Zohran Mamdani declined to criticize demonstrators who shouted down a commemoration ceremony he attended for Oct. 7 victims
CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (C-R) attends vigil for Oct. 7 victims on October 7, 2026.
Add JewishInsider on GoogleNew York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday shrugged off the protest — which featured jeers of “traitor” at the democratic socialist leader, and chants of “long live Hamas” — that sought to drown out an event he attended the night prior memorializing the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.
The mayor, who rose to power as a fierce critic of the Jewish state, declined at a press conference to denounce or even meaningfully engage with the presence of hecklers who massed in Union Square Wednesday night against a vigil organized by the liberal group Israelis for Peace. Protesters used drums and megaphones to berate the mayor and drown out remarks from speakers.
Mamdani’s statement earlier on Wednesday, which devoted greater space to the death toll in the Gaza Strip than to the atrocities on Oct. 7 that triggered Israeli military action, infuriated mainstream Jewish leaders and drew bipartisan rebuke.
Even so, the statement prompted a wave of far-left outrage online for its condemnation of Hamas, as did his participation in the commemoration.
“I was proud to attend last night’s vigil, as I did last year, to listen to testimonies from family members of those who were killed on Oct. 7, and those who’ve been killed in the three years since, and all of whom united in a vision for peace and an end to the genocide in Gaza,” Mamdani told journalists after an unrelated event in Brooklyn. “As for those protesting me, I am the mayor of New York City, and this is what I signed up for.”
Mamdani shrugged off protests — featuring jeers of “traitor” and chants of “long live Hamas” — that sought to drown out an event he attended last night memorializing the victims of Oct. 7. Read more: https://t.co/IsxYgVBc5N https://t.co/ynDyWiz2q8
— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) October 8, 2026
The mayor remained noncommittal when reporters pressed about city approval for a proposed memorial to the nearly 1,200 killed and 251 taken hostage during the assault, and would not answer why he did not dedicate a polished video on official city channels to the tragedy, as he has repeatedly done for the Palestinian cause. He also did not respond to a question about whether he considered the hecklers to be good-faith actors.
“I think that the statement, the attendance, the meeting, it all speaks to a reckoning with horror and a horror that devastated the lives of New Yorkers three years ago, and it also continues to devastate New Yorkers today,” he said.
Plus, Michigan Hillel appears to punt on Israel advocacy
CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (C-R) attends vigil for Oct. 7 victims on October 7, 2026.
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statement on the Oct. 7 terror attacks and the backlash it provoked from both legislators and Jewish leaders for its criticism of Israel, look at infighting among Republicans over a pro-Israel provision in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act and cover University of Michigan Hillel’s announced break with national Israel advocacy organizations. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Eli Sharabi, Rep. Haley Stevens and Andy Schor.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with assists from Tamara Zieve and Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
Today’s Agenda
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is slated to hold a press conference with New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin this morning on nonprofits. The press conference comes the morning after mayor’s widely panned statement on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack. More below.
Speaking at a UJA-Federation of New York event last night, Menin — without naming Mamdani or the other far-left officials and candidates who offered similar statements — said, “Today should be a day about only one thing and that is honoring and remembering the 1,200 people who were murdered by Hamas terrorists. That’s what October 7th is about. … This is a very, very difficult day for the Jewish community. And I think to say anything but that is not OK.”
An Oct. 7 vigil last night attended by Mamdani and organized by the left-wing Israelis for Peace was disrupted by anti-Israel protesters, some of whom wore green Hamas headbands and carried Hezbollah flags. The demonstrators screamed into megaphones and banged on drums, accusing Mamdani of being a “sellout,” “coward,” “traitor” and helping to facilitate genocide while the mayor stood silently and listened to remarks from speakers that were repeatedly drowned out by the demonstrators.
In Michigan, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed will participate in a debate tonight hosted by WOOD TV8.
In Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will present the Presidential Award for Civilian Heroism today to six people who helped thwart the attempted hijacking of the FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Sept. 30: Tali Manes, Zvika Manes, Yaniv Hayoun, Shota Musayev, Asaf Rajuan and Or Pardilov.
Israel and the U.K. reached an agreement ahead of today’s deadline to close the U.K.’s consulate in east Jerusalem, which serves Palestinians, following a row between the countries over London’s decision to ban products from West Bank settlements. U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said that the building would be redesignated as a mission and would continue to provide services with a pared-down staff, following a flurry of diplomatic activity — including a quiet trip to Israel last week by U.K. National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell — in an attempt to find a resolution after Israel said it would shutter the facility.
The USS Abraham Lincoln is set to arrive in San Diego today, after a more than 10-month deployment, the bulk of which was in the Middle East…
One Thing To Know
ON THE HILL
A provision in the draft 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that aims to coordinate and enhance cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli militaries has proven to be a significant source of controversy among Democrats, with even some senior lawmakers who defended the provision on its merits flipping against it under pressure.
And, as Congress will have only weeks to pass the NDAA when it returns from recess after the November elections, the provision is facing some resistance from Republican lawmakers as well — an indication of skepticism of the U.S.-Israel partnership building among the GOP base as part of the debate between hawks and isolationists.
The Big Reads
CITY HALL CRITICISM
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani observed the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel with a statement that opened with a denunciation of Hamas and the “horrific war crimes” it committed that day, but spent most of its length excoriating the Israeli response — drawing fierce criticism from mainstream Jewish organizations, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.
“We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss,” the top of the statement concludes — before launching into the main body of his remarks attacking Israel. “The suffering did not begin nor end that day.” UJA-Federation of New York said in statement that Mamdani “chose to respond to the grief of Jewish New Yorkers by advancing false and inflammatory attacks against Israel — not only inappropriately shifting the focus away from the victims of Hamas’s cruelty, but also placing Jewish New Yorkers at risk.”
Catching heat: Several Democratic lawmakers blasted Mamdani for his Oct. 7 statement, including Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Dan Goldman (D-NY), and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), JI’s Marc Rod reports.
NO COMMENT
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican nominee for Senate, issued a statement Wednesday commemorating the third anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and bashing his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, while El-Sayed remained silent, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to multiple inquiries from JI about whether he planned to issue a statement on the Oct. 7 anniversary, and has not shared any such statement publicly. Rogers said, “Three years ago today, the world witnessed in horror the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. This dark day is a sad reminder that evil exists all around us. And how we respond to evil determines how much it grows.”
Not on board: Lansing, Mich., Mayor Andy Schor told CNN that he’s not currently supporting El-Sayed, and is not willing to consider backing him without a conversation with El-Sayed about the nominee’s rhetoric around Israel and antisemitism.
Go Blue, but blue and white?
University of Michigan Hillel is ending its formal affiliations with student groups and national organizations engaged in Israel advocacy, lobbying or political organizing, while insisting that the policy does not represent a retreat from its support for Israel, Jewish Insider‘s Haley Cohen reports. The policy, announced by interim Executive Director Cindy Hughey in a message to students at the start of the academic year last month, is part of what Michigan Hillel described as a renewed focus on Jewish life, learning and community. University of Michigan Hillel said it will “no longer formally affiliate with national organizations or student groups whose primary work involves Israel-related advocacy, lobbying, or political organizing,” but it will continue to offer Israel education, cultural programming and discussions about Israel.
The Rundown
POLICY PIVOT
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SURVEY SAYS
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On Our Radar
● The Live Briefing. Word on the street, clips, podcasts and quick updates — the items we’re tracking all day in our Live Briefing on the app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Texas, President Donald Trump doubled down on comments made earlier this week that Iran could target San Diego and Los Angeles, telling a crowd in San Antonio, “You want to see trauma? You want to see problems? And I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way”…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is in Greece this week, reiterated the Trump administration’s position that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Simple, period, end of story.”
