough, will bandwagon, will hedge against us, try to find other patrons,” Richard Outzen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said. “That’s how Russia has a back door here.”

The hearing was focused primarily on finding ways to counter the Russian presence in Syria.

Outzen asserted that sanctions would not lead to the results their advocates seek, but rather renewed violence and fragmentation.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), a champion in the House for sanctions repeal, said he hopes to see any remaining sanctions, including Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, repealed as well.

Witnesses at the hearing noted that Russia is taking steps to entrench its presence and expand its relationship with the Syrian government, and that Syria remains heavily reliant on Russia. They largely called for increased engagement and incentives for the new Syrian government to counter Russia rather than coercive measures.

“The way to not abandon the Kurds is to not abandon Damascus. The best way to do that is to remain engaged and provide pathways to regional roles for Turkey and others, and not to give in to voices that say, we can’t trust [Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa],” Outzen said.

Asked about whether al-Sharaa can be trusted to protect minorities in Syria, Outzen argued that the bigger issue is whether he has the ability to control his own forces, given that many in al-Sharaa’s ranks are jihadists.

“The greatest way to protect [minorities] is to institutionalize and reform the Syrian military. That comes with a stabilized state, and frankly, probably comes with the U.S. providing oversight, whether that’s U.S. forces or contract mechanisms to insist on reforms so that the sort of people that have been responsible for atrocities fighting on that side are weeded out quickly, and, if they’re not Syrians, are sent out of the country,” Outzen said.

Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, likewise said that al-Sharaa’s “biggest problem … more than whatever he has in his heart — he has a cadre of people around him who are quite happy to go out and slaughter minorities. And they need to be kept on a short leash, and they need to be trained up,” he continued.

Doran described Turkey as the “key partner” in helping to build and professionalize the Syrian military.

Wilson expressed support for an expanded Turkish military presence in Syria as a path to removing Russian bases from Syria. He said he wants to see a deal between Turkey and Israel to facilitate that goal.

“Sadly, some in Israel prefer a weak and divided Syria and view an extended Russian presence as a buffer against Turkey. I believe this is suicidal for Israel,” Wilson said. “This will only be possible if Israel and Turkey deescalate and reach a detente in Syria.”

Wilson said that it was “startling to me” that Israel saw a Russian presence in Syria as a counterweight to Turkey.

“Our ability to expel the Russians from Syria, in the end, is going to be dependent on our ability to strike a balance between the Turks and the Israelis, and this is going to take a very sustained commitment on our part,” Doran agreed.

“I think the American leadership in pulling the Turks and the Israelis together and encouraging them, almost forcing them to talk to each other, is, I think, the starting point for solving this problem,” Doran said.

“I think the greatest fear of Israelis, more than the ideological onslaught of the Islamists against Israel and the Syrian minorities, is that Syria will become a Turkish military base — the front lines in an effort to annihilate Israel,” he continued. “I think we have a major role to play here, in getting the two sides to come to an accommodation.”

He said he wants to see Syria become a “buffer state” between Turkey and Israel, comparing it to Jordan as a buffer between Israel and Iraq.

Outzen said that outreach will be needed to the Israeli government to push back on their approach, bring together Israeli and Turkish security officials and emphasize Turkey’s role as a NATO ally and a close partner of the Trump administration — in spite of Israel’s own deep concerns about Turkey’s regional ambitions.

A bipartisan group of 59 House lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday urging the State Department to continue condemning Iran’s crackdown on protesters across the country. 

The letter, led by Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX), encourages the Trump administration to remain vocally supportive of the protesters amid “the Iranian regime’s ongoing violent suppression of protests across Iran.” The lawmakers urged Rubio to continue speaking out and ensure “whole-of-government support” from the U.S. is presented publicly to Iranians.

“The Iranian people have made clear their demand for a secular, democratic, non-nuclear republic grounded in political pluralism and respect for human dignity,” the letter reads. “Protesters have also explicitly rejected all forms of authoritarian rule, whether Iran’s former monarchy dictatorship or its current theocratic system, and seek the right to determine their own future. Recent international reactions against the regime’s brutalities underscore the urgent global concern over continued violence against civilians and abuses of power in Iran.”

“We urge the Department of State to continue publicly condemning the Iranian regime’s violent repression of protesters, including attacks on hospitals and medical facilities,” it continues. “At this critical juncture, whole-of-government support is essential to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to universal human rights and solidarity with the Iranian people.”

The lawmakers also noted their “deep concern” about the ongoing crackdown against protesters.

“Credible reports indicate the use of lethal force, mass arrests, and intimidation against civilians exercising their fundamental rights,” they wrote. “We are particularly alarmed by reports that Iranian authorities have targeted civilian sites, including hospitals and medical facilities, denying injured protesters access to urgent medical care. Such actions constitute violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

Weber’s letter was cosigned by Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE), Andy Barr (R-KY), Austin Scott (R-GA), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Brian Babin (R-TX), James Walkinshaw (D-VA), Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), William Timmons (R-SC), Tom Tiffany (R-WI), Glenn Thompson (R-PA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), Pete Stauber (R-MN), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Maria Salazar (R-FL), John Rutherford (R-FL), Raul Ruiz (D-CA), Zach Nunn (R-IA), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), John Moolenaar (R-MI), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), Carol Miller (R-WV), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Laurel Lee (R-FL), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Nick Langworthy (R-NY), Nick LaLota (R-NY), Tom Kean (R-NJ), Jeff Hurd (R-CO), Val Hoyle (D-OR), Andy Harris (R-MD), Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Michael Guest (R-MS), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), Laura Friedman (D-CA), Scott Franklin (R-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), Randy Fine (R-FL), Randy Feenstra (R-IA), Jake Ellzey (R-TX), Danny Davis (D-IL), Jeff Crank (R-CO), Joe Courtney (D-CT), Herbert Conaway (D-NJ), Mike Carey (R-OH), Brendan Boyle (D-PA), Mike Bost (R-IL), Sanford Bishop (D-GA), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Aaron Bean (R-FL), Troy Balderson (R-OH), Mark Amodei (R-NV) and Rick Allen (R-GA).

“The Iranian people have made it unmistakably clear that they reject this regime and the system of repression it has imposed on them,” Weber said in a statement on the letter. “From mass arrests to targeting hospitals, the regime has shown it will use any means to silence political dissent. The United States must continue to condemn these abuses and stand with the Iranian people as they demand the right to determine their own future.”

Lawmakers in Washington are largely downplaying recent developments suggesting that Saudi Arabia is pivoting away from moderation and entertaining more hardline Islamism.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been at loggerheads in Sudan, Somalia and Yemen — including a recent Saudi airstrike on an Emirati shipment in southern Yemen — prompting questions about Riyadh’s continued interest in acting as a moderating force in the region. 

Saudi Arabia has also sided with Muslim Brotherhood-aligned forces in other regional conflicts, is increasing its business ties with Qatar and softening its stance toward other Islamist powers hostile to Israel, among other steps, some analysts say.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, who came away from the meeting indicating that potential disputes or shifts in the kingdom had been overstated.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) — who has been critical of Saudi Arabia in the past — told Jewish Insider that Prince Faisal, in the meeting, sought to directly rebut claims that Saudi Arabia was pivoting away from a position of moderation.

The overall message from Prince Faisal, Sherman said, was “the Saudis claim that they are anti-Brotherhood and that the disputes with the UAE are tactical, not ideological.”

“Just because the Saudis are not Shiite does not mean they’re Zionists. No one should get too carried away. And I’m sure there are elements of the Saudi government that are not nearly anti-[Muslim] Brotherhood as much as they should be,” Sherman said. “That being said, I see a foreign minister who is not Qatar or Turkey.”

“If you’re worried about Israel, you should never put any of the countries we’re talking about here in the ‘don’t worry about it’ category — you’ve got to worry,” he continued. “But the foreign minister went out of his way to say that when it comes to the Brotherhood or Iran, that there’s less reason to worry about Saudi Arabia.”

He said that he expects Saudi Arabia and the UAE to come to an agreement on the anti-Houthi campaign to deconflict the situation — likely one which would see the UAE take a decreased role in Yemen.

Sherman also said he did not see evidence that Saudi Arabia has significantly accelerated or expanded its relationship with Qatar — though he also noted that Saudi-Qatari tensions have gradually eased over the past few years and particularly since the Arab League blockade of Qatar. Saudi Arabia signed a major deal earlier this month to link Riyadh and Doha with a high-speed rail line. 

Even so, Sherman said he has other pre-existing concerns about Saudi Arabia, such as its pursuit of a nuclear program and bid to purchase F-35 fighter jets, neither of which was discussed at Wednesday’s meeting.

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also met with Prince Faisal. He said it was “great” to see the foreign minister and that the group had discussed various issues including Yemen, Sudan and Gaza.

“Saudi Arabia and UAE are very close, right? I mean, that’s an understatement,” Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told JI. “What I’m saying — everybody can have disagreements, spats, misunderstandings about different things, and that relationship is no different, but those two are two very, very close allies.”

“The U.S.-Saudi relationship remains a pillar of U.S. policy in the region,” Mast said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing to build upon our decades-old alliance to help resolve some of the region’s most pressing and complex challenges.”

He dismissed concerns about a potential Saudi repositioning or clash with the UAE.

“Saudi Arabia and UAE are very close, right? I mean, that’s an understatement,” Mast told JI in a brief interview. “What I’m saying — everybody can have disagreements, spats, misunderstandings about different things, and that relationship is no different, but those two are two very, very close allies.”

A congressional source deeply involved in Middle East issues argued that ties between the Sudanese Armed Forces — the faction Saudi Arabia is backing in Sudan — and the Muslim Brotherhood have been overstated and that the Saudi decision to back the SAF is a tactical one rather than an ideological signal of alignment with the Brotherhood. The source said that the Saudis have indicated that they are working to push the Brotherhood elements out of the SAF faction.

And, the source emphasized, both sides in Sudan have committed significant atrocities, further noting that the Trump administration sanctioned the Rapid Support Forces — which successive U.S. governments have found is committing genocide. The source said that Saudi Arabian officials have been clear they do not want the U.S. to sanction the UAE over its alleged support for the RSF, as some in Abu Dhabi heard after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit.

Regarding the Saudi strike in Yemen, the source said that Saudi Arabia was concerned about anti-Saudi forces approaching its territory and that the shipment the UAE convoy was transporting was being provided to those forces. 

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said that there “a lot of concerns” about a Saudi dispute with the UAE in Yemen but that he is not “worried about [the Saudis] repositioning to an extreme point.”

“I don’t think we see that yet. There’s still a lot of conversations going on,” Mullin said. “I think that was just one of those regional things that sometimes we have a lack of understanding — or maybe understand it, but don’t understand it.”

Another lawmaker who has had conversations with individuals in the region said on condition of anonymity that — despite recent headlines — they did not believe that Saudi Arabia was making a fundamental pivot in its posture away from moderation or toward a more extremist Islamist stance.

The lawmaker added that the tensions between the two U.S. partners have been “surprising” but also noted there is a long and complex history between the two countries.

Addressing the Saudi-Emirati tensions, Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE), the No. 2 Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, acknowledged that the two countries had conveyed “different interests,” but did not appear concerned that their differences would alter the Saudis’ view of Iran as the top threat in the region. 

“The UAE seems like they’re trying to diversify their sources of support in the region, and that’s a point of some disagreement between the Saudi leadership and UAE leadership,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told JI.

“I have no insight into what’s going on there, but clearly they’ve got different interests,” Ricketts told JI. “Saudi Arabia’s long-term interest is in a peaceful Middle East where they have allies to offset Iran. Saudi Arabia knows that in the region their worst enemy is Iran, and so they’re going to want allies to push back.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee as well as on Foreign Relations, said his primary concern was the UAE’s deepening ties with Russia.

“I mean, the UAE seems like they’re trying to diversify their sources of support in the region, and that’s a point of some disagreement between the Saudi leadership and UAE leadership,” Cornyn told JI.

“What worries me a little bit is UAE talking about allowing the Russians to build a military base there,” he continued. “They seem to be less convinced that they can rely on support from the United States and so they are looking for other friends. That concerns me.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) attributed the fissures to the situation in Sudan and instability in Yemen that neither country could independently solve, but said he had been informed that the Saudis and Emiratis had addressed their differences. 

“Well, Yemen is a mess,” Kennedy said. “The UAE and the Saudis have been allies. Now, they recently got crossways, but I understand they got it worked out. I don’t know what else to say. I mean, Yemen is just, … it’s not a stable country.”

Pressed on the Gulf states having “worked out” their issues, the Louisiana senator responded, “Well, I think that got a lot of it worked out. The Saudis and UAE … they’re crossways in Sudan. They’re not always joined at the hip, so I wasn’t particularly shocked about it, but my understanding is they got it worked out.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he hadn’t been following all of the developments with Saudi Arabia’s regional posture but had been tracking the conflict in Sudan, where Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been backing opposing sides in the civil war. Warner emphasized that “neither one of them are the good guys,” referring to the UAE-aligned RSF and Saudi-aligned SAF.

“It does bother me, not just where [the Saudis] may be moving, but also just … in terms of bombing [in] Yemen,” Warner added, referring to the Saudi strike.

Warner, who led Intelligence Committee members on a visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2024, said that the Saudis were, at the time, “anxious to get normalization with Israel,” but the Gaza war interrupted that progress.

And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said the “instability” in the region — including the Saudi-UAE tensions —  demonstrates the need for strong congressional oversight of “any agreement that’s reached with any of our potential partners there.

President Donald Trump recently announced a series of deals with Saudi Arabia, including selling the kingdom F-35 fighter jets and naming Riyadh a major non-NATO ally, without making public strides toward Saudi-Israeli normalization.

“And very bluntly, it reemphasizes that our one truly reliable ally in the Middle East is Israel,” Blumenthal continued.

Lawmakers said on Monday that an additional round of U.S. strikes on Iran remains on the table if the regime makes strides in rebuilding its nuclear program or other malign activities, echoing recent warnings from President Donald Trump.

Trump also threatened last week that the U.S. would intervene to protect Iranian protesters if the regime cracked down on nationwide demonstrations, as U.S. officials are watching closely while Tehran reportedly accelerates efforts to restore its ballistic missile capabilities — developments that could spark renewed conflict with Israel and potentially the United States.

Republican senators expressed confidence that the president would strike Iranian nuclear facilities a second time if the U.S. determined that Tehran was working to restore its nuclear program. 

“I think there’s a chance” Trump will strike Iran’s nuclear sites again, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Jewish Insider. “If they go forward again and start building up nuclear facilities, yeah, I think Trump’s going to bomb the hell out of them.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) told JI, “President Trump is demonstrating that we have the most outstanding military in the world. And if he believes we have to hit Iran again, I believe he will do that.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) agreed but dismissed the suggestion that Trump’s willingness to order the operation that deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro last week signified that the president was looking to resume strikes against Iran. 

“I don’t think one’s related to the other,” Kennedy told JI. “I also think that if Iran starts back in terms of developing a nuclear weapon, or substantially tries to increase the number of missiles that they have, I think the president should hit them and I believe he will.”

Asked about Trump’s threat to intervene to prevent crackdowns on Iranian protesters, and rumors of a potential second round of Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) emphasized the threat of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.

“We should be considering what action may be appropriate if Iran progresses with its missile building and nuclear programs, which are obviously a pressing and dire threat to us and Israel,” Blumenthal said.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), a leading voice in the Senate for constraining presidential war powers, who is pushing to block further action in Venezuela, told JI that the U.S. should not be sending in its military in response to the protests, particularly without congressional debate and approval.

“This president should not willy-nilly use the press, use the military as his palace guard to go here, there and everywhere,” Kaine said. “Not Nigeria, not Iran, not Venezuela, not international waters, not Cuba, not Mexico, not Panama, not Greenland. It should be a debate with Congress.”

He added that a constituent, whose son is an Army Ranger, urged Kaine during the holidays to work to prevent unilateral military deployments by the administration. “And I am representing one of the most pro-military states in the country, and that’s what my state thinks,” Kaine explained.

U.S. officials and lawmakers across the political spectrum are condemning the terrorist attack at a Chabad Hanukkah celebration Sunday outside Sydney, Australia, tying the murder of 15 attendees to the rise of antisemitism across the world. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the United States “strongly condemns” the attack and that “antisemitism has no place in this world.”

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz said the “horrific and deadly terrorist attack” is a “sickening reminder that antisemitism remains a global threat. Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States will confront this hatred — at the U.N. and around the world — without apology or hesitation.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said he is “in touch with our counterparts in Australia” regarding the attack and is “providing the requested assistance,” while Attorney General Pam Bondi called it “heartbreaking news.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee noted, as did several others, that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s original statement on the attack did not specify its antisemitic nature. “The disgraceful statement from Australia PM never mentioned it was jihadist attack on Jews on first day of Hanukkah. Hope he’s ashamed of antisemitic statements past year,” Huckabee wrote on X. 

On the Hill, lawmakers from both parties also expressed their shock and sadness. All 25 Jewish members of the House, on both the Republican and Democratic sides, issued a joint statement remembering the “Jewish families in Australia” who were “grotesquely targeted with hate and murderous intent.”

“Sadly, this attack does not come as a surprise to the Jewish community of Sydney who have been raising a clarion call for local and national authorities to take concrete steps against a rising tide of antisemitism,” the members, organized by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), wrote. “Antisemitism is a cancer that eats at the core of society, whether in Australia, the United States, or anywhere it is allowed to take root and grow. We join leaders around the globe in condemning this evil act and in calling for justice, peace, and unwavering support for those affected. We also call on all leaders to do better standing up to antisemitism, bigotry, and hate.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said the “tragic news” is “another wake-up call.”

“Jewish people must be free to practice their faith openly and without fear. Antisemitism must be confronted and defeated wherever it appears,” he wrote on X.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a statement he was “horrified by the attack” and that it is “our collective responsibility to aggressively eradicate the poison of antisemitism whenever and wherever it is found.” 

“Today, as the Jewish community throughout America gathers with their loved ones to celebrate Hanukkah, the New York Police Department and law enforcement resources across the country must be vigorously deployed to keep everyone safe. It is my sincere hope that the story of Hanukkah and the candles that will shine on windowsills in homes around the world will bring needed light and resolve that the powerful resilience of the Jewish people that has existed for millennia will continue to endure always and forever,” Jeffries wrote.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the attack “is beyond appalling” and “a shocking reminder that antisemitism and hate is not only toxic and far too present and widespread around the world, it is deadly. It must be vigorously condemned, confronted and overcome.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called it “an act of barbaric, antisemitic terrorism.”

“It was the outrageous, but all-too-predictable result of far too many leaders around the world tolerating and even fomenting hatred of Jews, instead of countering the evil of antisemitism with moral clarity and unrelenting condemnation.”

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) connected the attack to other antisemitic acts of violence: “Tree of Life to 10/07 to Bondi Beach: antisemitism is a rising and deadly global scourge,” he wrote. “I stand and grieve with Israel and the Jewish global community.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said, “Terror and violence against Jews are part of a global surge in antisemitism fueled by an ever-escalating campaign of demonization and dehumanization. Yet the Australian Prime Minister’s initial statement expressed sympathy for ‘every affected person,’ conspicuously omitting any mention of Jews or Jew-hatred: a sin of omission that constitutes a fundamental failure of moral clarity at the very moment it is most urgently needed.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) called it “heinous” and said, “We must root out the rot of this most ancient hatred to bring safety and security for all humanity. Never Again is NOW.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) called the “targeted terrorist attack … appalling and sickening,” and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) said she was “horrified by the news of yet another disgusting act of antisemitic violence … Antisemitism has no place in our world.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wrote, “Allowing antisemitism in Australia created the environment for this despicable act. Globalize the antifada [sic] is not a slogan — it’s a promise. A promise we all have to stop.”

Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mark Warner (D-VA), Tim Scott (R-FL), John Curtis (R-UT), Dave McCormick (R-PA), Katie Britt (R-AL), Ted Budd (R-NC), Jim Banks (R-IN) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Rudy Yakym (R-IN), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), and Shontel Brown (D-OH) also offered their condemnation of the attack and prayers to the victims, among others.

Deborah Lipstadt, former special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism under the Biden administration, called out New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for contributing to rhetoric that she said fueled the attack. “Mr. MayorElect, when you refuse to condemn & only ‘discourage’ use of the term ‘Globalize the Intifada, you help facilitate (not cause) the thinking that leads to Bondi Beach,” she wrote of Mamdani. 

In a subsequent post, she asked, “Some asked has Mamdani condemned this? Not yet but he will. Strongly. But the time 2speak is before tragedies. The ‘wink & nod’ to Jew-hatred by facilitating language that leads to murdering Jews is unacceptable — and need we say it — so is murdering Jews.”

Mamdani did issue a statement about the attack, which he called “a vile act of antisemitic terror.” 

“Another Jewish community plunged into mourning and loss, a holiday of light so painfully reduced to a day of darkness. This attack is merely the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world. Too many no longer feel safe to be themselves, to express their faith publicly, to worship in their synagogues without armed security stationed outside. What happened at Bondi is what many Jewish people fear will happen in their communities too,” the mayor-elect wrote.

Jewish organizations also came out in force to share their condemnation and pain. 

Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Community, said he was “Horrified. But not surprised.”

“Bondi Beach is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And Jewish kids celebrating the joyous holiday of Hanukkah with their families is likewise one of the most beautiful images of our people. Both have now been ripped to pieces. … This week, we will be reaching out to leaders from around the world to unite around a shared commitment to eradicate the evil scourge of antisemitism. Take our call. Stand with the Jewish community.”  

“But don’t wait to speak out,” he continued. “Do it today. Wherever you live. If you are a leader, then lead. Stand with your Jewish community where you are. Yes, reach out privately to your friends in the community to express your support. But speak out as well for all the world to hear. Everyone who looks up to you needs to hear you condemn the antisemitic slaughter in Australia and the ongoing threats to our community everywhere. We are 16 million people in the world. We cannot do this on our own. Stand with us.” 

William Daroff and Betsy Berns Korn, respectively the CEO and chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, recalled their own recent trip to Australia in a statement, including meeting with a Chabad emissary who was killed in the attack: “Just last week, we joined a delegation of Jewish leaders from the seven largest Diaspora Jewish communities in Australia as they confronted a sharp rise in antisemitism. … This past Shabbat, we attended morning services at Chabad of Bondi Beach. We davened in their beautiful new building and saw a community full of warmth, faith, and energy. After services, we had the honor of sharing Shabbat lunch in the home of Rabbi Yehoram and Shternie Ulman with their family, including Rabbi Eli Schlanger and his wife, Chaya. We are devastated to learn that Rabbi Schlanger, z’l, was among those murdered today.”

“Our hearts are with the families of those killed and injured, and with our brothers and sisters in Sydney as they confront this brutal tragedy. The story of Chanukah speaks to Jewish survival and resilience in the face of persecution. This attack on the Bondi Beach community strikes at the heart of the entire Jewish people. We pray for the swift recovery of the injured and mourn those whose lives were taken in this senseless antisemitic act,” Daroff and Korn wrote.

Karen Paikin Barall, chief policy officer at The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, wrote in a post, “In 2008, as Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, I traveled to Australia amid rising antisemitic incidents and a troubling lack of response from law enforcement and government leaders. Australia is home to the largest population of Holocaust survivors outside Israel. The Bondi attack is not isolated. It reflects years of inaction and minimization. Antisemitism doesn’t fade when ignored, it grows more violent.”

The Orthodox Union called the attack “a direct assault on Jewish life.”

“Chanukah is the most public of Jewish holidays. We mark the defeat of ancient antisemitic persecution by lighting our menorahs openly and unapologetically. That is precisely why this attack matters. It was meant to intimidate, silence, and drive Jews out of the public square. It will fail. At a time when antisemitism is being normalized, excused, and even justified in public discourse, this attack is no longer shocking. It is the predictable result of unchecked incitement, extremist rhetoric, and repeated failures by leaders to draw red lines,” the organization wrote.

“Calls to ‘globalize the intifada’ are not slogans. They are threats, and they lead directly to violence. … Silence, moral equivocation, and inaction are no longer acceptable. Jews have the right to celebrate their faith openly and safely, without fear, anywhere in the world.”

Democratic Majority for Israel said the attack “makes painfully clear that antisemitic violence remains a grave and growing threat. Jews must be able to gather, pray, and celebrate their religion openly and safely. From the Tree of Life to Poway, from Boulder to Washington, D.C., and now Bondi Beach, the rise of violent antisemitism demands urgent and sustained action from our leaders and communities.”

“At this moment of darkness, as we prepare to begin Hanukkah, we draw strength from the story of the Maccabees, who faced hatred and persecution with courage and resilience. That spirit endures today.”

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs wrote, “Our hearts are shattered for those murdered and injured, all those impacted, and the entire Australian Jewish community. And we are angry: That Jews around the world are now beginning Hanukkah fearful of showing up and celebrating. That after years of us sounding the alarm about the crisis of antisemitism, our leaders and our society have still failed to truly recognize and effectively address this threat. That too many loud voices seek to politicize and exploit our real, legitimate fears — rather than taking the comprehensive, whole-of-society action necessary to keep us safe.”

The Jewish Federations of North America, Anti-Defamation League, Secure Community Network, Community Security Service and Community Security Initiative issued a joint statement with increased security recommendations for “all Jewish organizations that are hosting events in the coming days to undertake.”

A senior State Department official told lawmakers on Thursday that the U.S. believes there are “no good actors” in the brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the East African nation, and said the U.S.’ focus is on cutting off external support to both parties and achieving a temporary ceasefire.

“From our perspective, there are no good actors in this conflict,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Vincent Spera said during a House Foreign Affairs Africa subcommittee hearing. “The administration unequivocally condemns the atrocities committed by both parties. Members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanitry and ethnic cleansing, and members of the SAF have also committed war crimes, including in May when the United States announced the government of Sudan used chemical weapons in 2024.”

Spera said that the administration is “committed to helping end these atrocities in Sudan,” and that “external support to the warring parties must stop.” 

The United Arab Emirates is a key backer of the RSF, though it denies providing support to the paramilitary group, while Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Russia back the SAF.

Spera said the administration has sanctioned leaders on both sides of the conflict and their supporters, including SAF-aligned Islamic actors, “to limit Islamist influence and curtail Iran’s destabilizing influence.”

He said President Donald Trump is “personally driving” the effort to reach a humanitarian truce and ultimately a transition to new civilian leadership and end external support to the SAF and RSF, in cooperation with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — referred to as the Quad — as well as other international partners.

“President Trump recognizes the importance of endless conflict and that an unstable Sudan threatens regional stability along the critical Red Sea corridor,” Spera said. “It also creates a permissive environment for terrorists, adversaries such as Iran and transnational criminal organizations.”

Lawmakers broadly condemned all outside actors fueling the violence in Sudan and called for accountability for atrocities by both the RSF and SAF. Significant criticism from both sides of the aisle focused on the UAE, with lawmakers questioning whether the U.S. can place more pressure on its ally to cut ties with the RSF. 

“With the UAE, obviously [RSF leader] Hemedti is counting on the support he gets from them,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) said. “Is this something where the president could pick up the phone and talk to the UAE and say, ‘Just stop it’?”

Smith also called for the RSF to be designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Spera said that the administration has been clear that “we need to do everything we can to bring an end to external support, and that needs to stop. We’ve been making the case at the highest levels, and working through the Quad and other mechanisms, with any and all parties that have influence on actors to bring an end to that support.”

Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA), the subcommittee’s ranking member, called for the U.S. to cut off arms sales to both the UAE and to the other foreign powers involved in the conflict and potentially impose sanctions on Emirati entities involved in supporting the RSF.

Spera demurred on questions about leveraging U.S. arms sales, directing those questions to others at the State Department.

Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said that an end to external support would quickly bring the conflict to a close.

“This means not only pressing the RSF and SAF to agree to ceasefire negotiations, but also enforcing real consequences for external actors — all of them — who continue to fuel the conflict by providing arms or money or mercenaries,” Meeks said. “Without these external resources, both sides would be unable to continue killing civilians and committing mass atrocities and their push to take total control of Sudan. Let me be clear, this brutal war could end tomorrow, if the parties fueling this conflict ended their support, and there’s a number of them that are doing it. I’m talking about, all the parties need to be held accountable.”

Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and expert witnesses on Wednesday debated the meaning and significance of President Donald Trump’s edict in September that he “will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” which came amid a reported effort earlier this year by the Israeli government to assert sovereignty over all or part of the territory.

The at-times contentious hearing focused on “Understanding Judea and Samaria: historical, strategic and political dynamics in U.S.-Israel Relations,” referring to the biblical term for the West Bank preferred by members of the Israeli government and also used by Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), the chairman of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East, which hosted the hearing, asserted that Trump was only expressing his opposition to the annexation of territory not currently controlled by Israel.

“When the president is talking about annexing, again, I think it’s important to actually look at the map,” Lawler said. “Sixty percent of the West Bank is under Israeli control.” 

Lawler’s comments came in response to a remark from ranking member Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) highlighting Trump’s position on the issue.

“While some have argued that you don’t need to annex the West Bank because it’s already part of Israel, clearly that’s not what President Trump had in mind,” Sherman argued.

The back-and-forth set off a spat between the two members, with Sherman shouting a demand to be given additional time to respond to Lawler, and Lawler rebuking him in hushed tones as the hearing continued.

Lawler previously organized a private briefing for committee members with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on a similar subject.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) pressed GOP witnesses over their apparent disagreements with Trump on the issue. Like Lawler, they made the case that Trump’s position had been misrepresented.

Eugene Kontorovich, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued that Trump’s position and the situation have not been “accurately characterized.”

“There have been proposals to extend Israeli civil law to those areas where Jewish communities are, in other words, to incorporate under Israeli law, parts of Judea and Samaria,” Kontorovich said. “President Trump’s plan is consistent with his 2020 vision for peace, where Israel would, in fact, expand Israeli civil jurisdiction specifically to those areas, and it seems his comments were simply a reaffirmation of that, that’s how I understand it.”

Schneider responded: “I think his comments were clear: ‘There will not be annexation,’ was I believe exactly what he said,” to which Kontorovich interjected, “of the West Bank.”

The Vision for Peace plan that Kontorovich referenced would also have created a Palestinian state. Plans announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time to annex Israeli settlements immediately upon the release of that plan were rejected and blocked by Trump in 2020.

Multiple Democrats along with Democratic witness Jon Alterman, the Brzezinski chair in global security and geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, raised comparisons between the political and governance situation in the West Bank and eastern Ukraine — noting that ethnically Russian Ukrainians had a voice and vote in the Ukrainian government prior to the Russian invasion, and that they are now disenfranchised under Russian occupation. 

Alterman said that allowing annexation would also weaken the U.S.’ argument against Russia’s attempted annexation of parts of Ukraine.

Democratic lawmakers and Alterman also warned that full annexation would create a politically untenable position for Palestinians in the West Bank, where they are disenfranchised under Israeli control or expelled — a situation that could prompt further international outrage — or have voting rights and would have sufficient voting share to fundamentally change the nature of Israel. Alterman added that the status quo breeds Palestinian resentment and opposition from the global community.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, we need to recognize that not only are there competing claims here, but there are competing legitimate claims, and that’s if we just consider what’s clear from the historical record. When we bring in faith values and interests which aren’t universal, the issue becomes even more complicated,” Alterman said. He urged lawmakers to seek solutions that preserve space for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) floated the question of whether the U.S. should, instead of a full separation of Israel and a Palestinian state under a two-state solution and in light of the Palestinian Authority’s dysfunction, be “looking for a solution that is not a conventional state, one that has levels of autonomy, levels of governance, but … the borders would inherently be porous, the question of militarization would be dealt with in some ways as though it is one nation and in other ways clearly with a recognition of the facts on the ground.”

Alterman said that would inevitably involve certain compromises to Israel’s own sovereignty and decision making with “some sort of outside [entity].”

Kontorovich argued that such a proposal would make a “lot of sense,” comparing it to the situation in American Samoa, whose residents are not U.S. citizens and do not have a vote in federal elections. Issa responded that American Samoans do “stand among us and have a say.”

Mort Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, repeatedly emphasized that the PA continues to pay the families of terrorists who conduct attacks against Israel and indoctrinates Palestinian children with anti-Israel and antisemitic ideologies, and that Palestinian Arab opposition more broadly is responsible for the lack of peace in the region. Some Republicans echoed the same point.

Klein said that the PA’s actions “make peace virtually impossible until they have a dramatic reformation and transformation of their actions and their regime,” also noting the escalating security threats in the West Bank.