Speaking in Athens yesterday, Rubio praised Western civilization, drawing a contrast between the Iranian regime, which he cast as a “cult of death” that glorifies martyrdom, and the West’s tradition of loyalty and sacrifice…
The Department of Defense instructed U.S. Central Command to prepare for a potential resumption of strikes targeting Iran, which according to Israeli and U.S. officials could take place before the midterms…
At least 81 U.S. military aircraft and drones have been damaged or destroyed since the war with Iran began in February, according to a new Congressional Research Service report; the losses include 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones and 12 F-15E fighter jets…
A tanker near the coast of Qatar was struck on Wednesday, the first reported strike on a vessel in the Gulf in nearly a month…
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) released a short documentary she made about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, compiled from interviews with survivors; Stevens said she “wanted people to hear directly from those who lived through it, to see their humanity, their grief, and their resilience”…
A Haverford College professor was charged with cyberstalking and taken into federal custody over threatening and antisemitic messages sent to a co-worker; Guangtian Ha, whom the college has placed on leave, reportedly used anonymous social media accounts to post the home address of his colleague, and sent messages including one that warned that “The Führer is coming, rats”…
The co-pilot who attempted to hijack and crash a FlyDubai flight reportedly told investigators he had sought out roles at airlines that would bring him to Israel and considered carrying out his attack in July, stating he was motivated to do so over the war in Gaza; he reportedly changed his mind because a friend was among the crew on the July flight…
The U.K.’s Metropolitan Police arrested 11 individuals at anti-Israel marches coinciding with the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, including five at a “spontaneous protest” outside the Camden headquarters of the Board of Deputies, the representative body of British Jews…
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot visited Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square and Kibbutz Be’eri on the anniversary of the attacks, saying in a statement that France “will never forget” the victims of the Oct. 7 attacks…
Three people were killed and dozens wounded in Houthi attacks on airports in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday and Wednesday, escalating the conflict between Riyadh and the Iran-backed terror group in Yemen…
Hezbollah reportedly received $200 million from Iran to support Lebanese displaced by the war with Iran; the State Department denied the transfer of funds, saying that the Iran-backed terror group was “trying to save face with fake stories about cash influxes from Iran”…
French-Jewish scientist Henri Kagan, a Holocaust survivor, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, alongside Japan’s Kenso Soai, for their work on homochirality, building off the 19th-century research of Louis Pasteur; Kagan, 95, is the third-oldest winner of a Nobel Prize…
Worthy Reads
Find more Worthy Reads in our Live Briefing via our app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Back Home, For Now: In The Atlantic, Amir Tibon, whose family survived the Oct. 7 attacks in their Nahal Oz home, ties his decision to permanently relocate back to the kibbutz on the outcome of the upcoming elections. “Emigration, of course, is always easier to imagine than to execute, and there are many people in this land who would suffer if this government returns to power but who have nowhere to go. … Yet for many Israelis who do have options abroad, starting over somewhere else, with all of its difficulties, seems a better choice than four more years of Netanyahu’s corruption, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s extremism, and the ultra-Orthodox parties’ shameless plunder of public funds, all amid a regional ‘forever war’ with no end in sight.” [TheAtlantic]
Mamdani’s Message: In The Free Press, Eli Lake weighs in on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statement on the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, which drew bipartisan criticism for its focus on Israel’s war in Gaza. “These are not the errant ravings of a fringe activist or edgy podcaster. This is the mayor of New York sounding like the hate-filled radicals that swarmed American campuses in 2023 and 2024. One should have grace for the youth and the terminally online. But the mayor is a civic leader. When he spreads this poison, he mainstreams it.” [FreePress]
No Direction Home: In eJewishPhilanthropy, the Hadar Institute’s Rabbi Avi Killip reflects on the feeling of political homelessness increasingly felt by American Jews. “Those who once felt comfortable on the left are facing the antisemitism that has been there for years but now become impossible to overlook or excuse. Those who found a home on the right, grateful for leaders willing to acknowledge and defend Israel and Israelis, have watched that support waffle and wane with the winds of the moment.” [eJP]
Picture of the Day
Former hostage Eli Sharabi c0-hosted the October 7 Families’ National Memorial Ceremony alongside actress Shani Cohen on Wednesday night in Tel Aviv’s HaYarkon Park. At the end of the ceremony, Sharabi delivered a monologue dedicated to the memory of his wife, Lianne, and two teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel, who were killed in their home in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7.
Birthdays
Yaakov “Kobi” Marimi, singer and actor, he represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 in Tel Aviv, turns 35
Isadore Sharp, founder and chairman of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, author and philanthropist, turns 95
Agustin Estrada, general surgeon in Tempe, Ariz.
Rona Barrett, gossip columnist and businesswoman, turns 90
R. L. Stine, author of more than 330 horror novels, turns 83
Brian E. Frosh, attorney general of Maryland from 2015 to 2023, turns 80
Stephen Shore, director of the photography department at Bard College since 1982, more than 25 books of his photographs have been published, turns 79
Edward Zwick, Academy Award-winning film producer and director, turns 74
Jonathan Kessler, AIPAC senior staffer for 18 years and now CEO of Heart of a Nation
Shira Piven, movie and theater director, writer and filmmaker, turns 65
David Kustoff, member of the House of Representatives (R-TN-8), one of four Jewish Republican congressmen, turns 60
Stefan Simchowitz, Los Angeles-based art collector, art curator and art advisor, turns 56
Rabbi Menachem Creditor, scholar-in-residence at UJA-Federation of New York
Ben Lyons, entertainment reporter and sports commentator, turns 45
Ilana Blitzer Snider, magazine editor and daughter of CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, turns 45
Aliyana Traison, N.Y.-based therapist
Adina Lichtman, founder of Knock Knock, Give a Sock, an organization that collects socks for the homeless
Rep. Josh Gottheimer: ’Mr. Mayor, you're right that today is painful for Jews. You're also the one making it worse’
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) during a hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on June 24, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Several Democratic lawmakers blasted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday for his statement on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel — which focused primarily on condemning Israel, the war in Gaza and Jerusalem’s alleged “ongoing genocide” and “apartheid.”
“He basically said ‘The Jews that died, sad, but it’s their fault,’” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said on X. “He needs the city’s antisemitism policy for himself. Just an atrocious statement.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) accused Mamdani of “[d]esecrating the memory of murdered, innocent Jews today of all days and refusing to even condemn Hamas,” calling the mayor’s statement “obscene.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who lost his primary race in part due to his support for Israel, said that Mamdani’s statement was “reprehensible.”
“In the guise of ‘grieving’ with those mourning that day, Mayor Mamdani asserts as fact hotly disputed allegations that he knows full well will offend and further upset those same people he pretends to grieve with,” Goldman said. “On this day of all days, the Mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel embraces extreme activism instead of balanced leadership.”
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) accused Mamdani of worsening Jews’ pain.
“Mr. Mayor, you’re right that today is painful for Jews. You’re also the one making it worse,” Gottheimer said. “Blame the victims. Trash Israel. Wife likes posts cheering the attack. Thanks for the clarity.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) did not explicitly mention Mamdani, but condemned critics of Israel who used the anniversary as an opportunity to bash Israel.
“The world demonizes Israel 365 days a year,” Torres said. “Perhaps, for just one day—October 7th—the critics of Israel could take a vacation from their hysterical hatred of the world’s only Jewish State and find it within themselves to express condolences for the thousands of Israelis murdered, maimed, mutilated, raped, and abducted at the hands of Hamas.”
Other Democratic leaders have also spoken out.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran against Mamdani, also criticized him, saying that Oct. 7 “should be sacred.”
“Yet even today, @NYCMayor cannot put aside his ideological obsession with Israel long enough to simply let Jews mourn,” Cuomo said. “At a time of rising antisemitism, words matter, and rhetoric has real-world consequences. There are 364 other days for politics. Today, remember the victims. Condemn Hamas. Stand with the Jewish community. It should not be difficult.”
Former New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop, who now leads the business advocacy group Partnership for NYC, called Mamdani’s statement “inappropriate and unnecessarily inflammatory.”
“At a time when heightened antisemitism is a real concern — one the Mayor himself has acknowledged — New York’s elected leaders should be focused on bringing our city together and addressing the urgent challenges facing New Yorkers, not creating further division,” Fulop said.
Former Florida Senate candidate Alex Vindman issued an implicit condemnation of Mamdani, saying, “You could save your selective ahistorical biased opinions on the whole history of Israel and Palestine (seemingly justifying October 7th) until say tomorrow. Your empathy could exceed your biases.”
Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s former ambassador to monitor and combat antisemitism under the Biden administration, also criticized Mamdani’s statement.
New York-based and national Jewish groups have condemned Mamdani’s statement as well.
The UJA-Federation of New York said that the anniversary “should have been a day” to stand with the victims and survivors of Oct. 7.
“Instead, Mayor Mamdani chose to respond to the grief of Jewish New Yorkers by advancing false and inflammatory attacks against Israel — not only inappropriately shifting the focus away from the victims of Hamas’s cruelty, but also placing Jewish New Yorkers at risk, the group continued.
William Daroff and Betsy Berns Korn, respectively CEO and chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said similarly in a joint statement, “There is a time for debate over Middle East policy. The anniversary of the October 7 massacre is not that time. Exploiting a day of profound grief to accuse Israel of genocide dishonors the memory of those who were murdered, deepens the pain of survivors and hostage families, and further alienates Jewish New Yorkers at a moment that should unite us in remembrance.”
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said he’s spoken directly with Mamdani about his rhetoric, “but he once again found an opportunity to be callous toward Jewish pain.”
“He gave Hamas a single sentence and then spent the rest of his statement condemning Israel,” Jacobs said. “You cannot proclaim empathy and care for the Jewish community and then fail to show basic humanity toward us in our grief. Turning this anniversary into an indictment of the Jewish state is not only hurtful, and deeply offensive, but it also makes Jewish New Yorkers less safe.”
Democratic Majority for Israel said Mamdani’s statement “diminishes the gravity of the day and disrespects the victims.”
A slew of Republicans have also spoken out to condemn Mamdani, including Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rick Scott (R-FL); Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Jason Smith (R-MO) and Rudy Yakym (R-IN); U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Board Chair Jeff Miller; Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders; U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee; former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley; and former Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY).
Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter also condemned Mamdani’s “dangerous lies” and called him a “defender of Palestinian terrorism, a promoter of antisemitism, and an advocate of anti-Americanism” as well as an ally of Hamas.
In spite of his staunch anti-Israel stance, Mamdani is still facing protests from further-left anti-Israel demonstrators today, accusing him of genocide and of betraying the anti-Israel movement.
Rallying for a memorial for Hamas victims, the city’s top two Jewish officials wouldn’t criticize mayor directly over his Oct. 7 statement
Adam Gray/Getty Images
Julie Menin, Speaker of the New York City Council, addresses the media before a New York City Council Committee on October 5, 2026 in New York City.
New York City’s two highest-ranking Jewish local officials turned down the opportunity to condemn Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s controversial comments on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — even as their fellow Democrats railed against him — at a rally supporting a memorial to the Hamas victims.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin and City Comptroller Mark Levine both turned out for an event organized by state Sen. Sam Sutton to advocate the establishment of a privately funded monument in a small Brooklyn park honoring those killed or abducted three years ago in the attacks. In their formal remarks, the pair deplored Hamas’ violence, and Levine even called a single heckler’s repeated cries of “free Palestine” during his address “very disappointing.”
But pressed by Jewish Insider and other reporters about Mamdani’s statement earlier in the day, which gave greater space to condemnations of Israel’s military response than to the attack that provoked it, neither would expressly criticize him.
“Look, I’m focused on Oct. 7 and memorializing the 1,200 people who were murdered by Hamas terrorists. I think the focus needs to be on Oct. 7, full stop,” Menin told JI as she headed for her city vehicle after speaking.
She would only reiterate this point about “focus” when JI pressed if the mayor’s statement was appropriate to the occasion.
Levine made a near-identical statement.
“Today needs to be about the victims of Oct. 7 — today of all days. And I want everyone to come together for one day to focus on the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust,” Levine told JI. “That is my message, it’s one that I hope all leaders would also deliver to their communities.”
"Today needs to be about the victims of Oct. 7." Asked by JI’s @WillBredderman about Mamdani’s statement on the Hamas attacks that assailed the "genocide in Gaza," NYC Comptroller Mark Levine said, "I want everyone to lower the temperature." Read more: https://t.co/Oyc4fzdhIB https://t.co/sp28wez7sO
— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) October 7, 2026
Asked if he had a specific message for the mayor, Levine again spoke only generally.
“I want everyone here to lower the temperature, to bring people together, and today more than any day to focus on the victims of this horrific attack,” he said, adding after further prompting, “I think his statement speaks for itself. And I issued my own statement. I think it’s pretty clear where I stand.”
The Manhattan politicians’ statements contrasted dramatically with those of Sutton, a conservative Democrat and longtime leader in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community.
“There are those that check off a box by saying the line that Oct. 7 was a tragedy, and then they go on and on,” Sutton said, calling out the Democratic Socialists of America and the rally they promoted in Times Square one day after the attack. “Listen, DSA members, you guys celebrated on Oct. 8 when not one Palestinian was killed, but Israeli civilians were killed. Stop lying. The truth must be told.”
Joey Cohen-Saban, Sutton’s chief of staff and Democratic district leader — an unpaid but important role in the Brooklyn party organization — went further.
“The fact that [Mamdani] includes such disgusting remarks in a statement that’s allegedly supposed to remember victims of Oct. 7 shows again that he is inherently antisemitic, and that’s something that he just continues to prove over and over and over again,” Saban, now a candidate for state Assembly, told JI.
Jewish groups condemned Mamdani for amplifying rhetoric they said puts Jewish New Yorkers at risk — on a day of mourning for victims of Hamas attacks
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, arrives to speak to members of the media in New York, on July 7, 2026.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani observed the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel with a statement that opened with a denunciation of Hamas and the “horrific war crimes” it committed that day, but spent most of its length excoriating the Israeli response — drawing fierce criticism from mainstream Jewish organizations.
“We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss,” the top of the statement concludes — before launching into the main body of his remarks attacking Israel. “The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza,” it continues.
The mayor then launched into a litany of familiar criticisms of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and of U.S. support for the Jewish state in a passage more than twice as long as his comments on Hamas and its victims.
“Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them — all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes,” the statement continues. “Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.”
The mayor concluded his statement with a call “to honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.”
The decision to devote the bulk of his statement commemorating the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust to attacking Israel infuriated leading Jewish religious civic leaders.
“Today should have been a day for New York to stand with the victims of October 7, their families, and all those still living with the trauma of Hamas’s barbaric attack,” UJA-Federation of New York said in statement. “Instead, Mayor Mamdani chose to respond to the grief of Jewish New Yorkers by advancing false and inflammatory attacks against Israel — not only inappropriately shifting the focus away from the victims of Hamas’s cruelty, but also placing Jewish New Yorkers at risk.”
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations also released a statement, saying, “Mayor Zohran Mamdani chose this solemn day to advance his familiar attacks on the Jewish state. There is a time for debate over Middle East policy. The anniversary of the October 7 massacre is not that time. Exploiting a day of profound grief to accuse Israel of genocide dishonors the memory of those who were murdered, deepens the pain of survivors and hostage families, and further alienates Jewish New Yorkers at a moment that should unite us in remembrance.”
“Mayor Mamdani cannot give Jewish New Yorkers even a single day to mourn without gaslighting us and appropriating the trauma of Oct. 7,” Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding said in a statement, re-upping longstanding concerns that the mayor’s constant criticism of Israel feeds into the city’s spike in antisemitic hate crimes under his leadership. “His rhetoric fuels hostility toward Jewish New Yorkers. Today, he could have honored the victims and promoted peace and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, he chose to incite hatred.”
Andrew Gross, New York regional director for the American Jewish Committee, also criticized the mayor for what he described as injecting politics into a solemn occasion.
“Today is about the 1,200 lives stolen on October 7, 2023, the 251 who were taken hostage, and the countless others who were terrorized by Hamas and continue to be haunted by the violence inflicted on them, their families, and an entire country that day,” Gross wrote in a statement to Jewish Insider. “It is not about the mayor or his efforts to advance a false political narrative. His decision to use October 7 to promote slander against the Jewish state and amplify rhetoric that puts Jewish New Yorkers at greater risk is especially painful and egregious.”
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, meanwhile, highlighted that the mayor’s statement made no reference to “Jews,” repeating a frequent criticism that Mamdani does not recognize or appreciate that many of the people he represents feel an affinity to Israel as a nation — even as he frequently and explicitly identifies New Yorkers of Palestinian background with events in Gaza and the West Bank.
“You are weaponizing a day meant for mourning the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle your usual antizionist talking points,” Greenblatt wrote to Mamdani on X. “The city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel deserves a mayor who can honor the dead without exploiting them.”
The mayor’s schedule indicated the mayor will attend first a vigil for the Oct. 7 victims before he “meets with Palestinian New Yorkers” on Wednesday. His office did not provide additional details.
JI reported in March that Mamdani’s wife liked multiple posts on Instagram celebrating the Oct. 7 attacks.
Ironically, Mamdani’s statement on X also prompted an outpouring of antisemitic commentary from the site’s users suggesting he was controlled by Jewish interests.
Anti-Israel activist Jacob Berger: ‘It’s cathartic because I want to beat the s*** out of these guys every single day’
(Esra Hacioglu Karakaya/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Jacob Berger, a Jewish American actor and viral content creator, poses for a photo wearing a T-shirt with Gaza written on it during an interview in Cairo, Egypt on January 29, 2025.
An attendee at a New York City fundraiser for Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Monday night told a fellow attendee that beating up a pro-Israel demonstrator outside the rally was “cathartic” and “the next best thing” to being able to punch an Israeli.
According to video of the incident posted on social media by both men involved, the two mutually agreed to fight and that they would not report the incident to the police.
The El-Sayed supporter, an anti-Israel Jewish actor and activist named Jacob Berger, then bragged about the incident to a fellow attendee at the El-Sayed event, in an audio recording obtained by Jewish Insider. Berger does not appear to have any formal affiliation with the El-Sayed campaign and was not a host or organizer of the fundraiser.