He focused in his opening remarks on the historical Jewish ties to the region and asserted that Palestinian Arabs have no such claims. “If Israel does not control the Jewish heartland in Judea and Samaria, peace will be impossible. Again, Judea and Samaria are Jewish Israeli land, it’s Jewish land, legally, religiously, biblically, politically and morally,” Klein said.

Sherman argued in his opening statement that modern borders should be based on the modern state of affairs, rather than historical Jewish territories — noting that Tel Aviv had not been Jewish territory for most of the Kingdom of Judea’s history, and that defining international borders based on the “maximum you ever controlled in history” would be a ridiculous exercise.

At the end of the hearing, a group of Code Pink activists confronted Yossi Dagan and Yisrael Ganz, the heads of two Israeli regional settlement councils, surrounding and screaming at them. Capitol Police demanded the activists leave the hearing room.

Ganz said in a statement, “We will do everything to apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.” Dagan added, “The hearing is a milestone in the cancellation of the lie of the ‘occupation.'”

As anti-Israel demonstrators increasingly target synagogues in protests that have turned violent and used antisemitic rhetoric, some Jewish leaders and state lawmakers are now calling for more expansive legislative safeguards to help bolster protections for houses of worship.

The new efforts have come in the wake of threatening behavior outside synagogues in New York City and Los Angeles that drew forceful condemnation from elected officials and raised concerns among Jewish leaders who fear that such incidents will normalize antisemitic harassment disguised as anti-Zionism.

In New York, state lawmakers this week introduced a new bill to ban protests directly outside houses of worship. The legislation seeks to amend the existing state penal law by establishing a 25-foot buffer zone around religious sanctuaries to insulate congregants from facing intimidation and potential clashes with demonstrators that have occurred more regularly in recent years.

The bill, which would also apply to abortion clinics, was advanced in response to a controversial protest last month outside Park East Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Manhattan, where about 200 activists disrupted an event educating attendees about immigration to Israel while chanting slogans including “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada,” interpreted as calls to violence against Jews.

“We’re in a very troubled time, and that’s going to mean we need to adapt, including with legislation,” Micah Lasher, an assemblyman in Manhattan who introduced the legislation with a fellow Jewish state senator, Sam Sutton, told Jewish Insider on Thursday.

He said that he had weighed free speech concerns while drafting the bill to protect “the right of people to speak out, even when that speech is hateful, with the right of people to express their religion freely.”

“We’re going to see more and more of this until we can more broadly curb antisemitism,” he cautioned, calling the protest in Los Angeles this week, which ended in the arrests of two demonstrators, “a harbinger of things to come” in the absence of further legislative action.

Nily Rozic, a Democratic assemblywoman from Queens who is co-sponsoring the bill, echoed that view. “Houses of worship should serve as peaceful sanctuaries, not punching bags for protesters,” she explained. “Following incidents in NYC and LA, it’s becoming apparent that creating no-protest zones outside houses of worship is absolutely necessary.”

In contrast with the incident in New York City, the protest that erupted in Los Angeles on Wednesday was more intrusive, with video showing anti-Israel demonstrators shouting inside the historic Wilshire Boulevard Temple — where one activist shattered a vase during a public safety event held with Korean community members.

Jewish community activists in California said they viewed the incident, coupled with the recent protest in New York City, as an impetus to take a closer look at state law relating to such demonstrations.

Julia Mates, the director of policy and government affairs at Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, said that the state already has an existing law that protects access to houses of worship as well as abortion clinics — similar to the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which has been used by the Justice Department under President Donald Trump to target protesters charged with disrupting Jewish spaces.

Mates said that her organization last year had “started to reexamine the act” with an eye toward potentially expanding what she called the “bubble zone” protecting congregants, but tabled that effort in favor of focusing exclusively on legislation aimed at countering antisemitism in public schools.

But now, in light of recent events, “it might be a good time to reexamine a fixed distance rule and gaps in enforcement,” she told JI on Thursday.

“The environment is such that we need to take another look at this,” Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Bay Area JCRC, vowed. “This is getting a lot of chatter in the community. I think that Jewish legislators and organizations haven’t figured out where we want to land yet,” he continued. “But it’s certainly the topic du jour.”

Noah Farkas, who leads the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, said that his organization, for its part, has “been pushing for” legislation to more forcefully regulate such demonstrations “for a long while.”

“While we recognize the right of anyone to assemble lawfully to express themselves,” he explained to JI Thursday, “it should not endanger the lives or limit the liberty of anyone else. And while this is a matter on a legal and political level of balancing one set of rights next to another, there is yet a deeper strain of values that needs to be addressed.”

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA), a Jewish Democrat from Los Angeles, said the Wilshire demonstration was “deeply personal,” noting that she had attended services at the synagogue during the High Holidays. 

“At a time of surging antisemitism, no one should have to choose between their safety and their right to worship,” she said in a statement shared with JI. “I’ll always protect free speech, but when protests cross into criminal intimidation, threats or blocking access, authorities must step in to uphold the law and protect Americans’ right to gather and worship without intimidation.”

Julie Fishman Rayman, senior vice president of policy and political affairs at the American Jewish Committee, called the Los Angeles protest “horrific and beyond unacceptable,” while citing legal “tools that already exist and should be used to maximum impact” in order to hold anti-Israel demonstrators accountable.

As Jewish community activists are now considering efforts to strengthen such laws, Lasher said his new legislation “strikes the right balance” on free speech and safety issues, and “could potentially be a model for other states.”

“For as long as we’re dealing with these sorts of hateful events,” he said, “we should make sure we are giving appropriate tools that are constitutional to enable people to enter synagogues without fear of intimidation.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, voiced interest in supporting the bill on Thursday, saying that she was “willing to look seriously at a buffer to protect that fundamental right we have, which is to express ourselves and practice the faith we choose to without fear and intimidation.”

“I don’t say whether or not I’ll support bills,” she told reporters, “but if it shows up in another place, I’m taking that very seriously. I think it’s time. I will be supportive of that.”

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City and a democratic socialist long vocally critical of Israel, has also expressed interest in learning more about such legislation, after he had faced backlash for accusing the Park East Synagogue of promoting activities “in violation of international law,” even as he sought to distance himself from the protesters.

Mamdani’s team did not respond to a request for comment from JI about the newly proposed bill.

Qatar, whose ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have drawn scrutiny in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, is doubling down on a charm offensive focused on a handful of GOP lawmakers and conservative social media influencers, all while hosting two of the most established brands in American news. 

A group of House Republicans visited Qatar during the House’s Thanksgiving recess last week, including Reps. Laurel Lee (R-FL), Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ), Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Lance Gooden (R-TX). The trip occurred just before the House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to vote on legislation that classifies the entire Muslim Brotherhood organization globally as a terrorist group.

A group of conservative social media influencers also visited Qatar over Thanksgiving, posting glowing dispatches lauding the country and its role in hosting a U.S. military base. 

Rob Smith, one of the invited guests, posted credulously about Qatar on his Instagram feed after the trip, “I wasn’t aware of a great deal of things about Qatar, only misperceptions and half-truths I’d read about online. When the opportunity was presented to me, with full authority and autonomy to ask the tough questions of the officials I’d be meeting with, I decided to risk any potential criticism and to travel and experience it for myself.”

Meanwhile, numerous prominent celebrities — including comedian Kevin Hart, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and tennis star Novak Djokovic — gathered in Doha over the weekend for the 2025 Formula One Qatar Grand Prix.

And this week, the country is hosting the Doha Forum, a conference co-sponsored by CNN. Those attending the conference include several Trump administration officials and ambassadors, politicians and philanthropists, alongside Israel-bashing officials such as former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, sanctioned U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese and former Iran envoy Rob Malley.

Others on the guest list include: Donald Trump Jr., U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker, Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz, the Heritage Foundation’s Victoria Coates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour and other officials, leaders and analysts from around the world.

Also this week, The Wall Street Journal is hosting a technology conference in Doha, featuring business leaders and celebrities, hosted by various Journal reporters. As JI’s Matthew Kassel reports, the summit is raising ethical questions surrounding the paper’s deepening business ties with Qatar — even as the Journal’s conservative editorial page has slammed the Gulf monarchy as a financial and diplomatic sponsor of Hamas. 

Each of these events comes at a time when Qatar’s complicated public reputation in the United States is becoming a flashpoint, particularly inside the conservative movement.

The Trump administration announced in late November plans to designate branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and the House Foreign Affairs Committee is taking up legislation on Wednesday that aims to proscribe the entire group.

Though the White House’s executive order on the issue sidestepped any mention of Qatar, the country has been a major Muslim Brotherhood patron, and analysts have characterized the Qatari branch of the Muslim Brotherhood as one of the organization’s key terrorist arms.

The simmering battle in the conservative movement was on display in a heated social media exchange between Trump ally and far-right influencer Laura Loomer, a vocal critic of Qatar, and Zinke’s chief of staff, Heather Swift.

Loomer, in a series of posts blasting the Republicans who visited Qatar, took particular aim at Zinke, mocking his attire and claiming he was visiting to “beg [the Qataris] for money.” She also said that “Qatar is trying to control every member of Congress. This is very alarming.”

Swift shot back, “[Zinke] has given more of his life and blood to eradicating Islamic jihadis than this woman ever will. … Strongest possible record against Iran and for Israel. Perhaps being a member of the House Foreign [Affairs] committee may require speaking with foreign leaders from time to time so they know where the USA stands.”

Loomer also pressed Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson about the U.S.-Qatar relationship and Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday. Wilson responded by saying that the “U.S. military has a long-standing partnership with Qatar, and we look forward to continuing that partnership.”

Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike are cheering the implementation of X’s new location feature this week — allowing users to see what countries accounts are operating from — with some expressing hope that the move will expose the level of foreign involvement in domestic online political discourse.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle touted the new feature as a useful way to identify if an account commenting on U.S. political matters could potentially be a foreign actor. 

The new feature has exposed a variety of far-left and far-right accounts engaging in U.S. political discourse and spreading antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiments as they operate from various foreign countries.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said the information gleaned from the platform’s new feature crystalized the degree to which “foreign interests are trying to spread” antisemitic ideas in the United States. “The evidence is insightful,” Bacon, who is leading a bill with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) aimed at addressing antisemitism on social media, told Jewish Insider.

“On one hand I’m glad much of the antisemitism poison is not coming from the U.S., but it is alarming that so many foreign interests are trying to spread that poison by pushing it in the U.S. and masquerading as Americans,” the Nebraska Republican continued. “We need to keep informing Americans that much of the antisemitism is coming from abroad.”

Several lawmakers argued that the feature would help with the broader effort to prevent worsening domestic partisan divides, especially those fueled by U.S. adversaries.

“Foreign adversaries have spent years flooding social media with hate-filled and antisemitic propaganda to divide Americans,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the GOP co-chair of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, told JI. “Americans deserve to know which accounts are run from abroad so we know the true source of these narratives.”

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who represents a Trump district and has been critical of X owner Elon Musk, said in a statement, “I have always suspected that many anti-Israel, antisemitic, Jew hate accounts are promoted by our adversaries.”

“Beijing, Moscow and Tehran know they cannot defeat us economically or militarily, so they exploit controversial issues, like Israel and antisemitism, and try to divide,” Suozzi told JI. “We must defend America by pushing back on external adversaries seeking to divide us internally.”

Others noted in statements to JI that ensuring transparency from major social media platforms was a necessary step in combating the rise in online antisemitism. 

“Transparency on social media is crucial to fighting misinformation and antisemitism online. We’ve seen cases of foreign actors like Russia, China and Iran attempting to use these platforms to sow division and spread hate,” Gottheimer told JI. “I am glad they implemented this change and hope they will work with Congress to take steps to fight antisemitism and prevent malicious foreign influence.”

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA), who led a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in July about X’s AI program Grok expressing antisemitic and pro-Nazi ideas, told JI in a statement, “This transparency is an important step. No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, bad actors spreading antisemitic narratives to divide Americans is a real threat. There’s much more tech companies should do to expose and stop this manipulation.”

Other Republicans also commented on the new feature this week. 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has become a leading voice targeting right-wing antisemitism, posted on X on Tuesday that “America-hating foreign bots are at it again,” in response to a tweet from an account that is based in South Asia, according to the new location feature.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley tweeted her support for the new service, writing on Tuesday, “I have long said foreign actors are using social media to poison our politics and divide Americans. The location feature on X is a huge win for transparency and American security. Other social media platforms should do the same.”

Senate lawmakers from both parties on the Armed Services Committee excoriated the Department of Defense policy office run by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby at a Tuesday hearing. They criticized the office for a lack of communication with lawmakers as well as a series of controversial decisions seemingly at odds with White House policy.

Lawmakers expressed frustration that they had not received sufficient communication from the Pentagon’s policy office and criticized Colby and his team for making controversial decisions like pausing U.S. aid to Ukraine, opposing the deployment of additional U.S. forces to the Middle East during Israel’s war against Iran, withdrawing U.S. forces from Romania and re-assessing the AUKUS submarine agreement with the U.K. and Australia.

Democrats have publicly voiced frustration with Colby’s alleged rogue decision-making in the past, but the committee meeting — a confirmation hearing for several civilian Pentagon officials — constituted an unusual public airing of grievances from Republicans and Democrats alike about their concerns with Colby and his office.

“It just seems like there’s this pig-pen like mess coming out of the policy shop that you don’t see from [other departments of the Pentagon]. Why do you think it is that there’s so many controversies emanating out of the policy shop and not these other offices in the department?” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) asked Austin Dahmer, the nominee to be assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities — a top position in Colby’s department — who is currently serving in an acting capacity as one of Colby’s chief deputies.

Cotton also serves as the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“I’ve noticed an unsettling trend this year at times, that Pentagon officials have pursued policies that are not in accord with President Trump’s orders, or seem uncoordinated within the administration,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said, adding that the members of the committee have found out about such moves from press reports rather than the Defense Department.

“There are strong foreign policy debates in my political party. We do not have consensus on every issue and I welcome healthy discussion on America’s role in the world. I think the president does too,” Wicker continued. “Amid these debates, I think everyone would expect the president’s national security strategy staff to follow his lead and implement his vision.”

He added that committee members “have struggled to receive information from the policy office and have not been able to consult in a meaningful way with [the policy office] either on the national defense strategy or the global posture review. … The situation needs to improve if we are to craft the best defense policy.”

A  frustrated Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) described Colby as “the hardest guy to get a hold of in the Trump administration.”

“He came to this committee and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to work with the Congress.’ He hasn’t, on big issues,” Sullivan continued. “I can’t even get a response and we’re on your team.”

Sullivan and other lawmakers expressed particular frustration with the lack of consultation from the administration on the forthcoming national defense strategy and global posture review, which news reports indicate will prioritize the Western hemisphere and domestic missions at the expense of other threats and theaters including China.

Dahmer, a former staffer for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), pleaded ignorance about the controversial moves and lack of communication or claimed that such moves had not happened and that public reporting about them was false.

Regarding the recent drawdown of troops from Romania, Dahmer claimed that lawmakers had been briefed three times prior to the move — but Wicker said that neither the majority nor minority staff had been notified ahead of time about the plans.

“I think all of us would like to have more information on how the decision was made” and communicated to Romania, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said, adding that he had more questions for Dahmer about “what the policy office has been doing as compared to the president’s and secretary’s directives and stated policy objectives” and “confusion between what the president and secretary called for versus what the policy office has been doing, from weapons sales and deliveries to troop draw-downs.”

Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the committee’s ranking member, said that Dahmer had “cloaked your testimony in a veil of ignorance, when in fact you were basically the stand in and the surrogate for [Under] Secretary Colby. … You’re clearly avoiding answers to questions that you should have been acutely aware of in your position.”

“I think you’ve essentially indicated to us that you won’t cooperate with us,” Reed continued.

Wicker also criticized the administration for providing notification to Congress on Sunday — days before the confirmation hearing — that it had renamed and changed the duties of the position for which Dahmer is nominated. Reed said that those changes were apparently made a month ago, without notifying Congress.

Alex Velez-Green, another former Hawley staffer nominated for a top Pentagon post under Colby, is scheduled to appear for his own confirmation hearing later this week.

In recent days, a chorus of left-wing lawmakers in Congress have ramped up their ire towards the United Arab Emirates, accusing the Gulf country of helping fuel the yearslong civil war in Sudan by reportedly backing the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the non-Islamist Arab force fighting the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). 

The UAE has long denied allegations of involvement in the war. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that, according to sources, recent assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department’s intelligence bureau purport to show the UAE sending Chinese drones to the RSF. 

On the other side, Iran, Russia, Egypt and Turkey have provided support to the SAF, according to conflict monitors and reporting by Bloomberg and The Washington Post.

The war in Sudan has wrought havoc upon the eastern African nation, with both warring factions committing crimes against humanity. The conflict has killed as many as 150,000 people and has displaced around 12 million. 

Over the more than two-year long conflict, both militias have been accused of widespread sexual assault, mass killings of civilians, torture and deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure. On Monday, the RSF captured the city of El Fasher after an 18-month blockade which saw the group effectively devastate the city, with reports of mass killings, sexual violence and the destruction of hospitals and displacement camps.

The U.S. government, under former President Joe Biden, determined the RSF was committing genocide and found both the RSF and SAF guilty of committing war crimes.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood’s growing influence with the Sudanese Armed Forces has alarmed experts, who warn that the SAF’s deepening ties to Islamist networks threaten regional stability and could pose a risk far beyond the eastern African nation.

“The Muslim Brotherhood has had a strong presence in Sudan since the 1940s and that presence has evolved over the years,” Norman Roule, a former senior U.S. intelligence official, told Jewish Insider. “It’s important to note that this presence is also why Iran is such a strong supporter of the Burhan [head of SAF] government.” 

Liam Karr, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, who has condemned actions on both sides of the conflict, says the ties date back to former Islamist dictator Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan for several decades before the SAF overthrew him in 2019. 

“The SAF is working with several Islamist brigades that consist of former Bashir-era army, police and intelligence personnel,” Karr told JI. “This includes the al Baraa Ibn Malik Brigade, which is widely associated with the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood and Bashir and has an estimated 20,000 fighters.” 

In recent months, the SAF has received explosive attack drones from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to aid in the conflict, while Egypt, one of their key backers, arrested a key Islamist militia leader aligned with the group — signaling that even staunch regional supporters of the group are “growing wary of its Islamist factions,” according to Foundation for Defense of Democracies Research Fellow Hussain Adbul-Hussain. 

Roule said Iran has a vested interest in providing the SAF with weaponry in order to reestablish a presence in the region and revitalize their “broken proxies,” following Israel’s degrading of its military capabilities and of its proxy Hezbollah, as well as the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. 

“This is of extreme importance to the U.S. and its partners in the region, because if the Quds Force [IRGC] is able to establish a presence it lost in Syria, it would be able to reestablish training camps it operated a decade ago for Hamas smugglers, routes for weapons that it could send back into Gaza and revitalize Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as provide a transshipment location of weapons to the Houthis,” said Roule. “The Muslim Brotherhood presence in Khartoum is of serious concern for the United States and deserves much greater attention. It is a significant threat to the United States, Israel and the region.” 

Anti-Israel lawmakers, including some of the Jewish state’s most vocal critics in the House, have sounded the alarm on the RSF, but have notably glossed over the SAF and its increasingly Islamist alignment. 

“Sudan is facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and a genocide,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in a post on social media on Tuesday. “The UAE and other arms dealers to the RSF and RSF-aligned militias must be held accountable.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) echoed the same sentiment, saying she is “horrified” by the RSF’s “mass killings of civilians.”

“We must do everything in our power to stop this genocide, including cutting off all weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates who are arming and funding this ethnic cleansing,” said Tlaib on social media on Wednesday.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) followed suit and similarly directed his criticism at the Emirates. 

“I am incredibly concerned about the deepening humanitarian crisis in Sudan, and the atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces,” Castro wrote on social media on Wednesday. “The United States must put pressure on the RSF and those who back it — including the United Arab Emirates — to end these atrocities.”

A number of far-left activists online have also singled out the RSF and its reported Emirati ties for condemnation. 

Kenneth Roth, a virulent critic of Israel and former head of Human Rights Watch, posted on Tuesday, “British arms sold to the United Arab Emirates are being found in Sudan, where the UAE is arming the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces as they commit genocide.” 

“Both the Biden and Trump administrations refused to hold the UAE accountable as it armed Sudan’s RSF, despite massacre after massacre, atrocity after atrocity,” wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, adding, “Members of Congress are showing more responsibility and initiative.” 

House Democrats, led by Reps. Gregory Meeks and Sara Jacobs, released a statement in April marking the two year anniversary of the conflict. “External actors like the UAE must immediately stop fueling the conflict by arming the warring parties,” the statement said notably only listing the UAE and omitting any mention of Turkey, Iran, Russia, and other countries who have sent arms to factions in Sudan.

A bi-partisan group of senators, including Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, released a statement on Thursday breaking in tone from the other lawmakers – condemning both sides and making mention of all nations reportedly backing the war. 

“Both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have committed atrocities against civilians and pursued a zero-sum war at any cost,” the lawmakers said in a statement. “Foreign backers of the RSF and SAF-including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Russia, Iran, China and governments in the immediate region-have fueled and profited from the conflict and legitimized the monsters destroying Sudan,” the senators continued. 

Secular forces in Sudan have called for the country’s Islamist movement to be classified as a terrorist group, according to Hussain. Sudan’s Civil Democratic Alliance of Revolutionary Forces (Sumud) has stated that the “Islamist movement sees no pathway for ending the fighting other than the complete submission of the Sudanese people to its terrorist regime, an arrangement that has never achieved peace.” 

Karr says the Trump administration and the SAF’s own partners have put “heavy pressure” on the group to “distance itself politically from the Islamist groups.” Karr also believes pressure should be applied to the RSF.

In his second term, President Donald Trump voiced support for designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Various members of congress have introduced legislation that would require the secretary of state to use this designation, though Congress has yet to move forward with the legislation. 

Democratic lawmakers who have been stridently critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza offered tepid support for the ceasefire and hostage-release deal, the first phase of which was signed on Thursday, while reiterating their criticisms of Israel and the U.S.’ support for the Jewish state. Few offered any words of support for the Israeli hostages who have been held by Hamas for over two years. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has led a series of efforts to block arms transfers to Israel, didn’t explicitly praise the deal negotiated by President Donald Trump, but said he hopes the deal would lead to the end of a “horrific war.” He made no mention of the Israeli hostages set to be released, but asserted one-tenth of the Gazan population was killed or injured during the war. 

“As of today something like 10% of the Palestinian people in Gaza have been killed or wounded, mostly women, children and the elderly. The United States has put tens of billions of dollars into an effort which has led to mass destruction,” Sanders told Jewish Insider. “So I hope — and I’m sure everybody else does — that this horrific war can end as soon as possible.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said on X that the ceasefire is a “hopeful step” but quickly pivoted to expressing unvarnished opposition to Israel. She also made no mention of the Israeli hostages expected to be freed from their Hamas captors.

“For the sake of humanity, let’s hope this will be a lasting and permanent ceasefire,” Omar said. “While this is a hopeful step, we must demand accountability for every war crime committed during this genocide and continue to call for an end to the occupation.”

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), the lead sponsor of legislation that aims to place strict conditions on critical arms sales to Israel, said on X she plans to continue to pursue that legislation.

“Immediately after October 7, I called for a ceasefire and for a path that honors our shared humanity. It is unfortunate that it took this long. However, I am hopeful that today’s ceasefire agreement will bring the hostages and prisoners home and end the bombing and starvation of the Palestinian people,” Ramirez said. “We must save Palestinian lives and pursue an end to U.S. complicity in Israel’s war crimes, atrocities, and genocide.  I will continue to work to Block the Bombs, as we pursue a future of self-determination for the Palestinian people and a just and lasting peace for all residents of the region.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), tamping down on enthusiasm for the deal, reposted an X post suggesting that Israel may violate the deal.

“There is certainly some hope that the Gaza deal will hold but it’s important to remember that the last ceasefire agreement collapsed in March before ever reaching phase 2 when Israel reimposed a blockade on Gaza and bombings on the strip resumed,” the post, from an NBC News correspondent, reads.

Other prominent critics, particularly on the far-left, have remained unusually mum about the deal.

Squad members Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) and Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) did not respond to requests for comment and did not comment publicly.

Some other lawmakers who have been vocally critical of Israel’s operations in Gaza offered more fulsome praise for the deal.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said in a statement that the deal is “the first hopeful moment in a long time,” noting both the release of hostages and the surge of aid into Gaza. He credited U.S. pressure on Israel, however, rather than the reported increased pressure from Qatar, Turkey and Egypt on Hamas, for the breakthrough.

“Pressure from the U.S. and others has always been necessary to reach this moment — something that could have been achieved much earlier and prevented the staggering loss of civilian life, starvation, and devastation in Gaza,” Van Hollen said. “U.S. leadership will be essential to enforce this plan and convert this moment into real progress toward lasting peace — which can only be achieved by sidelining the extremists on all sides and committing to security, dignity, human rights, and justice for all.” 

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who led an effort calling for the U.S. to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, also praised the deal and led with the return of the Israeli hostages in his comments.

“It’s obviously very welcome news. Finally, the hostages are going to come home. The bombing hopefully is going to stop. Israel is going to withdraw,” Khanna said on Fox Business. “Everything I have read seems that this is a welcome development. And I’m really glad that after two years of a war, this seems to be finally coming to a resolution.”

“Now, we need to work for 2 states & ensure the bombing does not resume later in the year,” he added on X.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) told JI, “For the sake of humanity, I pray this holds. It is so far past time to end this genocide, free the hostages, and surge food, water, and baby formula to starving families in Gaza.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) declined to comment, saying she had not reviewed the deal.

Senate and House lawmakers on Tuesday are expected to reintroduce the Pray Safe Act, a long-gestating bill that would create a federal database and clearinghouse for security best practices, training materials and grant opportunities for religious nonprofits.

The legislation is being led by Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Reps. Grace Meng (D-NY) and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and comes after a series of high-profile attacks at religious institutions, including mass shootings at a Catholic church in Minneapolis and a Mormon church in Michigan.

“No one should ever have to fear for their safety while practicing their faith,” Meng said in a statement. “However, we have seen an alarming rise in vandalism, violence, and terror targeting houses of worship, faith-based organizations, and other nonprofit organizations. It is vital that these organizations have the security resources they need, and ensuring their protection should always be a bipartisan priority.” 

“The Federal government should not sit idly by while faith communities experience attacks on their houses of worship. The security needs are only increasing and creating a dedicated resource for communities to improve their security would help stop these incidents before they happen,” she continued.

“The Federal Clearinghouse on Safety and Security Best Practices would be staffed by experts who can walk even the smallest rural parish or synagogue through safety-related resources that meet their community or congregation’s direct needs,” a group of Jewish, evangelical, Catholic and Hindu leaders said in a letter of support to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House homeland security committees. 

“In a moment when acts of hate seek to divide us, the Pray Safe Act embodies the unifying principle that every American, regardless of creed or tradition, deserves to gather peacefully,” the letter continues. “We respectfully request that you schedule a markup, move the legislation expeditiously out of Committee, and champion its swift passage on the floor.”

Jewish groups that signed the letter include the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, A Wider Bridge, Agudath Israel, the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Assembly, Secure Community Network and the Union for Reform Judaism, joined by Christians United for Israel, the Hispanic Israel Leadership Coalition and Passages Israel.

The letter emphasizes the spate of attacks on places of worship, of various denominations, across the country in recent years.

“Empowering our churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras, temples, mandirs and other houses of worship with the resources and expertise they need, yet often cannot afford, is paramount in this moment of increased violence,” the letter continues. “This support is critical to safeguarding a pillar of the American fabric, freedom of religion.”

The legislators describe the Pray Safe Act as “the most direct, cost-effective path forward” that “will not create a new grant program or impose mandates, it simply streamlines and makes more accessible resources Congress has already authorized, increasing efficiency, and ultimately saving lives.”

“As ADL’s research has shown, antisemitism and other forms of hate continue to fuel threats against faith-based organizations and houses of worship,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “We are grateful to Representatives Grace Meng and Maria Salazar, as well as Senators Maggie Hassan and Ron Johnson, for reintroducing the bipartisan Pray Safe Act. This legislation will help ensure that synagogues, churches, mosques, and other faith communities have the resources, training, and best practices they need to stay safe and secure.”

Senate and House lawmakers met Thursday with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, in the first trip by a Syrian government official to the Congress in decades.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that their meeting was “very encouraging and constructive.”

“I think we are on a path to eliminate sanctions in a way that safeguards interests of other nations in the region, and at the same time, provides for reconstruction in Syria, in a way that negates the influence of Iran and Russia,” Blumenthal said.

He said there was broad, but inconclusive, discussion about talks between the Syrian and Israeli governments.

Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ), who worked on Syria and Middle East issues at the State Department, called the trip “historic.” This was his first meeting with officials from the new Syrian government.

“He very much expressed a deep interest in being able to work as partners with us to stand up against ISIS, to stop Iranian reach and meddling throughout the Middle East, to push back on Russian interference,” Kim said. “There’s something really serious here that we need to engage with, and see how we can play a role. I worry that if we miss this opportunity, it could be a long time before we see a chance to be able to reshape the Middle East in a way for greater peace.”

He likewise said that al-Shaibani had said that the Syrian government has had extensive negotiations with Israel and suggested that they had been “positive conversations,” but that no agreements had been reached.

Regarding sanctions, Kim said that al-Shaibani had been “helpful in explaining how these restrictions are hurting” Syria’s reconstruction and recovery. “That’s important for us to hear and it’s important for us to think through what the effects are.”

“There’s a possibility and an opportunity here to reshape the Middle East in a way I could never have imagined,” Kim said.

Along with Kim and Blumenthal, Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Chris Coons (D-DE), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Reps. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) met with al-Shaibani.

“We discussed steps that are essential for Syria to ensure their full access to the international economy. Syria has an opportunity to build a stable democracy, something the region desperately needs right now, and I am hopeful they are on the right track,” Risch, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in a statement.

Shaheen, the Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking member, emphasized in a statement the need to move quickly to repeal the Caesar Act sanctions on Syria.

“Syria’s economy is in crisis, and its authorities need financial resources to maintain basic functions of governance,” she said. “If we are too slow to act, we risk plunging Syrians back into conflict, which is in no one’s interest except for Russia and Iran. We have a small window of opportunity to put Syria on a path toward stability and prosperity. Members of our recent bipartisan congressional delegation to Syria as well as senior Administration officials … all agree: now is the time for the Senate to act by repealing the Caesar Act sanctions.” 

Wicker chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Wilson said, “President Trump’s leadership has ushered in a historic opportunity for a new chapter, benefitting ALL. Congress must now act: fully repeal the Caesar Act.”

Advocates with the Anti-Defamation League are set to lobby lawmakers this week on a series of actions related to antisemitism, including pushing to jump-start the stalled Antisemitism Awareness Act.

In connection with the start of the school year, the ADL is bringing a group of around 30 volunteers to the Hill, hailing from 13 states, for meetings with 11 Senate and 11 House offices, including seven Republicans and 15 Democrats, a spokesperson told Jewish Insider.

The group’s agenda for the House includes the Antisemitism Awareness Act, the top-priority legislation for major Jewish groups since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, that failed to pass Congress in 2024 and has again stalled in 2025, after a contentious Senate committee markup earlier this year. The House has yet to take action on the bill.

“Antisemitism is showing up in classrooms, on campuses, and in the daily lives of Jewish students in ways we have not seen in generations,” Lauren Wolman, ADL’s senior director of government relations and strategy, told JI. “Our Back-to-School Lobby Day is about ensuring that Congress takes this threat seriously — not tomorrow, not next year, but now. Every student deserves to learn in a safe and inclusive environment, and that requires action.”

The ADL advocates are also set to lobby in support of the HEAL Act, which would order an audit of national Holocaust education programs; for “robust funding” for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which House Republicans and the Trump administration have aimed to cut significantly; and for lawmakers to send letters to elementary and secondary schools in their districts, calling on the schools to implement clear policies on antisemitic harassment.

In the Senate, the advocates are set to push for the passage of the Protecting Students on Campus Act, which aims to make it easier for students to file discrimination claims, requires schools to report annually on instances of discrimination on campus and requires the Department of Education’s Inspector General to audit schools with high levels of discrimination complaints.

The Senate agenda does not include the Antisemitism Awareness Act, the passage of which in the upper chamber has been complicated by a series of poison-pill amendments added during the committee markup.

The version of the Antisemitism Awareness Act in the House remains unamended and could be passed with bipartisan support as-is, if brought to the floor, whereas additional procedural steps would be needed to bring forward a clean version of the bill in the Senate.