Berger posted clips from the fight with the caption, “had to rock a zionist face” with a smiling emoji. Asked about the fight, Berger claimed in the recording that he and the other man have a history of antagonism from past demonstrations and confrontations, and described the fight gleefully.
“It’s cathartic because I want to beat the s*** out of these guys every single day. He cheers on genocide, he cheers on babies being blown up,” Berger said in the recording. “F*** you — I was literally putting all my rage into my fists there. … I can’t punch an Israeli right now, but that’s the next best thing.”
Asked by JI whether the recording was authentic, Berger sent a vulgar response, dismissing the question.
“Abdul believes everyone has a right to express their opinion without fear of violence,” campaign spokesperson Roxie Richner said in a statement to JI.
Berger has recently posted a series of videos mocking the FlyDubai hijacking, and suggested in another video during the U.N. General Assembly that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials should go “back to Poland where they belong.”
Berger was also a member of the 2025 Gaza flotilla and was detained by Israel. He claims to have been banned from Israel. He moved to Egypt at some point in recent years, and has been accused of misconduct by other anti-Israel activists.
As El-Sayed works to rally members of the Jewish community who remain skeptical of him and his campaign, a recent letter from Michigan Jews in support of the candidate was also found to include a series of fringe figures holding various extremist views.
The Honan Strategy Group survey also found Jewish voters split almost evenly on whether each major party is friendly or hostile to Jewish interests
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America May 01, 2019 in New York City.
A new poll found support for the Democratic Party decreasing among Jewish voters in New York City and a widespread view among Jewish New Yorkers that the Democratic Socialists of America are hostile to Jews.
The poll, by the Honan Strategy Group, of 503 Jewish voters — a subsample of a poll of 1,167 likely New York City voters conducted from Oct. 2 to 6 — found that 51% of New York City Jewish voters said their support for the Democratic Party has grown weaker since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. Only 9% said that their support for the party had grown stronger, 27% said it had stayed the same and 12% said that they had never supported Democrats.
A majority of Jewish voters, 61%, also described the DSA as hostile to the interests of Jewish people, with 53% characterizing the DSA as “very hostile.” Thirty percent said they saw the DSA as friendly.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member, has had a rocky relationship with the mainstream Jewish community.
The survey found a significant difference in support for the Democratic Party among non-Jewish voters: only 26% of non-Jewish voters said their support for the party had grown weaker since Oct. 7 and 19% said it had grown stronger.
Jewish voters offered similar verdicts on the Democratic and Republican parties: 54% said the Democratic Party is friendly to Jewish interests and 46% called it hostile, while 51% said the Republican Party is friendly to Jewish interests and 49% said it is hostile.
Survey respondents were contacted by text and completed the survey online.
David Haskell promised future story assignments tied to Sephardic and Mizrahi heritage but declined to issue a correction to the controversial cover issue that spurred the discussion
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for VOX Media
New York magazine issues are displayed during New York Magazine's Vulture Festival LA at Goya Studios on November 11, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
Weeks after meeting privately with a group of Mizrahi and Sephardic leaders to address their concerns about a recent New York magazine cover package accused of erasing Jews from its narrative, the outlet’s editor-in-chief, David Haskell, vowed in response “to publish journalism that’s both accurate and empathic about the Jewish experience,” even as he otherwise declined to add a requested correction, according to an email he sent on Thursday.
Haskell’s note to the Jewish leaders, which was reviewed by Jewish Insider, came as New York has faced mounting scrutiny over its hostile turn against Israel in the years since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, an ideological shift that has sparked internal tensions with some Jewish staffers who have raised objections to the magazine’s direction.
The new correspondence provides insight into Haskell’s approach to the broader topics covered in the widely debated package, which he has not addressed publicly, even as it has drawn intense backlash.
In his email, Haskell reassured the Jewish leaders that the magazine’s editors “intend to be careful and precise in our coverage, including in the words and terms we use.”
“I am in conversations with editors here at the magazine for future coverage, including making assignments directly pulled from some of the stories I heard on the call,” he confirmed, while defending the package that the Jewish leaders and other critics had accused of bias.
The meeting on Sept. 17 followed the publication in August of a controversial cover issue that had hailed a thriving Middle Eastern cultural scene in New York. The issue centered on a feature that identified what it called a “SWANA” renaissance, using the acronym for Southwest Asia and North Africa.
But in highlighting a proud network of Arab and Muslim trendsetters, the story pointedly suggested that Jews could not participate in a community the author characterized as emerging in response to “the genocide in Gaza.” The article also questioned if “Israelis can claim a connection” to the region, citing “ethnic background” as a complicating factor, and it cast Zionism as a uniquely menacing ideology akin to Islamophobia and xenophobia.
Haskell later agreed to meet for an off-the-record call with the representatives of several leading Sephardic and Mizrahi organizations that had released an open letter urging the magazine to issue a public correction acknowledging “its framing excludes the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa except on ideological terms.”
During the meeting two weeks ago, which was organized by the nonprofit Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, the participants also pressed for “stronger editorial standards” concerning the magazine’s coverage of “Zionism, Jewish identity and Middle Eastern people,” according to one Jewish leader who joined the conversation and spoke with JI recently.
In his follow-up note on Thursday, Haskell thanked the Jewish leaders for what he called “an informative, productive and moving conversation,” saying that he had “appreciated in particular the personal stories of heritage, and the historical background” they shared on “Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa.”
“I very much want to publish journalism that’s both accurate and empathic about the Jewish experience, and the conversation we had deepened my awareness and sensitivity of the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities indigenous to the region,” he went on.
With regard to the magazine’s August cover issue, however, he explained that editorial leadership had “decided not to alter it or append a correction, as we believe that it clearly spoke about a specific New York City community with roots in the region and a shared political identity.”
While Haskell said it “is fair criticism for others to note that, as a geographic term, SWANA includes a broader range of identities and political beliefs, we don’t believe a correction or an addendum from the magazine is the appropriate place to do that,” since the community featured in the issue “self-identifies as SWANA.”
A spokesperson for New York did not immediately return a request for comment from JI on Thursday afternoon.
Since the publication of its cover package, New York has doubled down on its approach to Israel, writing in a subsequent letter to readers that its editors had last fall chosen to use the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions in its war in Gaza after an “extensive review of genocide scholarship and interviews with multiple experts” on the topic.
Before the institutional review, the magazine’s editorial director, Gazelle Emami, who assumed her role in October 2023, had signed a statement weeks after Hamas’ attacks calling Israel’s war in Gaza “an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people.” One source familiar with the publication’s internal dynamics told JI that Emami is among the “key instigators” driving the magazine’s increasingly antagonistic reporting and commentary on Israel.
The magazine has faced some internal pushback from Jewish writers who took issue with the content of the recent cover package, as JI reported earlier this week. Their complaints followed objections from former Jewish staffers who had raised concerns over previous stories they viewed as biased against Israel, which they detailed in a lengthy memo sent to editorial leaders in the weeks after Oct. 7.
Former Jewish employees, who spoke with JI on the condition of anonymity, said their pleas were largely met with indifference in their time at the publication, which was acquired in May by the media scion James Murdoch.
The mayor pushed back on questions about pouring cash into nonprofits and not changing his Israel rhetoric
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a press conference during moving day at Gracie Mansion on January 12, 2026 in New York City.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani defended his administration’s strategy to battle spiking antisemitic offenses by spending heavily on nonprofit-based “hate crime prevention” and lower outlays for security — all while keeping up his fierce criticism of Israel on official government channels.
On Tuesday, the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism released its weeks-delayed “strategy to combat antisemitism,” which touted $1 million in security grants for houses of worship and “other sensitive locations” and $26 million in already announced funding for the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes.
Questioned by Jewish Insider at a press conference on Wednesday about evidence that the hate crimes office funding has made a meaningful difference, given that the increased funding has coincided with more and more bias incidents targeting Jews, Mamdani instead talked about his experience learning about the Holocaust as a teenager, and pointed to declining public awareness of the Nazi genocide.
Asked by JI's @WillBredderman about evidence that increased funding for the city’s hate crimes office has mitigated antisemitism, Mamdani instead spoke of learning about the Holocaust as a teenager and pointed to its declining public awareness.
— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) September 30, 2026
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“You know, I myself, I went to Bronx Science [High School], and we were lucky to have resources of Holocaust education. I remember going recently to a number of museums where we could see what that actually meant,” the mayor said, as his staff sought to talk over a JI reporter and turned his microphone off. “And that’s something I want to provide for every New Yorker.”