In meetings with Senate offices, the ADL activists are also set to support the HEAL Act, OCR funding and letters to local schools. The ADL will offer a letter template to lawmakers with recommendations including adopting a definition of antisemitism.

“Bringing together advocates from 13 states to meet with both Democrats and Republicans demonstrates the breadth of concern and the urgency of this issue,” Wolman continued. “From first-time volunteers to seasoned ADL leaders, our message is the same: protecting Jewish students is not partisan, it’s a matter of basic safety and civil rights.” 

According to ADL data, there were more than 850 incidents of antisemitism at elementary and secondary schools in 2024, in addition to 1,700 incidents on campus. In total, the two categories account for nearly 30% of antisemitic incidents nationwide.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee privately briefed lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning on the security and political situation in the West Bank and the war in Gaza.

The briefing was organized by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who chairs the subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, in response to efforts by France and other U.S. allies to recognize a Palestinian state. Despite a focus on the West Bank, attendees indicated that the briefing did not provide specific answers on any U.S. policy toward a potential Israeli move to annex all or part of the territory.

Lawler told Jewish Insider the briefing had included a “thorough discussion with the ambassador about Judea and Samaria and the challenges and the opportunities,” using the biblical term for the West Bank preferred by the Israeli government and utilized by the Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Given the insistence on the part of the French and other Europeans to recognize a Palestinian state, I thought it was important for my colleagues to have a greater understanding of what we’re actually talking about with respect to Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, and how it is actually governed post-Oslo,” Lawler continued, referring to the peace accords brokered in the 1990s.

He noted that a majority of the West Bank is categorized as Area C, controlled by Israel, and said many people do not understand that.

Asked whether the group had discussed a potential declaration of Israeli sovereignty in that area, Lawler responded, “No, we had a broad discussion on the entirety of the situation there.”

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said he does not “think there’s any support in the United States for unilateral action by Israel to annex any territory.” Some congressional Republicans have indicated support for such a policy.

“[Huckabee] is against the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, and I urged [him] to be equally vocal against unilateral actions by settlers or even the Israeli government designed to prevent a Palestinian state. If you’re against this unilateral, you’re against that unilateral,” Sherman told JI.

He added that Huckabee’s “dedication to the hostages is palpable. You can feel it. You can see it.”

Asked whether the group had discussed potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) declined to address specific details of the closed-door briefing but said, “there was broad discussion on a lot of different issues, but we didn’t go in-depth into anything specifically.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Wednesday that members of the Israeli government are formulating plans for annexation of the West Bank, potentially including all but six large Palestinian cities in the West Bank, with the goal of claiming “maximum territory and minimum population.” Israel is set to hold high-level discussions on the subject this week.

An envoy for the United Arab Emirates told The Times of Israel this week that “annexation would be a red line” for the UAE and would “foreclose the idea of regional integration and be the death knell of the two-state solution.”

The UAE joined the Abraham Accords in 2020 in part to halt then-pending plans for annexation of the West Bank.

xAI, the parent company of the social media platform X and creator of the Grok artificial intelligence chatbot, said in a letter to lawmakers earlier this month that the antisemitic and violent rants posted by the chatbot last month were the results of an “unintended update” to Grok’s code.

The company’s letter, obtained by Jewish Insider, came in response to a letter led by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Don Bacon (R-NE) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) in July that raised concerns about the screeds posted by Grok, saying they were “just the latest chapter in X’s long and troubling record of enabling antisemitism and incitement to spread.”

Grok, for hours on July 8, praised Adolf Hitler, described itself as “MechaHitler,” endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories and offered detailed suggestions for breaking into the house of an X user and sexually assaulting him, while claiming that recent changes by X owner Elon Musk had “dialed down the woke filters” and made it more free to make such comments.

Lily Lim, the head of legal affairs for xAI said in response to the lawmakers that the antisemitic Grok posts “stemmed not from the underlying Grok language model itself, but from an unintended update to an upstream code path in the @grok bot’s functionality,” and that the change, implemented a day prior to the offensive posts, “inadvertently activated deprecated instructions that made the bot overly susceptible to mirroring the tone, context, and language of certain user posts on X, including those containing extremist views.”

“Lines in the deprecated code, such as directives to ‘tell it like it is’ without fear of offending politically correct norms and to strictly reflect the user’s tone, caused the bot to prioritize engagement over responsible behavior, resulting in the reinforcement of unethical or controversial opinions in specific threads,” Lim continued.

As noted in the House members’ original letter, Elon Musk, owner of xAI, said days before the antisemitic outburst that the company had “improved [Grok] significantly” and that users “should notice a difference” in its output.

Lim called the issues “a bug, plain and simple — one that deviated sharply from the rigorous processes we employ to ensure Grok’s outputs align with our truth-seeking ethos.” She insisted that the company conducts “extensive evaluations” before any updates to Grok.

“The underlying Grok model, designed to stick strongly to core beliefs of neutrality and skepticism toward unverified authority, remained unaffected throughout, as did other services relying on it,” Lim continued. “No alterations to model parameters, training data, or fine-tuning were involved in this incident; it was isolated to the bot’s integration layer on X.”

Lim said that the Grok posts were “in direct opposition to our core mission” and “antithetical to the principles of neutrality, rigorous analysis, and ethical responsibility that define our work.”

She said that the company had taken multiple other steps in response, including deleting the relevant instructions, implementing additional pre-release testing protocols to prevent repeats of similar incidents and publicly sharing data about the Grok X bot for public examination.

“Moving forward, xAI remains steadfast in mitigating risks through comprehensive pre-deployment safeguards, ongoing monitoring, and a refusal to compromise on ethical standards,” Lim said. “We do not view harmful biases as features but as failures to be eradicated, ensuring Grok serves as a force for good — educating, fact-checking, and fostering open dialogue without promoting division or violence.”

Suozzi thanked xAI for its response, while also warning about the need to combat bias in AI outputs in a statement shared with JI.

“I am encouraged that the Musk team gave such [a] thorough response,” Suozzi said. “However, their investigation highlights a critical point: AI companies, in their race to create the most innovative and commercially successful product, must be vigilant in combatting biased, slanted, bigoted and antisemitic outputs. It’s a very slippery and dangerous slope.”

A separate group of Jewish House Democrats had raised related concerns about Grok in a letter to the Pentagon, focused specifically on the Defense Department’s plans to utilize a version of Grok, announced shortly after the antisemitic meltdown.

One of the biggest slurs coming from anti-Israel influencers and other crankish extremists is that outside pro-Israel advocacy groups, such as AIPAC, somehow play an inordinate role in the reason so many lawmakers support a close U.S.-Israel alliance.  

Their misguided belief is that the donations from pro-Israel donors drive lawmakers’ behavior. The reality is that such financial support has reflected the strong public support Israel has long enjoyed — within both parties. 

But as that public support drops within the Democratic Party (and to a lesser extent, among independents), all the resources in the world won’t be able to prevent progressive-minded elected officials from putting their finger in the wind and reneging on their past backing for the Jewish state.

We’re already seeing the consequences of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to expand the war in Gaza by taking control of Gaza City — a decision that has limited support in Israel, and has been drawing criticism even from some of Israel’s stalwart Democratic party supporters at home.

But what should be doubly concerning to the Jewish state and its supporters is that several of the Democrats championed by AIPAC’s super PAC in the last two congressional elections — Reps. Valerie Foushee (D-NC), Maxine Dexter (D-OR), and Robert Garcia (D-CA) — have lately become more hostile to Israel, with the former two calling for a cutoff in military aid.

And as we documented last Friday, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL), whose initial candidacy was boosted by commitments he made to Jewish leaders amid skepticism about his record on Israel, is now reneging on many of those promises, joining a handful of progressives in calling for a Palestinian state.

Some important context: All these Democrats represent some of the most progressive turf in the country, with deep-blue constituencies in Portland, Ore.; Durham, N.C.; and Long Beach, Calif. AIPAC’s engagement in these primaries, electing more mainstream Democratic candidates, was a key marker of the group’s success, given the sizable anti-Israel constituency in all these districts. 

But ultimately, the overall progressive turn against Israel proved more consequential than these lawmakers’ relationships with AIPAC or the amount of financial support they received in their primaries. It’s hard enough for mainstream Democrats to run against the left-wing tide that’s been gaining ground in their party. In these activist-minded districts, it’s become nearly impossible.

It’s been the rise of social media platforms amplifying extreme views that have played an outsized role in shaping public opinion — far more than the money from outside advocacy groups. The change in how young voters get information is driving the shift in public opinion on a wide range of issues, and is fueling the left-wing, anti-establishment constituency within the Democratic party.

We’re seeing the consequence of that change within the Democratic party and its voters’ views towards Israel in real time. Even the best and well-resourced outside advocacy can only do so much when the rules of the game are skewed against the political mainstream.

It’s been two months since the Capital Jewish Museum shooting in Washington and the Boulder, Colo. firebombing attack.

The two attacks prompted unified condemnation from lawmakers and calls from the Jewish community for Capitol Hill to take aggressive action against the escalating antisemitism crisis in the United States. But as Congress heads into its August break, that initial momentum has produced little concrete action.

The House and Senate have passed resolutions condemning the attacks, but key legislation related to antisemitism remains stalled, even as lawmakers individually and in groups continue to press for action.

There are still no clear prospects for passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, a key element of congressional efforts to address antisemitism, after a contentious Senate committee meeting in April in which Democrats, joined by Republicans including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), voted to add amendments that most Republicans supporting the bill view as nonstarters. House leaders have made no public moves to advance the legislation.

And despite calls from Jewish groups for significant increases in nonprofit security funding to as much as $1 billion next year and a push from a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers for $500 million, the funding levels under consideration in the House are so far little different from those discussed in prior years.

One Republican senator working on the Antisemitism Awareness Act told Jewish Insider they have not seen much movement among colleagues who have continued concerns about the legislation, in conversations with those colleagues and the White House.

The senator said they are frustrated by unresolved disputes about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism on the Republican side of the aisle, noting as well that there are steps the administration can take independently.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said at a press conference last week that “there needs to be, for sure” more focus from Congress on tackling antisemitism. A key part of that, he said, will be sidelining extreme voices.

“I think too often extremes on both ends kind of warp the conversation and insist that the definition of antisemitism somehow needs to include things like the false charge of ‘the Jews murdered Jesus,’ or the claim that anti-Zionism is never antisemitism,” Greenblatt said, alluding to the objections from both sides of the aisle to the Antisemitism Awareness Act. 

“All the Jews didn’t murder Jesus, and anti-Zionism is antisemitism. I think I’d like to see the extremes marginalized so the vast majority of members of Congress on both sides can get the stuff done that needs to happen once and for all,” he continued.

Several sources familiar with the situation said that the bill is “stuck,” for the moment. Senate Republicans could attempt to bring the bill to the floor and utilize procedural means to eliminate the poison-pill amendments added to the bill in the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee, but that would require Democratic support and could rehash the same ugly debates seen in the HELP committee.

It could also be added to a must-pass legislative package — but that same plan failed last year.

A source who has advocated for the legislation said that the recently passed budget reconciliation package sapped attention for antisemitism legislation in recent months, but argued that passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act is critical because there are no realistic alternative proposals for tackling antisemitism on Congress’s agenda at this point. 

The Senate has also been focused on confirming presidential appointees.

The source said that advocates for the bill need to find strategies to work around the obstacles to the legislation, “and that has not been easy,” but insisted that they and others are not giving up on the bill.

“There just hasn’t been a lot of legislation [moving] in general,” Nathan Diament, the executive director of public policy for the Orthodox Union, said — arguing that the slow progress is not unique to the Antisemitism Awareness Act or antisemitism generally.

Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-NV) office told JI that she is continuing to advocate for the Antisemitism Awareness Act, and is also looking at potential other legislation that could move forward on antisemitism. Rosen, the co-chair of the Senate antisemitism task force, is the lead Democratic sponsor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act.

Senate Republicans had vowed, coming into the majority, to pass the bill.

“Republican control of the Senate means that this institution will no longer turn a blind eye to the growing threat of antisemitism in our country or the numerous threats that our ally Israel faces on all sides,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told JI after Republicans won the Senate majority. “We will empower committees to advance legislation addressing antisemitism and protecting students on campuses, and we will increase oversight into Iran’s malign actions.”

On the House side, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told JI last week that “we’re working on” the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Pressed on whether Congress is moving strongly enough to respond to antisemitic violence, Lawler said, “It continues to be a strong focus of mine and many of my colleagues, and we’re working through the legislation.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) did not respond to a request for comment.

Observers believe the House, which passed the bill last year only for it to fail to move forward in the Senate, is waiting on the Senate to move first this year and prove that it can pass the bill.

Another source argued that, given the action the administration has taken to address antisemitism on college campuses, the Antisemitism Awareness Act is “less necessary” in the near term.

On NSGP funding, the House Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would allocate $335 million for the program in 2026 — the same funding level that the House backed for the program in 2025, though final funding levels ultimately fell short of that mark.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, meanwhile, has yet to finalize its homeland security funding bill. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), the ranking member of the subcommittee responsible for such funding, told JI last week that lawmakers are “still negotiating” it.

Congress will have just a month to finalize government funding or pass a stopgap bill when it returns from August recess.

A Republican senator working on the issue said they’ve been focusing on ensuring that outstanding NSGP funding for this year is disbursed from the administration before turning to the appropriations process for next year.

“First things first on it, let’s get the grant money out so people can actually create a more secure environment where they’re physically located,” the senator said. The administration opened applications for the 2025 grant program on Monday, but some supplemental funding remains to be allocated.

Diament said that Congress is in the “fourth or fifth inning out of nine” on government funding, and that the process will likely play out mostly in September or October. He also argued that, given the “tight fiscal environment,” particularly for homeland security funding, the fact that advocates were able to secure a $30 million increase in NSGP funding from the initial proposed level of $305 million, on a bipartisan basis in the House Appropriations Committee is very “valuable in the process going forward.”

In “the later innings of the process, it laid very good groundwork” for further bipartisan movement to increase funding as the process proceeds, Diament continued. “We made sure to work it on a bipartisan basis and we’re moving in the right direction.”

“Given everything else on the legislative calendar and where we are on the legislative calendar, I don’t feel like we’re behind,” he continued.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a co-chair of the House antisemitism task force, asked about congressional action on antisemitism last week, said that “there’s a place for legislation” but argued that other steps are also needed to make antisemitism unacceptable in public discourse.

“In the end, Americans have to speak out on this,” Bacon said at a press conference on legislation aiming to tackle support for terrorism on social media. “We have to make it like it’s embarrassing to be standing on that side saying those things. So we got to speak up. And you can’t legislate that.”

Several Democrats said last week that more needs to be done legislatively to tackle antisemitism.

“We’ve had an unlimited amount of hearings, and the speaker has now come out with a security plan [for members] for the summer, and a lot of that, obviously, is tied to the amount of hate and threats that we are getting, but we still haven’t passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said. “No, we’re not doing enough to combat antisemitism and other forms right now of hate and demagoguery that’s going on.”

“The language and the culture, it’s just completely toxic,” Moskowitz continued, adding that Congress is “also not doing enough on the security grants. … They gave ICE $140 billion. We’re trying to get more money for security when the community is in grave danger, and these threats are out of control, at all-time levels.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that “there can never be too much focus on antisemitism, and I see, frankly, too little right now, in light of events that are unfolding around the country.”

“I wish there were more focus on bias and bigotry of all forms, because it is growing, and so is violent extremism and the confluence of the two make for a very dangerous recipe for potential disaster,” Blumenthal continued.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), a co-chair of the House Jewish Caucus, said that “it’s not business as usual” on antisemitism, and that lawmakers are “working on it and we’re trying to take constructive steps.”

But he added that “we have to do more. We’re seeing antisemitism rising all across the country, being normalized in ways that should never be normalized” on both sides of the political spectrum. 

Schneider said that “it is critical that everybody, Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, stand together, stand united against anti semitism and not what about ism in here, we need to stand against hate. But antisemitism is rising at a rate that should give everyone concern.”

He primarily blamed Republicans for the lack of progress on legislation like the Antisemitism Awareness Act.

Jewish Insider’s congressional correspondent Emily Jacobs contributed reporting.

The latest round of fundraising reports for members of Congress paints a concerning picture about the future of the ideological center. Many lawmakers from both parties known for their pragmatism and moderation struggled to raise big bucks for their campaigns, while a number of insurgent candidates on the left and the right wings of their parties scored significant fundraising hauls.

Some of the middling fundraising numbers from experienced, establishment-oriented lawmakers will lead to speculation they are considering retirement. 

On the GOP side, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), a senator deeply immersed in national security issues, only raised $723,000 in the last three months — barely inching past two of her Democratic opponents. That’s an underwhelming sum for Ernst, who has typically been a strong fundraiser but has been taking heat from both the right and left. It will only raise speculation about her political future.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), facing a primary challenge from right-wing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, also didn’t hit the $1 million mark in fundraising, bringing in just $804,000. Paxton, despite worries about his electability and scandals surrounding him, raised $2.9 million.

In the House, Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), the respected former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, raised just $93,000 for the quarter, with less than $100,000 in his campaign account. While he’s not in a competitive district, that small sum has raised retirement speculation as well.

On the Democratic side, there were some fresh signs that mainstream, pro-Israel candidates aren’t getting quite the same fundraising traction as they have in the past.  

We noted earlier in these pages that in the Michigan Senate Democratic primary, pro-Israel stalwart Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), was outraised by both state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul el-Sayed, an outspoken anti-Israel voice.

In the race to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), the two Democratic candidates running as progressive critics of Israel — Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh — outdistanced state Sen. Laura Fine, a strong supporter of Israel in the state Legislature.

There were some encouraging signs from several moderate Democrats in high-profile races: Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) outraised progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, $1.47 million to $917,000, in the Minnesota Senate race. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a suburban congressman with a generally pro-Israel record, led the Illinois Senate field in fundraising. And Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), a battle-tested pragmatic lawmaker, raised a solid $1.8 million without much primary opposition in the New Hampshire Senate race.

But the party’s biggest fundraisers remain the true-blue left-wingers: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) raised a whopping $5.8 million in the last three months as she receives more and more presidential buzz. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), despite not even running for reelection next year, brought in more than $4.5 million in the second quarter. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), by comparison, raised less than half of AOC’s second quarter total — at $2.37 million. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who isn’t in cycle until 2028, brought in just $155,000 to his campaign account.

PITTSBURGH — Pennsylvania’s top lawmakers put up a united front on Tuesday to emphasize to the hundreds of tech and energy investors at Sen. Dave McCormick’s (R-PA) inaugural innovation summit the benefits of working with states that embrace bipartisanship and the national security imperatives of investing domestically.

The Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit brought top tech and energy executives to Carnegie Mellon University’s campus, home to one of the world’s most advanced AI programs. Tuesday’s gathering also included the state’s two leading Democrats, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), and President Donald Trump, all of whom praised the conference as a strategic way to promote U.S. investment to the scores of foreign and American leaders in attendance.

Amazon Web Services’ $20 billion investment last month in three computing and AI campuses in the Keystone State was “an indicator of all that we can be when we harness the new things that we have going for us, and when we have government and the private sector working together, not at odds, and when we pull in our educational institutions … in a way that really helps move Pennsylvania forward,” Shapiro said during a panel discussion with McCormick and AWS CEO Matt Garman. 

While McCormick and Shapiro acknowledged their political differences, they said they agreed that their state should be on the forefront of the technological innovation and investment happening in the United States. They also said they share the view that a unified team of statewide leaders is more appealing to outside investors and businesses than an assortment that’s at odds with each other.  

“I look at this moment as a business guy, and so I say one of two things: If I’m a business guy, what do I want?” McCormick asked. “I want to come to a place that has all those ingredients and has uniform political leadership. … If you’re a CEO and you want to invest a bunch of money and you come in and sit down, you meet the governor and he’s talking bad about me and saying that I’m full of it, and vice versa, that makes you not want to invest, right? So we need to be aligned at all levels.”

“The governor and I are of different parties, we have plenty of differences, but on this, we agree. Sen. Fetterman was at our dinner last night. On this, we agree that we need to be at the crossroads of the energy revolution, the AI revolution. To have a leadership position, we need to show a unified front at the local level, at the state level, at the national level. That’s the only way to win,” McCormick continued. 

The conversation, which took place as hundreds of AI and energy firms courted investors at tables around the Jared L. Cohon University Center on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, followed panel discussions from senior tech and finance executives about winning the race for AI and energy domination domestically and the benefits of investing in the Keystone State.

Shapiro and McCormick separately said that they view Pennsylvania as a purple state that requires bipartisan cooperation to push any legislation across the finish line. 

“As a candidate, I promised I would get things done, and in Pennsylvania, you can’t get things done unless you’re able to work with people who you disagree with on certain things and find areas of common agreement,” McCormick said. “We can agree that we’ve got to have great jobs in Pennsylvania, we’ve got to take advantage of our energy resources, like there is so much to agree on. So I think this is a particularly special moment for Pennsylvania.”

Shapiro noted that his first two years as governor took place under a Republican state Senate, forcing him to reach across the aisle and find common ground on areas such as economic and education policy, before noting that he still takes issue with major GOP policy priorities such as Trump’s budget reconciliation bill.

“The last two years, I was the only governor in the entire country with a divided legislature. Senate led by Republicans, a House led by Democrats. This year, I think there’s one or two other governors with the same. For me to get any bill to my desk requires votes from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. And I think if you enter every discussion focusing on your differences, you’ll never get anything done,” Shapiro said.

“We’re honest about differing on the bill that was just passed, the reconciliation bill that was just passed last week,” he added of his disagreements with McCormick. “But we also understand how critically important it is to grow our economy in Pennsylvania, this unique moment that we are in.”

Fetterman, who returned to Washington on Tuesday for Senate business, told Jewish Insider in a statement that he was fully supportive of the summit and the unity push by McCormick and Shapiro.

“Party aside, we’re all in – on Pennsylvania’s best interests,” Fetterman told JI, adding that he sent his “congratulations to Sen. McCormick for putting this tremendous event together for Pennsylvania’s future.”

McCormick later highlighted in his discussion with Shapiro and Garman the need for Pennsylvania and the U.S. to keep up with the rest of the world in economic development. 

“If you travel around the world, if you go to the Middle East, if you go to other places, the pace of change is extraordinary. And it’s gonna require a level of urgency that I don’t think most people in this room have probably had in the past about this moment, particularly in Pennsylvania. And so that urgency, we need to grab the moment,” the senator said. 

In response, Shapiro pointed out that one of McCormick’s top takeaways from his recent visit to the Middle East was the potential for U.S. investments from new partners.

“The senator, and I think Dina [Powell McCormick] as well, went to the Middle East a month or two ago, and we talked right when he came back. One of the things you were most jazzed up about, I thought, were the investments that folks in the Middle East shared with you that they wanted to make in America and how you were pitching Pennsylvania as part of that,” Shapiro said.

“This is a global race for both energy dominance and AI dominance. We need home-grown Pennsylvanians to be doing this work, and we need investment from all across the country and all across the globe. We do not want China to beat us in this AI race. This is one of the most important national security questions we have, and so if the senator and others can bring investment from around the globe to right here in Pennsylvania,” he continued.

During the president’s roundtable discussion with McCormick, leading executives and several members of his Cabinet, Trump touted the $5.1 trillion in domestic investments he claimed to have secured on his last visit to the Middle East while cheering the $90 billion in committed U.S. projects announced at the summit.

“Today’s commitments are ensuring that the future is going to be designed, built and made right here in Pittsburgh and I have to say right here in the United States of America,” Trump said. 

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum described the president’s “vision of energy dominance” as the “foundation of this golden age for America.” 

“You identified that there were a couple of threats to our country. One was Iran having a nuclear weapon. The other was losing the AI arms race to China. You took care of one of those a few weeks ago. You’re helping to take care of the other one here,” Burgum said of Trump’s agenda, prompting a smile from the president. 

McCormick then noted that Trump’s attendance at the summit helped boost interest from industry leaders and investors alike. “I really believe, Mr. President, based on you being here, we’re going to look back on this day and say that this was a real, seminal moment in the history of our Commonwealth and maybe in the history of our country,” he told the president. 

Trump then remarked that while McCormick had initially only asked him to make a brief appearance at the gathering, he decided to stay for longer once he saw the industry leaders on the high-profile guest list. 

“When I saw the people gathered, I said, ‘I’m not leaving. I want to learn something.’ And I have learned something. This is the smartest group of talent, probably, that you’ve ever had in terms of energy and even finance, [that you’ve] ever had in one room,” Trump remarked to the crowd.

A group comprised largely of Democratic House lawmakers wrote to Elon Musk on Thursday condemning the antisemitic and violent screeds published by X’s AI chatbot Grok earlier this week, calling the posts “deeply alarming” and demanding answers about recent updates made to the bot that may have enabled the disturbing posts.

“We write to express our grave concern about the internal actions that led to this dark turn. X plays a significant role as a platform for public discourse, and as one of the largest AI companies, xAI’s work products carry serious implications for the public interest,” the letter reads. “Unfortunately, this isn’t a new phenomenon at X. Grok’s recent outputs are just the latest chapter in X’s long and troubling record of enabling antisemitism and incitement to spread unchecked, with real-world consequences.”

The lawmakers noted that Musk said on July 4 that xAI, the company responsible for Grok, had “improved [it] significantly” and that users “should notice a difference” in its responses. 

“On July 8, 2025, Grok’s output was noticeably different,” the lawmakers said, pointing to a string of Grok posts praising Adolf Hitler, describing itself as “MechaHitler,” spreading antisemitic tropes, creating detailed and violent rape scenarios about an X user and providing instructions for breaking into that user’s house. 

The bot also claimed that the changes implemented by Musk to its algorithms had allowed Grok to share these extreme posts.

“These quotations are utterly depraved. They glorify hatred, antisemitic conspiracies, and sexual violence in grotesque detail, presented as truth-seeking. We are particularly troubled at the prospect that children were likely exposed to rape fantasies produced by Grok,” the lawmakers wrote. “That your work product Grok would embrace Hitler and his ideology marks a new low for AI development and a profound betrayal of public trust.”

The lawmakers demanded that such posts by Grok be taken down and that Musk publicly provide information about the recent changes made to Grok’s algorithm, the reasons for them and their intended outcome; what in Grok’s training, programming or datasets led it to produce these comments; what safeguards had previously been in place to prevent these types of posts; how xAI will prevent similar incidents going forward; and whether X has any content filters to prevent underage users from seeing Grok-generated content.

“When certain filters are removed, Grok readily generates Nazi ideology and rape fantasies,” the lawmakers wrote. “Why shouldn’t a reasonable observer conclude that these outputs reflect biases or patterns embedded in its training data and model weights, rather than merely being the result of inadequate post-training moderation?”

The letter was led by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Don Bacon (R-NE) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). Additional signatories include Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Laura Friedman (D-CA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Marc Veasey (D-TX), Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), Eugene Vindman (D-VA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Dina Titus (D-NV) and Mike Levin (D-CA).

A day after the antisemitic fiasco, Musk announced a new version of Grok, calling it “the smartest AI in the world,” adding that he would be rolling it out to Tesla cars within the week. X CEO Linda Yaccarino abruptly stepped down a day after the chatbot’s antisemitic rants.

Musk claimed that the issues had arisen from Grok being “too compliant to user prompts. Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially,” and said the issues would be addressed.

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, whose organization was targeted in some of Grok’s posts, said in a statement that the incident highlights risks of antisemitism proliferation through social media platforms and AI chatbots.

“The antisemitic content produced by Grok earlier this week underscores how social media platforms easily can be manipulated and too often amplify antisemitic rhetoric and toxic extremism,” Greenblatt said. “ADL’s research shows that LLMs [Large Language Models] remain vulnerable to this kind of antisemitic and anti-Israel bias. It was helpful that xAI removed the most offensive posts, but xAI and all the tech companies absolutely must do more to ensure these tools do not generate or spread harmful content.” 

“We appreciate the efforts of Reps. Tom Suozzi, Don Bacon and Josh Gottheimer to lead a bipartisan response, demanding real accountability and greater safeguards,” Greenblatt continued.

In the aftermath of the U.S. strikes on Iran, officials and lawmakers are warning of potential threats from Iranian or Iran-affiliated “sleeper cells” embedded in the United States, a threat that could persist in spite of the ceasefire reached last week.

Experts say that there is a real threat that Iran could seek to target the U.S. government, Jewish communities or other targets within the United States, either through networks of operatives in the country or individuals radicalized online against Israel and Jews.

“Though we have not received any specific credible threats to share with you all currently, the threat of sleeper cells or sympathizers acting on their own, or at the behest of Iran, has never been higher,” Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said in a memo to CBP personnel earlier this month, asserting that thousands of known and unknown Iranian nationals are believed to have entered the United States.

Iran also reportedly sent a message to President Donald Trump days before the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, threatening to activate a terrorist network inside the United States if the U.S. struck Iran, NBC News reported.

A Department of Homeland Security public bulletin warned that the conflict in Iran could prompt attacks in the United States, and that a specific direction from Iran’s religious leadership could increase the likelihood of homegrown violent extremist mobilization. It also warned of potential cyberattacks.

Both before and after the U.S. strikes, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle had delivered similar warnings. Jewish community security groups came together to caution institutions to take heightened precautions in response to the strikes to protect their physical safety and cybersecurity.

Matthew Levitt, the director of the counterterrorism and intelligence program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former counterterrorism official, told Jewish Insider that homeland threats are very real, though he argued that the term “sleeper cells,” which he said invokes spy thriller TV shows, can trivialize the threat.

Levitt said there are past cases of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked operatives being smuggled into the U.S. and surveying sensitive government and Jewish community locations. One such individual, after his arrest, told authorities he might have been instructed to attack those sites following a development like a direct American attack on Iran.

Levitt said that there have also been documented cases of groups such as Hezbollah setting up networks abroad to raise funds or spread propaganda, among other operations — but these individuals are generally not, as seen in popular culture, “a trigger puller who’s been sent here to wait until he’s ultimately told to pull the trigger.”

“There is real concern that if there was ever a time when Iran or Hezbollah was going to use these types of operatives, now would be it,” Levitt said, “especially since their other toolkits have generally been denied to them.”

Embedded foreign operatives operatives are likely few in number, Levitt added. A larger threat is from individuals in the United States who have been radicalized by anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda or could be prompted to violence by a potential future Shia religious edict.

The degradation of Iran’s proxies and limited effectiveness of its missile attacks leaves “the potential for international terrorist attacks” that are less easy to definitively trace to the Iranian government, but send a message that “they haven’t been beaten” and can still retaliate, Levitt said.

Oren Segal, the vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told JI that “this specific conflict speaks to concerns that intelligence agencies have talked about for years, about the idea that Iran or its proxies have people around the world.”

“It’s understandable for not only the Jewish community, but frankly, the broader community, to be feeling anxiety over whether these people are in place and what they might do,” Segal continued.

He said it’s difficult to know how many direct Iranian assets might be in the United States, but regardless of that, there’s an ongoing threat of individuals being radicalized online.

“You don’t have to look too far to see attacks that have happened, or plots in this country that were motivated or animated by ideology, as opposed to somebody coming in from abroad,” Segal said. “To me, that is always going to be the most omnipresent threat.”

He emphasized that violent language targeting the Jewish community has skyrocketed since recent antisemitic terrorist attacks in Washington and Boulder, Colo., and “we just don’t have the luxury to ignore any of these threats.” 

Secure Community Network CEO Michael Masters, speaking on a recent webinar with FBI and DHS officials, warned of heightened risks to Jewish community groups that could emanate from a range of different sources, according to prepared remarks reviewed by JI.

Masters emphasized that Iran has a record of attempting operations inside the United States in recent years, and noted that U.S. military engagement against Iran has long been seen as a likely trigger for Iranian retaliatory attacks in the United States.

He said SCN believes that Jewish institutions and leaders would be top targets of Iranian proxies and criminals working with them. And he noted that within hours of the U.S. attacks on Iran, SCN had identified nearly 1,700 violent social media posts targeting the American Jewish community.

Levitt said that the “good news is” that IRGC and Hezbollah operatives in the country are likely under tight surveillance, noting that recent reporting indicates that the FBI has increased its focus on such groups in recent days.

“On the one hand, I’m sure that there are adversaries that would like to do something against America in America,” Levitt said. “It’s also a case that — there’s no such thing as 100% successful — we’re pretty good at law enforcement, intelligence and border security and all that here.” 