The plan faced immediate criticism from leading Jewish groups for omitting any reference to Israel, including cases of violence and vandalism against New York’s Jews and their institutions inspired by opposition to the Jewish state. But on Wednesday the mayor maintained the program was the product of discussions with “more than 100 Jewish leaders,” and rejected calls that he tone down his own fervent denunciations of Israeli leadership and the military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
“When it comes to criticism of the Israeli prime minister or the Israeli government, that has no bearing on our responsibility to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe,” he asserted. “The responsibility for the Israeli government’s actions lies with the Israeli government. It does not lie with Jewish New Yorkers.”
A list of the Office to Prevent Hate Crimes’ subvendors from 2025 lists a wide array of traditional Jewish and non-Jewish social service providers, many politically connected, as well as explicitly anti-Zionist nonprofits such as Jews for Racial & Economic Justice and the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. Agudath Israel of America particularly critiqued the administration’s emphasis on secular expressions of Jewish identity, and $2.5 million in city financing for a facility for the Center for New Jewish Culture, which has hosted and supported Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel.
The mayor brushed off questions about Jewish New Yorkers who consider him an antisemite, while noting his continuing celebration of Sukkot with prominent Jewish supporters.
“I think my job as the mayor is not to get bothered by other people’s opinion,” he said. “My job is to deliver for them, no matter what their opinion is.”
The plan provides $7.4 million in security grants but does not address Israel-related hate
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere on Nov. 5, 2025.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration on Tuesday released what it calls the country’s first municipal strategy to combat antisemitism, a 30-page plan that provides $7.4 million for security and prevention grants, but declines to adopt a definition of antisemitism and does not address Israel-related hate.
The report, titled “Tackling Hate: The Mamdani Administration’s Strategy to Combat Antisemitism,” features a photo of New York City’s oldest Jewish congregation, Congregation Shearith Israel, on its cover. The synagogue told Jewish Insider, “We were surprised to see our picture on the cover of the City’s brochure. The City did not advise us that it would be using a photograph of Congregation Shearith Israel for its brochure, which we didn’t know about and had no input into. Had they asked, we would have requested that they not use an image of our Synagogue for this purpose.”
The plan, developed by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, splits the $7.4 million in immediate hate-prevention funding — part of a $26 million increase for the Office for Prevention of Hate Crimes that was announced in May — into $1 million grants for physical security at synagogues and other vulnerable nonprofits, including lights, cameras, locks, risk assessments and bystander training. It also includes $6.4 million to double Partners Against Hate grants to community-based organizations that focus on data collection and countering online hate.
Other commitments include embedding Jewish history in public school education; launching a city-wide public campaign on how to report discrimination; initiating a campaign on Jewish New Yorkers’ contributions to be featured on LinkNYC kiosks; and providing $2 million towards finishing the Queens Holocaust Memorial at Queens Borough Hall, as well as $2.5 million to the Center for New Jewish Culture, a new cultural and community space in Central Brooklyn.
Mamdani said in a video accompanying the report’s release on Tuesday that the goal of the initiative is to “confront the scourge of antisemitism now and in the future,” noting that Jews make up only 12% of the city’s population but are the victims of around half the city’s reported hate crimes. “This is not only unacceptable, it’s something we all have an obligation to change. And City Hall will lead the way,” he said.
The strategy comes as Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has faced sustained criticism from Jewish leaders over his rhetoric and policies on Israel and antisemitism, straining his relationship with parts of New York’s Jewish community.
Despite billing his strategy as the first in the nation, Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, had already released a “bluprint” for combating antisemitism on his last day in office, which included the city adopting International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism — a policy that Mamdani repealed on his first day in office.
Jewish leaders offered a mixed response to the mayor’s new strategy, with some welcoming increased security funding and other measures while also arguing that the plan fails to address what they see as a key driver of anti-Jewish hostility — rhetoric targeting Israel and its supporters.
In a joint statement to JI, UJA-Federation of New York, JCRC-NY, AJC New York and New York Board of Rabbis said that “any effort to confront antisemitism in New York City must fully address the realities Jewish New Yorkers face today.”
The groups praised Mamdani’s plan for featuring “a number of positive elements, including some increased security funding for Jewish institutions and expanding proven programs,” but noted that “it fails to address a central issue that the mayor himself has perpetuated: rhetoric that demonizes and delegitimizes Israel inevitably leads to the targeting of Jewish New Yorkers.”
“Those who truly seek to address antisemitism must unequivocally reject such rhetoric and help ensure that Jewish New Yorkers are never made to feel suspect, excluded, or unsafe in their own city,” the statement continued.
Moshe Davis, founding executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism under the Adams administration, told JI he applauds the plan for its “protective measures [that] will greatly help safeguard Jewish New Yorkers against attempted terror attacks carried out by those seeking to ‘globalize the intifada.’”
“But the latest report seems to ignore anti-Israel protesters targeting synagogues and the hate being taught in our educational spaces,” said Davis. “In doing this, it seems to make a conscious effort to erase the connection between the violence against Jews we are seeing in our city and the anti-Israel propaganda clearly fueling it. A report on antisemitism that ignores what is driving much of the hate and violence against Jews is tone-deaf and dangerous.”
The Anti-Defamation League criticized the strategy, arguing that it fails to adequately address the threats facing Jewish New Yorkers — particularly condemning the mayor for not adopting a formal working definition of antisemitism. ADL said it has recorded hundreds of antisemitic incidents in New York City since Mamdani took office in January, nearly 40% of which were related to Israel.
“[Mamdani] has looked the other way as flags glorifying terror groups have been flown outside synagogues, a deliberate act meant to intimidate families walking in to pray, and as crowds gathered outside houses of worship voicing support for the same groups. At the same time, he continues prioritizing his anti-Israel agenda over the basic promises he made to Jewish New Yorkers,” the ADL wrote on X.
“Our expectations have not changed: zero tolerance for antisemitism and extremism in city government, real protection for Jewish institutions, a clear and formal definition of antisemitism that the city actually uses, and city contracts, pensions and procurement kept free of ideological boycotts.”
Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Defend Democracy in Brazil worked closely with groups backed by Marxist mogul Neville ‘Roy’ Singham
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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a food distribution center on July 27, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
A few months before New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani met with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, his administration hired an expatriate supporter of the left-wing South American leader — an academic and activist involved in a group tied to the sprawling global influence network of China-allied tech mogul Neville “Roy” Singham.
Hired in June as a deputy commissioner for international affairs focused on “municipal strategy and innovation,” Gianpaolo Baiocchi in July brought the organization Defend Democracy in Brazil (DDB) into his city office for a formal meeting to “strengthen ties of the Brazilian community in New York against ICE and to protect Brazil’s sovereignty.”
The summit, along with Baiocchi’s ascent into a key role in coordinating city contact with foreign consulates and world leaders, marked the culmination of years of work that the former New York University sociology professor had done as a member of DDB — which has included representing the group on Turkish and Iranian state television — and with its partners.
Those partners include multiple groups at the center of federal and congressional investigations into Singham, a Shanghai-based Marxist software magnate, and his support for the interests and narratives of Beijing, Moscow and Tehran: the People’s Forum, CODE PINK and the Party for Socialism and Liberation and its affiliate the ANSWER Coalition.
A 2025 report from The George Washington University identified these groups — though not DDB itself — as elements of a “covert funding network supporting extremist organizations in the U.S.”
Together, they have formed the core of multiple high-profile demonstrations against Israel, including a celebratory rally in Times Square a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks that drew the now-mayor’s rebuke.
Mamdani’s team disregarded questions from Jewish Insider about Baiocchi’s associations with the Singham network, which include at least one foreign trip with other senior members of the administration. Mamdani’s office would also not answer which meetings between the mayor, his office and foreign figures he was personally involved in, though it acknowledged making such arrangements was the core function of the international affairs office. DDB did not respond to queries JI sent for this story.
Social media accounts for DDB, launched a decade ago to support the then-embattled Lula da Silva and his Workers Party, shows it has for years cooperated and coordinated around protest and even electoral activity with CODE PINK and the PSL/ANSWER. The group’s co-founder works as a Portuguese language instructor at the People’s Forum, which DDB has fundraised for and called “a HOME for us.”
DDB’s Instagram profile is rife with images of events it has run or participated in with Singham network affiliates at the People’s Forum’s Manhattan headquarters, including a “Benefit Concert for Gaza” held in March. Baiocchi himself has participated in at least two gatherings at the People’s Forum, the most recent recorded in 2023.
That same year, DDB arranged a “learning delegation” that sent “35 community leaders and organizers” to the Latin American nation, a trip that involved multiple meetings from another Singham-tied organization: the Landless Workers Movement, or MST, abbreviated for its name in Portuguese. The MST is part of Singham’s International People’s Assembly, an umbrella group of his left-wing allies across the planet, and the Brazilian organization coordinates closely with organizations the financier underwrites.