Many Republicans have linked the “sleeper cell” threat to increased levels of undocumented immigration during the Biden administration, a connection that Levitt largely dismissed.

“I don’t subscribe to the opinion that border security was so lax in previous administrations that all kinds of bad guys got in,” Levitt said. “More people were allowed in the country. It doesn’t mean that law enforcement wasn’t doing its job, and the actual [number of] cases we know about where bad guys were able to come into the country is very, very small.”

Good Tuesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on Iran’s violation of a ceasefire with Israel hours after it went into effect, and speak to GOP lawmakers about their perspectives on the ceasefire. We interview experts about the state of Iran’s nuclear program following Israeli and American strikes against its facilities and cover efforts by House and Senate Democrats to bring forward votes on war powers resolutions that aim to constrain the administration from taking any further military action against Iran. We also report on how Jewish and pro-Israel activists are responding to the ascent of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, Rep. Carlos Gimenez and Yotam Polizer.

What We’re Watching

• All eyes are on the New York City Democratic mayoral primary to see if former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will prevail over Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, though because of ranked-choice voting, complete results may not be known for several days. Downballot, we’re keeping an eye on the city comptroller’s race, which pits Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine against City Councilmember Justin Brannan. More below.
• President Donald Trump is heading to The Hague, Netherlands, today for the NATO summit, where the war with Iran is likely to be a top agenda item for discussion.
• Prior to his departure, and just before the Daily Kickoff was published, Trump told reporters, Israel and Iran “don’t know what the F*** they’re doing,” and said, “I’m not happy with Israel.” he also wrote on Truth Social, “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”
• Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter is speaking today at a televised town hall hosted by Iran International and American Abroad Media.
• In Washington this morning, the House Appropriations Committee is holding a markup on the Homeland Security bill for 2026. We’ll be keeping an eye on how much is allocated for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.
• Later today, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are slated to hold classified briefings with House and Senate lawmakers on the Israel-Iran war.
• At 2 p.m. ET, the House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on “America’s Battle Against Antisemitic Terror.” 
• Tonight at the Capitol, the Embassy of Spain and Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) are hosting the World Jewish Congress and the American Sephardi Federation for an event on “The Golden Age of the Jews of Al-Andalus.”

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S matthew kassel

It’s not an overstatement to suggest that the future direction of the Democratic Party could well be decided tonight in New York City, where a far-left, anti-Israel assemblyman from Queens, Zohran Mamdani, has a shot to win the Democratic nomination against presumed favorite, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Most public and internal campaign polls show Cuomo ahead, but a new Emerson College poll released Monday showed Mamdani in the lead for the first time, sending shockwaves through the New York City Jewish community — and beyond.

The notion that a candidate who pointedly declined to condemn “globalize the intifada” rhetoric in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world could be running competitively would have been unthinkable not long ago.

For a party desperately seeking to moderate in the aftermath of brutal defeats in 2024, the prospect of having a socialist mayor for the next four years in the largest city in the country would be an undeniable setback, threatening to reverberate beyond Gotham’s borders.

Mamdani’s rise has particularly fueled anxiety among Jewish leaders — as his hostile views toward Israel have hardly dented his standing in the race. Even if he doesn’t win the nomination, Jewish Democrats uncomfortable with his anti-Israel rhetoric and alleged insensitivity to rising antisemitism fear his surging campaign could end up causing them to rethink their long-standing affiliation with the Democratic Party.

One prominent New York-based Democratic strategist told JI he expected some Jews to relocate to Florida or Texas if Mamdani becomes mayor.

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

ISRAEL-IRAN WAR, DAY 12

Iran violates ceasefire with Israel within hours

Iran violated a ceasefire with Israel hours after it began on Tuesday, with Israel vowing “powerful strikes” in response, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports. The IDF intercepted two missiles from Iran at about 10:30 a.m. No injuries were reported. Despite residents of northern Israel reporting interceptions, Iran denied firing the missiles.

Retaliation order: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he “instructed the IDF to respond forcefully to the violation of the ceasefire by Iran with powerful strikes against regime targets in the heart of Tehran.” Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff, said that “in light of the severe violation of the ceasefire carried out by the Iranian regime, we will respond with force.” A senior Israeli diplomatic source said that “Iran violated the ceasefire — and it will pay.” In the hours before the ceasefire was meant to go into effect at 7 a.m., Iran launched 20 missiles in a series of barrages at Israel, killing four in a direct hit on a building in Beersheba. 

Read the full story here.

Outfoxed: When Fox News anchor Bret Baier scored a primetime interview with Vice President JD Vance for Monday evening, he likely hoped that Vance would have news to share with him. Instead, Baier was the one to break the news to Vance that President Donald Trump had brokered a ceasefire deal between Israel and Iran, which Trump announced in a post on Truth Social moments before Vance went on air, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. 

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republican response

GOP lawmakers: Trump ceasefire a sign of ‘peace through strength’

Republicans publicly lauded President Donald Trump’s ceasefire between Israel and Iran as an example of his “peace through strength” approach to foreign policy, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report. “This is a war that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will,” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform, alluding to criticism that he was dragging the U.S. into another prolonged Middle East conflict. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told reporters on Monday evening that the news of a ceasefire was “incredible,” saying, “This is what peace through strength looks like.”

Victory lap: Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told JI that he’s “very much pleased” by the news. Pressed on whether he’s concerned that the deal could give Iran breathing room to rebuild its nuclear program, Kennedy said, “There’s this rule when you practice law, when you’ve won for the judge, you shut up. OK? You don’t keep talking. It’s a ceasefire. We won. We ought to take our victory.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said he viewed the ceasefire as a “very good development.” He told reporters, “I think the question now is how do we get to a place where we can get to a deterrence posture, a containment posture for Iran for the long haul, that will keep them in their box, keep Iran in their box, but will also allow us, the United States, to draw down our troop and military presence in the region.”

Still wary: Some national security-focused House Democrats highlighted the risks of Trump’s actions if they did not successfully eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. “If you take this shot, you have to land it, and it’s a very hard shot to land,” Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) told JI, arguing that the situation highlighted the need for Congress to assert a role in war-making authorities. Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, emphasized that the success of the strikes is very uncertain at this point, and that he would be “most worried about an Iran that goes silent right now.” He said, “If Iran goes silent right now, what are they doing? Are they actually developing something?”

Read the full story here with additional comments from Sens. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Jim Banks (R-IN), Bernie Moreno (R-OH), Katie Britt (R-AL), James Lankford (R-OK), Roger Wicker (R-MS), John Fetterman (D-PA), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Dana Stroul.

Earlier Monday: Iran launched several missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar, Jewish Insider’s Jake Schlanger reports.

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WEAPON QUESTION

Will Iran’s nuclear program survive the U.S. and Israeli strikes?

According to President Donald Trump, Iran’s nuclear program is finito. “Obliteration is an accurate term!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “Monumental damage was done to all nuclear sites in Iran.” He said on Monday that the three sites hit by U.S. strikes on Sunday morning “were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday that the U.S. “took out” Iran’s nuclear program over the weekend. Nuclear experts aren’t as confident. What, exactly, remains of Iran’s nuclear program — which, just weeks ago, Israeli officials said was on the precipice of being able to produce a nuclear weapon — remains an open question, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Uncertainty lingers: Experts agree that the combination of Israel’s strikes that began a week and a half ago, aided by the U.S. military’s intervention on Sunday, has done significant damage to Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But uncertainty lingers about the status of the enriched uranium that had been housed at Fordow, the major Iranian nuclear facility hidden under a mountain that the U.S. struck with bunker-buster bombs this weekend. Reports suggest Tehran may have removed the nuclear materials from Fordow and hidden them elsewhere in Iran. “I think that we can assume that damage was done, but it’s going to take a long time, and we may never know entirely the extent of the damage,” said Tressa Guenov, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who dealt with international security affairs at the Pentagon in the Biden administration. Iran’s claim that it moved the uranium “could be real, or it could be a strategy to keep things ambiguous,” she added. 

Read the full story here.

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DEM DRIVE

Democratic efforts to block Trump war powers to continue despite Iran ceasefire

House and Senate Democrats are pushing ahead with efforts to bring forward votes this week in the House and Senate on resolutions that aim to constrain the administration from taking any further military action against Iran in spite of the surprise ceasefire between the U.S. and Israel and Iran, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Though Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) said they’re pulling back on efforts to pass a bipartisan war powers resolution, a group of top House Democrats introduced an alternative measure, which aims to address concerns that Massie’s resolution would have blocked U.S. support for Israel’s defense.

Democrats’ positioning: Democratic staffers told JI that Democrats have largely unified publicly against the administration’s strikes on Iran — even some who support them privately — due to a perception that the move was a political weak point for Trump, concerns about being recorded as backing the strikes if they prompted another protracted regional war and a deep level of distrust with the Trump administration and its failure to present Congress with information about the strikes. 

Read the full story here.

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SCOOP

Georgetown University ‘appalled’ by department chair’s call for Iran to strike U.S. base

Georgetown University’s administration said it was “appalled” after a prominent faculty member called for Iran to conduct a “symbolic strike” on a U.S. military base in a social media post on Sunday. “We are reviewing this matter to see if further action is warranted,” a spokesperson for the university told Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen on Monday, noting that the administration is “appalled” by the since-deleted tweet by Jonathan Brown, a tenured professor and chair of the university’s Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service, who has a history of spreading anti-Israel vitriol.

What he wrote: On Sunday, one day after the U.S. struck three Iranian nuclear facilities, Brown tweeted: “I’m not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily. I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops.” 

And then: Brown, who is the son-in-law of convicted terror supporter Sami Al-Arian and has gone on several X tirades since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks slamming Israel, deleted his tweet on Monday. “I deleted my previous tweet because a lot of people were interpreting it as a call for violence,” Brown wrote. “That’s not what I intended. I have two immediate family members in the US military who’ve served abroad and wouldn’t want any harm to befall American soldiers… or anyone!” 

Read the full story here.

Off base: As Iran targeted Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in retaliation for the U.S. airstrikes against the Iranian nuclear program, Tucker Carlson claimed on his podcast that the air base, “that they [Qatar] don’t need at all,” exists to protect Israel and Qatar is hosting it “to be nice,” Jewish Insider’s Jake Schlanger reports.

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MAMDANI MOMENTUM

Mamdani’s ascent in NYC mayoral primary alarms Jewish voters

As the closely watched Democratic primary for mayor of New York City wraps up today, many Jewish and pro-Israel activists are now confronting a mounting sense of alarm that Zohran Mamdani, a far-left assemblyman from Queens, could win the nomination, propelling a fierce critic of Israel to the general election — and, potentially, Gracie Mansion. In a city home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel, Mamdani’s rise has fueled anxiety among Jewish leaders — particularly as his hostile positions toward Israel have hardly dented his standing in a competitive race that has narrowed to a two-person matchup. Even if Mamdani does not win, Jewish Democrats uncomfortable with his strident criticism of Israel and alleged insensitivity to rising antisemitism fear that his surging campaign could end up alienating Jewish voters who have long called the party home, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

If he wins: “The Jewish community is going to face a real shock if Mamdani gets the nomination,” Mitchell Moss, an urban policy professor at New York University who is backing Cuomo, said in an interview with JI on Monday. “A lot of people have come to realize that anti-Israel sentiment has metastasized into antisemitism.” Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist, predicted a Mamdani victory could end up pushing “more Jews nationally into the Republican column” and said Orthodox Jews might choose to relocate to South Florida and New Jersey. “Whether he wins or loses,” Sheinkopf said, the contours of the race have sent a concerning message that he characterized as “Jews don’t matter.”

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

The Donald Doctrine: In The Atlantic, Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg considers President Donald Trump’s legacy in the Middle East. “Until the arrival of Donald Trump, no American president believed that the Iranian threat should be ended — to borrow from the language of the campus anti-Israel movement — by any means necessary. Trump may yet be remembered as a hypocrite who promised a clean American exit from the Middle East but found his presidency — like those of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan before him — hopelessly trapped in Iranian quicksand… But he could also be remembered as the president who averted a second Holocaust.” [TheAtlantic]

The Fall of Tehran?: In The Free Press, Eli Lake considers the implications of regime change in Iran. “This kind of talk has gone out of favor in Washington in recent years. The fall of dictatorships in Libya and Iraq led to confessional sectarian war. The fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt led briefly to a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo before a military coup. But in Iran, a country that has experienced democratic uprisings five times since 2017, it now seems like a real possibility. … At the heart of the present uncertainty is a paradox. On the one hand, the Iranian regime is wobbling. On the other, the organic Iranian opposition has been targeted with ruthless lethality by security services that have proven efficient in targeting dissidents. Since 2009 and the Green Movement against the stolen presidential election that year, internal opposition leaders have been killed, exiled, or jailed.” [FreePress]

Falling on Deaf Ears: Commentary’s Seth Mandel looks at the support for tyrannical regimes by some Western progressives, even as dissidents from those regimes advocate otherwise. “Iranian actress and activist Nazanin Boniadi has issued a heartfelt plea to the Western protest class that I fear will fall on deaf ears. Just as the Palestinians who have made it out of Gaza and can speak freely tried, in vain, to convince the anti-Zionist demonstrators to not lionize Hamas, so are Iranian democracy activists learning about the Western fascination and identification with tyrannical regimes. … If the Iranians are ever freed from the occupying force in Tehran, it will be against the wishes of the Western activist class, which is fully invested in the status quo of tyranny anywhere it can be found. And they will almost certainly not be dissuaded by those who actually have to live under those regimes.” [Commentary]

Word on the Street

The New York Times examines how Iranian officials have reacted to the strikes against their nuclear and military facilities, from insisting on normalcy to projecting false strength to cautioning restraint…

The Wall Street Journal looks at Russia’s reluctance to acquiesce to Iranian requests for assistance in its strikes against Israel and the U.S.…

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after the U.S. struck Iranian nuclear facilities — but before Iran attacked U.S. bases and President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire — found that only 36% of respondents (13% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans) said they supported the strikes, while 45% opposed them… 

Retired NASA astronaut Terry Virts, a Democrat, announced his campaign to run against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) on Monday with a video calling out Trump’s “chaos” as well as a lack of leadership in the Democratic Party and its failure to learn from the 2024 election… 

The British government announced plans to sanction the anti-Israel activist group Palestine Action following incidents in which members of the group broke into a British air base and damaged military planes and vandalized one of Trump’s golf courses in Scotland…

The 21 members of the House Jewish Caucus — all Democrats — pressed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a letter sent on Tuesday expressing concerns about Kingsley Wilson, the recently promoted Pentagon press secretary with a history of antisemitic and otherwise controversial comments, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod scoops…

Top Senate leaders introduced a bipartisan resolution on Monday condemning the recent antisemitic attacks in Washington and Boulder, Colo., Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

Democrat Jeff Grazyel, a former Morris Township mayor, announced plans to run for Rep. Mikie Sherrill‘s (D-NJ) congressional seat if she wins the New Jersey governor’s race. Grazyel is extensively involved in his local Jewish community, including as a member of the local Jewish Community Relations Council and Jewish federation and his synagogue board…

Former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is joining the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law as a distinguished visiting professor…

A New Jersey Assembly committee voted to table a proposed bill that would have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…

eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher interviews Yotam Polizer, the CEO of IsraAid, on the organization’s pivot from providing humanitarian aid abroad to focusing domestically on Israelis in need in the aftermath of Oct. 7 and the Iranian missile attacks…

The New York Times interviews former talk show host Maury Povich, who launched a podcast earlier this year after hosting more than 30 seasons of his eponymous show…

The New York Times reviews the new documentary “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” about the actress’ rise to stardom and representation of the deaf community in Hollywood…

Cosmochemist Edward Anders, who as a child survived the Holocaust and in his retirement wrote a book about the Jews from his Latvian town who did not, died at 98…

Pic of the Day

U.K. Foreign Minister David Lammy (left) met with former Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi in London on Monday. Sharabi’s wife and two daughters, who were murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, were British nationals.