The trip included an extended stay at the MST’s Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes, an organization that tax records show has received direct funding from the People’s Support Foundation Limited, an entity that The New York Times and other outlets have identified as one of Singham’s key vessels for bankrolling his empire of influence. DDB’s website describes the organization as “active members of the National Coordination of the Friends of the MST,” a U.S.-based group that raises awareness and support for the Brazilian organization.
The 2023 trip’s planners and participants included not just Baiocchi himself but Ana Maria Archila, now commissioner of Mamdani’s Office of International Affairs and Baiocchi’s boss. Archila, long a prominent left-wing activist, gained notoriety in early July for agreeing to meet with Iran’s U.N. ambassador before the State Department blocked the rendezvous.
Also attending the junket was Cea Weaver, now director of the newly created Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.
The Mamdani administration did not confirm or deny any awareness of this trip, but maintained Baiocchi was hired through a regular process and for his academic expertise in urban affairs. The professor previously served on the mayor’s transition team, as part of a new “committee on community organizing.” Baiocchi, who founded the school’s Urban Democracy Lab, was arrested in 2024 for his participation in an anti-Israel encampment.
A few months after the excursion’s end, Baiocchi co-signed a note on DDB’s website that hailed the trip as one of the year’s successes — along with protests organized with CODE PINK, the People’s Forum and PSL/ANSWER, including joint actions, “as part of the #shutitdown4Palestine coalition.”
Among the organizations Baiocchi brought into his new city office along with DDB after joining Mamdani’s administration was a sister organization to the MST, the MTST.
Foreign governments and influence operations have targeted New York City Hall in the past: federal prosecutors indicted Mamdani’s Gracie Mansion predecessor, Eric Adams, for allegedly accepting bribes from the Turkish government and its agents. Earlier this year, JI discovered that nearly half the New York City Council had signed onto a pro-Cuba relief campaign run through the People’s Forum.
Mamdani himself has had direct contact with persons tied to Singham: namely, the Maoist tycoon’s niece, whom the future mayor credited on the campaign trail with devising his “fast and free buses” campaign pledge.
The group plans to discuss a range of subjects including U.S. allies’ decision to sanction Israel
Aryeh Schwartz/AJC
Ted Deutch
This week’s upcoming United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York City will serve as the backdrop for a “diplomatic marathon” by the American Jewish Committee’s leadership to meet with representatives and leaders of more than 50 countries — a tradition the AJC has carried on for decades.
On the agenda are a range of subjects, including confronting close U.S. allies that have recently decided to impose sanctions on what they deem to be Israeli-occupied territories, including West Bank settlements as well as east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
“This is an opportunity to have really meaningful conversations with friends who are standing firmly with us and understand the challenges that Israel faces and are supportive,” AJC CEO Ted Deutch said in an interview at the group’s offices in Washington. “And then we’ll have conversations with countries who have been taking challenging positions, and we have very frank conversations as we will this year in particular when we meet with our friends from the U.K. and Canada and Australia and France.”
He argued that those conversations are critical to discuss the countries’ decisions to impose sanctions on what they deem to be occupied territories, a move he said “damages the prospects for peace” and “plays into the hands of extremists who wish to drive a wedge between Israel and her democratic allies.”
“Democratic allies should be coming together, not drifting apart. Israel is a democratic ally of these countries that plays a critical role in the Middle East’s stability,” Deutch said.
He said AJC had similar “difficult conversation[s]” around U.S. allies’ decision to recognize a Palestinian state. “That’s not just meant to be critical, but actually, to help them understand why this is a bad decision.”
In meetings with Germany and other European allies, Deutch said he also plans to discuss the rise of the far-right AfD party and the risk that “rising extremism” across Europe poses to the Jewish community. More broadly, AJC will discuss antisemitism and efforts to fight it and foster Jewish life around the world.
He said that every country that has a Jewish community has a role in making sure that Jewish communities can gather together without fear, but also that the responsibility extends beyond governments alone.
“We also think it’s important for countries to recognize that this is not something that governments can do on their own, that across the country there are roles for each part of society to play in combating antisemitism in ways that don’t just protect Jews but strengthen everyone’s ability to fully participate in those societies … because it’s consistent with who these countries are in maintaining pluralistic democracies,” Deutch added.
He said conversations with global leaders will also touch on issues within the United Nations itself and its bias against Israel. He said that Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories who has faced repeated accusations of antisemitism from various nations, “makes a mockery of the system as a whole.”
He said AJC also plans to press countries to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies as terrorist organizations, and to continue to support both international and country-by-country sanctions on Iran.
“Let’s also continue to remember what Iran represents and why the world should stand against it, and come together around all of the ways that it can,” Deutch said. “While [it is] appropriate for Congress to have that debate [about military action], Iran is a threat and continues to be a threat, we need to continue to remind people of that.”
Deutch said AJC will have “frank conversations” with countries about the situation in Gaza, while also emphasizing that Hamas has not fulfilled its obligation to disarm under the U.S.’ 20-point peace plan, which is a mandatory step for the peace process to move forward.
“We have to shift the focus back to how to make that happen, and it does start with disarming Hamas,” he said. “It shouldn’t be difficult for the world to rally around the idea that this terrorist group that committed the Oct. 7 attacks should no longer be allowed to be an armed organization that poses a threat. We’ve seen what happens when that was allowed in the past.”
But he said it’s also important to provide support and encouragement and express appreciation to those countries that have continued to stand with Israel and the Jewish community. The week will include meetings with various countries across South America, where AJC is working to promote ties with Israel as well as opportunities for expanding and deepening the Abraham Accords.
Deutch said that AJC will be engaging with some states that could join the Abraham Accords, and will emphasize that they face a shared threat from Iran, as has been demonstrated in recent days by the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.
“The Abraham Accords represents the alternative to that, and represents an opportunity for greater security and greater economic integration and more and better opportunities for the people of the region,” Deutch said.
During the UNGA, AJC will also discuss both internally and externally efforts to engage more deeply with Africa, working to provide opportunities for African countries to experience Israeli innovation and technology and see Israel for themselves.
Deutch and AJC additionally plan to push to strengthen the transatlantic alliance and support Ukraine’s defense. AJC will also host a reception with Jewish community members and diplomats, where the group will award Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative of Gaza for the Board of Peace, with the Madeline and Bruce M. Ramer Award for Diplomatic Excellence.
Both at home and abroad, Deutch said that leaders need to understand and call out efforts to deny Israel’s right to exist, and to understand that such rhetoric “put[s] the Jewish community at risk” and that “engaging in age-old antisemitic conspiracy theories” must be confronted.
Efforts by some political actors to bar Jews and supporters of Israel from the “political mainstream … aren’t just calls that affect the Jewish community, that threaten the Jewish community,” but also “undermine our democracy.”
Standing up to that rhetoric “matters to the future and security of democracies around the world,” well beyond the Jewish community itself, he said.
He called on members of Congress and other leaders to show greater courage and leadership in the face of harassment, bullying and threats that have been directed at supporters of Israel in Washington, and which some members say have led their colleagues to soften their support for the Jewish state.
“That’s what the Jewish community has been facing, and for the Jewish community and for supporters of Israel, the response is not to cower. That’s what the antisemites want. What the anti-Israel forces want,” Deutch said.
“For our leaders — I get it. I was a member of Congress. I dealt with people chasing me around with bullhorns, yelling names at me. I understand what that’s like, and I get that there are threats. That should embolden them, embolden members, embolden leaders to stand up against that,” he said. “Members of Congress aren’t mushy about anything, and they shouldn’t be mushy when it comes to standing up against antisemitism and efforts to undermine Israel’s right to exist.”
The New York City mayor continued to de-escalate his rhetoric a week before Netanyahu is set to arrive
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Unisphere on Nov. 5, 2025.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told reporters on Wednesday that he does not intend to participate in any demonstrations against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance at the U.N. General Assembly next week — and maintained he did not endorse public agitation against the Jewish state’s premier, an apparent ratcheting-down of his remarks from earlier this summer.
Following an unrelated press conference, Mamdani confirmed information leaked to Politico that he would not take part in anticipated protests against Netanyahu’s scheduled arrival in New York on Sept. 23 or speech at the international summit the next day. He also stressed that he did not call for his anti-Israel allies on the left to take to the streets either.
“I do not have any plans to attend any protest at the U.N. General Assembly,” Mamdani said. “To New Yorkers I have never encouraged them to protest.”
“I do not have any plans to attend any protest at the U.N. General Assembly” against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mayor Mamdani said. “To New Yorkers I have never encouraged them to protest.”
— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) September 16, 2026
Read more: https://t.co/k2ChSKU2Ko pic.twitter.com/oPjj5tTYzt
Yet the tone and couching of these comments differs markedly from statements in July, when a reporter pressed him on how local opponents of Netanyahu might express their feelings about his visit.