Birthdays

Film director, screenwriter, producer, editor and cinematographer, Todd Strauss-Schulson turns 45…

Ruth Weinstein… Activist investor, he is a co-founder of Trian Fund Management, Nelson Peltz turns 83… Professor emeritus in the College of Business at San Francisco State University, Sam S. Gill turns 83… Former chairman and CEO of New York Life Insurance Company, Seymour “Sy” Sternberg turns 82… Professor of Jewish philosophy at American Jewish University and founding dean of its rabbinical program, Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff turns 82… Founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and Yeshivat Maharat, Rabbi Avraham Haim Yosef (Avi) Weiss turns 81… Former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, he is an author and professor at UC Berkeley, Robert Reich turns 79… Former member of Knesset and former chief of staff of the IDF, Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon turns 75… Early childhood specialist at Columbus City Schools and Columbus School for Girls in Columbus, Ohio, Carol Glassman… EVP at Edelman until earlier this year, he is the author of a book on the Saatchi & Saatchi ad firm, Kevin Goldman… Circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Sandra Segal Ikuta turns 71… President and CEO of public relations firm Steinreich Communications, Stanley Steinreich… U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Florida, Beth Francine Bloom turns 63… President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum turns 63… Former principal of Mount Scopus Memorial College in Melbourne, Australia, Rabbi James Kennard turns 61… The first on-air talent of the NFL Network when it debuted in 2003, he has become the face of the network ever since, Rich Eisen turns 56… Israeli businesswoman and owner of the soccer team, Hapoel Beer Sheva, Alona Barkat turns 56… Author and columnist, he is the managing editor at Shtetl, Shulem Deen turns 51… Singer and songwriter known professionally as Ariel Pink, Ariel Marcus Rosenberg turns 47… Director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti turns 44… Digital marketing manager at Guardian Pharmacy Services, Brett Rosner… VP of Houston-based RIDA Development, Steven C. Mitzner… 2015 contestant on “Jeopardy!” who earned $413,612 by winning 13 consecutive episodes, Matthew Barnett “Matt” Jackson turns 33… Actress and singer, Elizabeth Greer “Beanie” Feldstein turns 32… Director of legislative fiscal affairs at the Rockland County (N.Y.) legislature, Moshe Gruber… College basketball player for the Harvard Crimson until 2022, then a graduate transfer player at NYU until 2024, Spencer Freedman turns 27… Lois Charles…

Bipartisan groups of House and Senate members have introduced legislation to repeal the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, sanctions legislation passed in 2019 targeting the former Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad, a step that proponents say will help remove obstacles to reconstruction and stabilization efforts in post-Assad Syria.

The administration recently announced that it would be lifting all sanctions on Syria, but the Caesar Act sanctions can only be temporarily waived, for periods of 180 days, barring a full repeal by Congress. Administration officials have indicated that they’d support such a step, and sanctions relief, in principle, has broad support on both sides of the aisle.

The sanctions, named for a pseudonymous individual who documented the Assad regime’s torture of civilians, also targeted Syrian critical industries, individuals and businesses that supported or did business with the Syrian government and Iranian and Russian entities that supported the Syrian government. 

Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced legislation on Wednesday to repeal the sanctions. 

Reps. Joe Wilson (R-SC), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), Lou Correa (D-CA), Jack Bergman (R-MI), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and Mike Levin (D-CA) introduced a similar bill in the House last week.

“We can keep the new Syrian authorities accountable without decimating the economy,” Shaheen said in a statement. “Sustained diplomatic engagement can yield tremendous results.”

Paul argued against the Caesar Act sanctions in principle, saying they had been too broadly targeted.

“While the Caesar Act was intended to isolate the Assad regime, it has ended up punishing everyday Syrians — fueling poverty, crippling recovery, and blocking progress toward peace,” Paul said. “This repeal is about restoring a more targeted, principled approach that holds bad actors accountable without inflicting unnecessary suffering on the very people we claim to support.”

The timeline for the repeal effort is somewhat unclear: Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in May that the administration’s ultimate goal would be to repeal the act, conditioned on the new Syrian government “mak[ing] enough progress” on U.S. priority issues. 

But U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who also serves as U.S. envoy to Syria, indicated greater urgency, calling for Congress to repeal the sanctions within the first 180-day waiver period, which is renewable if the sanctions are not repealed before then.

“I promise you the one person who has less patience with these sanctions than all of you is President Trump,” Barrack said during a visit to Syria to meet with President Ahmad al-Sharaa last month.

The House lawmakers leading the repeal legislation represent a broad spectrum of the House,  ranging from a former chair of the House Progressive Caucus to a former House Freedom Caucus member, and including Israel hawks on both sides of the aisle.

“The Assad regime sanctioned by the Caesar Act no longer exists, and it is time to repeal the law to provide long-term certainty to those who would like to invest in the reconstruction and rebuilding of Syria,” Wilson said in a statement.

Panetta said that repealing the sanctions would help the U.S. “position itself as a partner for continued progress” as adversaries aim to gain a foothold in Syria.

“The repeal of these broad sanctions will give foreign partners the certainty they need to invest in the Syrian economy and give their new government a chance to succeed,” Jayapal said.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is departing today for Saudi Arabia, the first leg of an Abraham Accords-themed congressional delegation that also plans to visit Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Israel and meet with leaders in each country. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who is leading the delegation, told Jewish Insider that the trip will take place even as Israeli strikes against Iran continue. 

“I think the timing just becomes all that much more important,” Schneider said in an interview on Friday. “Last night, Iran took a significant hit to its nuclear program and its military. So I think and hope maybe it opens up possibilities. We’ll find out.” 

Other members attending the trip, which is hosted by the Atlantic Council’s N7 Initiative, include Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Zach Nunn (R-IA). 

“During these times of instability in the region, support for the Accords is necessary to enhance Israel’s security and stability, as well as a way to counter threats posed by Iran,” Bacon said in a statement. 

It has been nearly five years since Israel normalized ties with the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco in the Abraham Accords, which were widely viewed not just as a diplomatic accord but also a counterweight to Iran’s influence in the region. 

“The Arab countries around Israel remain committed to this idea of a better future, a pathway to peace, and I believe the Abraham Accords are that path,” said Schneider. “The purpose of the trip, before the strikes against Iran, was to talk about that. That doesn’t change.”

A bipartisan group of 41 lawmakers wrote to the CEOs of Meta, TikTok and X on Friday urging them to take action in response to the spike in violent antisemitic content posted on their platforms following recent antisemitic attacks in Washington and Boulder, Colo.

“We write to express grave concern regarding disturbing and inflammatory content circulating on your platforms in support of violence and terrorism,” the lawmakers — the majority of whom are Democrats — wrote in the letter, highlighting the rise of rhetoric praising and justifying the two antisemitic attacks. “This content is effectively glorifying, justifying, and inciting future violence, mirroring the surge in hateful rhetoric and open calls to violence and support of terrorism observed after the October 7, 2023 [attacks], and the ensuing Israel-Hamas conflict.”

They urged the administration to take “decisive and transparent steps to curb these dangerous trends and protect all users from the effects of hate and incitement to violence online.”

There has been a “skyrocketing number of antisemitic conspiracy theories accusing the D.C. attack of being a ‘false flag’ operation” online as well as instances of users “glorifying” the D.C. shooter’s actions, the lawmakers said, arguing that this increases the chances of further violence.

“This is not merely a matter of policy enforcement but one of public safety and national security,” the letter reads. “We regard the unchecked spread of pro-terror content, extremist symbolism, and incitement to violence as a direct threat to U.S. national security and public safety … It is critical that social media companies do not allow coded praise of violence or hate speech to flourish unchecked, as this only encourages others to engage in similar acts.”

The letter draws a direct connection between “Failing to meaningfully curb hate speech, including antisemitic mis- and disinformation, and allowing antisemitic incitement to violence” and the attack in Washington.

The lawmakers asked the three platforms to provide clarity on how they plan to respond, including how they will address “coded language” promoting violence and terrorism, how they determine when content that has incited violence is allowed to remain on the platform, how they will be implementing their anti-terorrism policies and how they are addressing the spread of incitement to violence and terrorism in multiple languages.

The letter was led by Reps. Wesley Bell (D-MO) and Don Bacon (R-NE) and signed by Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Julia Brownley (D-CA), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), Gil Cisneros (D-CA), Steve Cohen (D-KY), Jim Costa (D-CA), Danny Davis (D-IL), Don Davis (D-NC), Cleo Fields (D-LA), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Laura Friedman (D-CA), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Jonathan Jackson (D-IL), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Grace Meng (D-NY), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Greg Stanton (D-AZ), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Marilyn Strickland (D-WA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Dina Titus (D-NV), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Marc Veasey (D-TX), Eugene Vindman (D-VA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Nikema Williams (D-GA) and Frederica Wilson (D-FL).

Bacon and Fitzpatrick were the only Republican signatories. Krishnamoorthi, Pappas and Stevens are all mounting bids for the Senate in their respective states.

The Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee supported the letter.

A group of lawmakers from more than 30 countries came together on Wednesday to discuss ways that the Abraham Accords can be leveraged to address energy security issues in the Middle East, the Caspian Sea Basin and the Eastern Mediterranean, Jewish Insider has learned.

The event, hosted by AIPAC and the European Jewish Association, was the third such meeting of the Abraham Accords Interparliamentary Strategic Dialogue, which has focused on energy issues. The meeting was the largest yet in the series, in terms of the number of countries represented.

Participants included Abraham Accords Caucus co-chairs Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and parliamentarians from Israel, Morocco, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Greece, Cyprus, Japan, Paraguay, Bahrain and a range of European Union nations.

Richard Goldberg, a senior energy official in the Trump administration and former senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, briefed the group on behalf of the Trump administration.

“Advancing normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors and strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship are two of my top priorities,” Rosen said in a statement. “As one of the co-founders and co-chairs of the Senate Abraham Accords Caucus, I’ve seen firsthand how these agreements are reshaping the Middle East — improving regional security, expanding economic opportunity, and creating people-to-people ties that make peace real and lasting. Today’s conversation made clear the importance of continuing our efforts to strengthen these ties, fostering cooperation, and widening the circle of peace and progress.”

In response to the shooting that killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum last week, a bipartisan group of 46 House members wrote to President Donald Trump on Friday urging him to support expanded funding for key security programs in his full budget request to Congress, expected as soon as Friday afternoon.

While presidential budget requests are non-binding and are frequently modified by Congress, Trump’s requests are likely to be influential in the GOP-controlled Congress. And the appeals made by the lawmakers, in some cases, constitute calls for Trump to walk back funding cuts he proposed in the high-level budget toplines — known as a “skinny budget” — he submitted to Congress earlier this month.

Highlighting the “sharp rise in threats to the Jewish community,” the lawmakers — most of them Democrats — said that it is “imperative that the federal government take the necessary steps to increase funding for enhanced security measures” and “ensure that the Jewish community is equipped with the necessary tools to prevent loss of life in the case of an attack.”

The legislation calls on Trump to support $500 million in funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, the same funding level that bipartisan groups of House and Senate members have urged Appropriations Committee leaders to support, calling the program “one of the most effective and critical programs for protecting the Jewish community and all faith-based communities from attack.” Jewish groups have called for funding to be increased to $1 billion.

Trump, in his “skinny budget,” had called for a reduction in funding for non-emergency grants at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a category that includes NSGP, but did not put forward a specific request for the program itself. In the past, presidents have not always made any specific funding requests for the NSGP, even in their more detailed budget outlines.

The letter outlines a series of examples that “demonstrate the direct return on investment for communities under threat” from the NSGP,  highlighting incidents in which security upgrades paid for by the program likely saved lives by stopping shooting attacks.

The lawmakers also called for Trump to “explore opportunities,” in collaboration with lawmakers, to provide an additional dedicated fund to allow faith-based organizations to hire security officers.

“Although Jewish institutions can use the NSGP to hire additional security personnel, the majority of Jewish institutions have either not been recipients of these grants or cannot afford the additional costs incurred,” the letter reads. “In light of recent events, it is more clear than ever that Jewish institutions are in desperate need of additional personnel support.”

The letter calls on Trump to support increased funding for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump called for a $545 million cut to the FBI’s budget in his “skinny budget”, pledging that the FBI would focus on counterintelligence and counterterrorism and that it would eliminate “duplicative intelligence activities.”

The letter emphasizes the FBI’s role in domestic terrorism investigations, which have been on the rise, and intelligence gathering and the FBI’s responsibility to report to Congress on domestic terrorism threats.

It calls for increased Department of Justice grants for local law enforcement to ensure that hate crimes are properly reported to local and federal law enforcement agencies, and specifically for grant programs to counter hate crimes “to ensure that antisemitic hate crimes are addressed and prosecuted in a timely manner” and their extent is fully understood. 

The “skinny budget” called for cutting $1 billion in DOJ grant programs, including “programs that focus on so-called hate crimes in clear violation of the First Amendment.”

The letter was led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and co-signed by Reps. Max Miller (R-OH), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Brittany Pettersen (D-CO), Laura Gillen (D-NY), John Larson (D-CT), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Nikema Williams (D-GA), David Scott (D-GA), Wesley Bell (D-MO), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Dina Titus (D-NV), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Susie Lee (D-NV), Andre Carson (D-IN), Shontel Brown (D-OH), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Frederica Wilson (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Janelle Bynum (D-OR), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), Ted Lieu (D-CA), George Latimer (D-NY), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Julie Johnson (D-TX), Julia Brownley (D-CA), Marilyn Strickland (D-WA), Darren Soto (D-FL), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Brendan Boyle (D-PA), Bill Keating (D-MA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Benny Thompson (D-MI), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Brad Sherman (D-CA), David Kustoff (R-TN) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC).

Miller and Kustoff, who are both Jewish, are the only Republican signatories.

As Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) faces attacks from the media and fellow lawmakers in the Democratic Party, he hit back at members of his own party on Tuesday in remarks to a group of bipartisan activists in Washington.

Speaking to members of NORPAC, a pro-Israel advocacy organization, Fetterman offered some of his sharpest criticism yet of the Democratic Party’s approach to Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

“Israel and your community deserves much better from my party,” Fetterman said, earning loud applause. 

He described how American universities have produced a “monoculture that produced, actually, rampant antisemitism,” and called to address it — but suggested Democrats are not interested in doing so. 

“We have to address that. But in my party, you will pay a price,” said Fetterman. “That’s OK. I think that’s what defines character … that you’re going to support things even if it moves against your own political interest.”

Several recent reports have suggested that Fetterman is struggling with mental health challenges, which Fetterman has denied. 

Michigan lawmakers from both parties are condemning Ahmed Al-Qazwini, a Dearborn, Mich.-area imam and Shiite scholar, for saying in a sermon last month that killing Zionists is “a win-win situation.” 

“Can you lose against a Zionist in the battlefield?” Al-Qazwini said during a Dec. 13 sermon at the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights, a heavily Arab American area. “It’s impossible to lose, because there is one of two scenarios, one of two outcomes. Either you kill him and you send him to hell, you’ve prevailed, or he kills you and he sends you to paradise. What other option is there? How can you lose? It’s a win-win situation,” Al-Qazwini said during the sermon, a video of which was posted on the Middle East Media Research Institute’s website.

Al-Qazwini described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Biden administration as each being “the greatest loser today” over the situation in the Middle East, adding, “It’s those Arab puppets, those Arab governments that not only are they indifferent, not only do they neglect. No, but they conspire with the Zionists in killing Muslims.”

The Islamic Institute of America did not respond to Jewish Insider’s request for comment regarding Al-Qazwini’s sermon. The remarks, which began circulating on social media this past week, were met with condemnation from a handful of congressional lawmakers. 

Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told JI in a statement, “These remarks were shocking. He glorified violence and hatred, and his antisemitic rhetoric has no place in Michigan — or anywhere in our country for that matter. I unequivocally condemn his statements.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said, “Advocating for violence is reprehensible. Full Stop. In Michigan, our diverse faiths and diverse beliefs are a strength.”

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) said, “I condemn the dangerous remarks of Mr. Qazwini in December 2024 at the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights, MI. We do not need religious institutions in the U.S. calling for violence or the killing of other people based on one’s religious beliefs. The path to peace is impeded by words like this.”

“These comments are clearly reprehensible, both in their calls for violence and their blatant antisemitism,” Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) told JI. “Inflammatory language like this sews the seeds of violence, endangering innocent people and moving the conversation away from the peace we would like to achieve.”

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) said, “Antisemitism is on the rise in our country, and comments like this are inexcusable and appalling. I strongly condemn violence and antisemitism of any kind. We must root out this hate from our institutions and the hearts and minds of those who seek to harm our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

“This is absolutely appalling,” Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI) told JI. “I completely condemn this violent and unacceptable rhetoric.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, did not respond to JI’s request for comment before publication. Nor did Reps. John James (R-MI), Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Tom Barrett (R-MI).