“One of the bedrocks of our city is protest,” the mayor said at the time. “I’ve always said that when we respect our Constitution, we also respect our First Amendment. And here in New York City, it’ll always be a place where you can exercise that.”
The democratic socialist, who distinguished himself in the mayoral field last year with his attacks on Israel, immediately followed those previous comments by reiterating he believed an International Criminal Court warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest should be honored.
That statement followed a multi-day controversy in which Mamdani publicly played with an old campaign pledge that he would order the NYPD to take the Israeli prime minister into custody should he attend the U.N. General Assembly — even though subsequent reporting revealed Mamdani knew he lacked authority to do so — and then released a viral video assailing Netanyahu as a “war criminal.”
The video provoked outrage among Jewish leaders, coming amid a wave of antisemitic hate crimes in the five boroughs, and a group of liberal-leaning rabbis urged the mayor to back off his broadsides against the Jewish state during a subsequent meeting at City Hall.
On Wednesday, to repeated press questions about the prospect of protests next week, the mayor would say only he had been “very clear about my views, my thoughts, my assessments” and his earlier remarks about possible demonstrations were only affirmations of his support for the First Amendment.
He instead pivoted to police security and traffic protocols around the event, which he and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch will elaborate upon later this week.
“My focus is ensuring that our city remains prepared to host representatives from across the world and to keep New Yorkers safe,” the mayor said. “Right now, there are no expected threats that we know of and we are, continue to be, confident in being able to deliver safety and security.”
The mayor also responded to news that two Modern Orthodox day schools — Manhattan’s Ramaz School and SAR Day School in the Bronx — would participate in a prayer demonstration outside Gracie Mansion on Friday, an action some have interpreted as a protest of the mayor’s views on Zionism. Mamdani voiced no objections to the event, but said he would likely not be at the official residence at that time.
“I welcome them,” the mayor said. “Whatever it is intended to be, they have the room and space to do so outside of Gracie Mansion. I think that at the time that they are there, I will probably be somewhere else across the city.”
The administration failed to produce the proposal it promised by Rosh Hashanah
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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a food distribution center on July 27, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team vowed that it would produce its long-promised plan to fight antisemitism in the five boroughs “soon” — but declined to provide any specifics about when it might actually come out or why his administration failed to meet its original Rosh Hashanah deadline.
The mayor has repeatedly alluded to a forthcoming “first-in-the-nation municipal response” to anti-Jewish prejudice, even as his short tenure leading the city with the largest Jewish population in the world has seen a spike in hate crimes against Jews. The Jewish community is consistently the target of more than half of all hate crimes, despite making up around one-tenth of New York City’s population.
When asked why its Office to Combat Antisemitism had failed to produce the plan before the High Holy Days as promised, a City Hall spokesperson only promised it would be out “soon.”
“The mayor is fully committed to the safety of Jewish New Yorkers and to using every tool available to ensure that Jewish communities continue to thrive as an essential part of the fabric of the five boroughs,” Sam Raskin, Mamdani’s deputy press secretary, told Jewish Insider.
Mamdani himself did not answer a question from JI about the report’s status following an unrelated event — the release of a plan to combat traffic-related deaths — on Tuesday afternoon.
Former Mayor Eric Adams, Mamdani’s predecessor, released a “blueprint” for tackling antisemitism on his last day in office, largely detailing steps his office had already taken. This included an executive order Adams signed adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism as official city policy.
The IHRA definition has been sharply criticized by Mamdani’s base for its assertion that the denial of the Jewish right to national self-determination and the comparison of Israeli actions to Nazi Germany are antisemitic, even though it explicitly states that criticism of Israeli policy that might be applied to any other country “cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
Mamdani, whose frequent broadsides against Israel powered his rise to political prominence, repealed the Adams order, along with a dozen others his predecessor signed, the day he assumed office.
The administration’s failure to put out its program to counter anti-Jewish hate sparked outrage from the Anti-Defamation League, one of Mamdani’s most consistent critics.
“The delay from the @NYCMayor’s office to combat antisemitism is unacceptable,” the group posted on X. “The safety and security of Jewish New Yorkers is not a political football.”
The group further demanded the final plan include an official definition of antisemitism — which the administration has resisted setting — specific proposals for protecting Jewish institutions, “zero tolerance” for antisemitism in the municipal bureaucracy and a pledge not to boycott businesses and organizations linked to Israel.
Raskin did not respond to a JI request for his reaction to the ADL’s statement.
An insider with knowledge of the plan’s status told JI it remains unfinished. The source, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, added that the administration had received input from the Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, an anti-Zionist activist group that supported Mamdani’s election.
Outreach to JFREJ was answered with an autoreply stating the group was inaccessible until after Yom Kippur.
Plus, Bibi's Big Apple trip tests Mamdani
Philip Dulian/picture alliance via Getty Images
Several AI applications can be seen on a smartphone screen, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, Grok and DeepSeek.
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the political and logistical challenges facing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the NYPD ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the city for the U.N. General Assembly, spotlight a new report from Anthropic that revealed that Iran-linked actors used AI tools to target Jews and develop weapons, and talk to GOP Reps. David Kustoff and Craig Goldman about their party’s position on U.S. aid to Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Robert Kraft, Stuart Zimmer and Judge Judith Sheindlin.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve.
Today’s Agenda
Members of Congress are back in Washington today for the final week before the House goes on recess until the November midterms. The Senate is also back in session today, and is slated to remain so until early October.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is holding its general conference in Vienna today, where Energy Secretary Chris Wright is expected to deliver a speech in which he will reiterate U.S. opposition to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Mohammad Eslami, Iran’s vice president for nuclear affairs, had been slated to address the gathering convened by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, but was denied entry to Austria, Bloomberg reports, following pressure from the Trump administration. In Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Austrian envoy over Vienna’s move to bar the Iranian nuclear chief.
We’re also keeping an eye on tensions in the Middle East as the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen scale up their attacks on Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government launches its own attacks on the Houthis. The escalation comes after the Houthis’ capture last week of the Yemeni port city of Mokha and an island on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, as well as Riyadh’s shutdown on Friday of its East-West pipeline amid the escalation.
Elsewhere in the region, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said on Sunday that a meeting between Iran and Gulf countries over the Strait of Hormuz — intended to be held in Oman today — had been indefinitely postponed, citing “the interests of consensus.”
U.S.-brokered talks between Israel and Lebanon in Rome that had been slated for this week have been postponed to October, with an Israeli official saying that the rescheduled meeting was due to scheduling conflicts. The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in Washington are still slated to meet in Foggy Bottom ahead of the October talks to discuss the implementation of a framework agreement to wind down the conflict in Lebanon and disarm Hezbollah.
One Thing To Know
Analysis
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to New York City for the U.N. General Assembly next week is expected to set up political and logistical challenges for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, one of Netanyahu’s foremost U.S. critics, experts tell Jewish Insider — a challenge that protests, which Mamdani has tacitly encouraged, may only exacerbate.
The Israeli leader is scheduled to arrive in New York on Sept. 23 and address the annual gathering the following day, during which time the NYPD’s dignitary protection detail will help ensure Netanyahu’s personal protection, its intelligence and counterterrorism teams will work to secure the gathering as a whole and an array of its officers will manage the Manhattan streets. The department reports to the mayor’s office.
The various law enforcement veterans who spoke to JI all underscored the scale of the department’s annual efforts to head off potential threats to the diplomatic summit, even without this year’s furor around Netanyahu’s attendance, the ongoing conflict with Iran and the proximity to both the Jewish High Holy Days and the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
The Big Reads
CLAUDE CONTROLS
Anthropic disclosed in a new report released on Thursday that it had over the past eight months disrupted efforts by Iran and other state-aligned groups and actors to use the AI giant’s artificial intelligence tools for “malicious activity” such as tracking U.S. forces, developing weapons guidance software and waging “cognitive warfare” to spread propaganda, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. The 154-page report also said it had identified an “Iran-nexus threat actor” using Claude, Anthropic’s chatbot, to target “hundreds of individuals in Israel and the Jewish diaspora.” The report did not specify the purpose of the activity or confirm whether it had been disabled.
AI alert: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on Saturday, calling on the AI industry to slow down and was met with agreement by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind Chairman Demis Hassabis and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
SELF SCRUTINY
A new survey of 470 Middle East scholars finds that nearly three-quarters believe American academia is less equipped to pursue truth than it was at the time of the 9/11 attacks, while two-thirds lack confidence that their students understand the attacks and say American academia has provided cover for ideologies, regimes or groups hostile to the United States, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. The findings, released last week by the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, reflect what ASMEA’s executive director, Asaf Romirowsky, described as a broader failure by American universities to maintain objectivity and intellectual rigor in the quarter century since the attacks.
AID CONVERSATION
Jewish House Republicans said during the Republican Jewish Coalition’s leadership summit in Las Vegas earlier this month that there’s little appetite among Republicans to end U.S. aid to Israel as the two sides look toward the end of the current memorandum of understanding on military aid, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. “I think the message is that the majority of the members of the House want to see the aid continue, want to see this alliance continue, but elections have consequences, and we don’t know what the makeup of the next House is going to be on the Republican side and on the Democrat side,” Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN) told JI. Rep. Craig Goldman (R-TX) emphasized that Israel and the United States are facing threats not only from Iran and its nuclear program but also from the terrorist groups that Iran has spent decades funding. “I certainly will fight tooth and nail as long as I’m a member of [the] U.S. Congress to continue aid to Israel,” Goldman said.
The Rundown
NUCLEAR NEWS
EXCLUSIVE
Doha Dealings
FLAGGING FICTION
On Our Radar
● The Live Briefing. Word on the street, clips, podcasts and quick updates — the items we’re tracking all day in our Live Briefing on the app (on Apple and Android) and website.
President Donald Trump, speaking in Ireland on Sunday, suggested that the U.S. “ultimately get out” of Iran “unless we decide to stay and keep the oil, like Venezuela,” adding that Iran “wants to make a deal so badly, and is calling constantly”…
Jared Kushner said in virtual remarks to the Yalta European Strategy conference on Friday that the U.S. used Israel’s September 2025 “errant strike” targeting Hamas officials in Qatar to pressure Jerusalem to reach a deal to end the war in Gaza, saying that the strike “led to Israel being globally isolated,” creating a dynamic the U.S. “used … in order to push them into a deal that now, today, they’re quite happy with.” Watch the conversation here.
In response to Kushner’s comments, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party issued a statement pushing back on the remarks, saying that Netanyahu’s “decision to send the IDF into Gaza City and to strike the Hamas leadership in Qatar, together with the intense pressure exerted by President Trump” led to Hamas dropping its demands as well as the release of the remaining hostages.
The New Yorker does a deep dive into Kushner’s approach to diplomacy as he represents the Trump administration in a voluntary capacity in negotiations to end a number of conflicts around the world while continuing to manage his own business interests, finding that “as [Kushner] has traversed the globe for Trump, he has grown more entangled in the commercial affairs of countries where he works”…
France and Lebanon are pushing to extend the mandate of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which is slated to expire at the end of this year, calling the move to end the decades-long U.N. presence in southern Lebanon “premature”…
The National Security Agency is planning a massive internal restructuring that will see the creation of five organizations within the agency that will focus on artificial intelligence, China, cybersecurity, combat support and global intelligence…
Front Line Action, a group linked to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), released an AI-generated ad titled “Family Values” that spotlights relatives of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed who have made anti-Israel and anti-America statements…
Sen. Jon Husted’s (R-OH) reelection campaign fired its political director following a Washington Post report last week that he had in 2018 used an image of Nazi SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture…
The Boulder Valley School District in Colorado settled a federal civil rights complaint with the Anti-Defamation League and the family of a Jewish middle schooler in the district who faced what the ADL described as years of “persistent, escalating, and severe antisemitic harassment” that went unaddressed by administrators in the district…
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft donated $10 million to Brandeis University to name a new 28,000-square-foot facility for Jewish life, expected to open in spring 2028, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports…
Philanthropist Stuart Zimmer, who with his wife in 2018 had pledged $100 million to Harvard University but froze the gift in response to the school’s handling of campus anti-Israel activity in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks while their daughter studied at the school, quietly resumed funding; the gift will help expand kosher dining options on campus and will include the renaming of the school’s Science Center to honor Zimmer’s father…
CBS’ “60 Minutes” premiered its 59th season with an interview with the U.S. Air Force officer who was shot down over Iran and stranded in the Islamic Republic for two days before being rescued during the conflict earlier this year…
The Hollywood Reporter spotlights SHOOQ, a new online platform designed to boost Jewish filmmakers and help connect them to funding streams and financial backers; among those backing the initiative are former NBC Co-chair Ben Silverman, 30 West CEO Micah Green, Made by Us Co-CEO Tanya Cohen, actress Emmanuelle Chriqui and producer Anthony Bregman…
Singer-songwriter Pink published a lengthy statement explaining her criticism of rapper Macklemore, who led “Free Palestine” chants while opening for Ed Sheeran at a concert earlier this month, saying that the artist “stood in front of a stadium full of music-loving families, with violent images from a war on the screens, dedicated a song to the movement of his choice, and then took the mic to tell all of the Jews in the stadium that it wasn’t about them”…
Judge Judith Sheindlin — known as Judge Judy — is stepping back from the cameras after a decades-long television career as Amazon Prime stops releasing new episodes of her “Judy Justice” show; Sheindlin will serve as an executive producer for a new show starring her son, attorney Adam Levy…
Germany’s federal prosecutor said in an indictment filed last week that Hamas had planned terror attacks in Berlin and Vienna on the second anniversary of its Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel; authorities in Germany made several arrests last year in connection with the alleged plots…
A Jewish Iranian-American man from New York who had been held in Tehran’s Evin prison was released from the notorious facility after serving approximately half of a two-year sentence but remains banned from leaving the Islamic Republic…
The New York Times spotlights the wedding of Adriana Fernandez, who has gained an internet following as “Now-Jewish Nanny,” and Jordan Langer…
Kimberly Colchamiro was announced as the new chief development officer of the Jewish Broadcasting Service…
Israeli planetary scientist Adi Ninio Greenberg died at 50… Longtime political columnist Roger Simon died at 78… Rachel Rabin Yaakov, the sister of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, died at 101… Luthier Jonathan Cooper, who designed a quartet of string instruments to honor slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, died at 76… Photographer Jay Maisel died at 95… Yehuda Widawski, believed to be the oldest Holocaust survivor in Israel, died at 107…
Worthy Reads
Find more Worthy Reads in our Live Briefing via our app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Hard-liners in Charge: The New York Times’ Farnaz Fassihi does a deep dive into the effort by Iranian hard-liners earlier this year to derail the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. “The hard-liners succeeded in part because the only figure with the authority to resolve such disputes — the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — has been a phantom since taking office in March. … Three Iranian officials said inquiries by the government and security forces traced the decision to strike the three commercial ships in July to the cleric Hossein Taeb, an influential spymaster who had opposed the peace deal with the United States from the outset.” [NYTimes]
Definition Debate: In The Wall Street Journal, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Orde Kittrie and Andres Munoz-Mosquera, a former NATO chief legal advisor, warn of an effort tied to an International Court of Justice case involving Gambia and Myanmar that would change the definition of genocide. “The Myanmar judgment, expected in October, would establish the lower threshold before the ICJ judgment on Israel. It would change the rule first in the less-watched case against Myanmar rather than seemingly invent it for Israel. … ICJ judges who vote to lower the genocide threshold will damage the court’s credibility, invite an avalanche of politicized cases, and undercut democracies’ ability to fight terrorists and autocrats.” [WSJ]
Lambasting London: In Haaretz, Peter Lerner, director general of international relations at the Histadrut and a former IDF spokesperson, argues that Britain’s move to impose sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the West Bank may prove to be politically counterproductive. “Britain has handed Netanyahu and his coalition an electoral gift. Extremists in the current government will present the sanctions as proof that the world is hostile to Israel and Israelis. … At the very moment Israelis must decide whether to replace the most extreme government in the country’s history, London has provided that government with an external enemy.” [Haaretz]
Picture of the Day
Birthdays
Walter Koenig, actor, writer and director, first known for his role as Chekov in the original “Star Trek” television series, turns 90
Lawrence Harvey “Larry” Brown, the only basketball head coach to have won both an NCAA national championship and an NBA championship, turns 86
Larry A. Mizel, founder of MDC Holdings (parent company to Richmond American Homes), CEO of the Mizel-Mandarich Foundation and the primary supporter of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem, turns 84
Frederick A. Schenk, San Diego-based attorney, a specialist in mass torts, turns 73
Daniella Levine Cava, mayor of Miami-Dade County, turns 71
Pope Leo XIV, born in Chicago as Robert Francis Prevost, turns 71
Dr. Terry Dubrow, plastic surgeon and television personality, turns 68
Thomas Scott Kaplan, chairman and chief investment officer of The Electrum Group, he is the world’s largest private collector of Rembrandt’s works, turns 64
Amy Kauffman, founder of Mindchat Research
Paul Budnitz, founder of Vermont-based Kidrobot, a retailer of art toys, apparel and accessories, and Ello, an ad-free social network, turns 59
Sir Grant Shapps, British secretary of state for defence until 2024 and knighted in 2025, he was a national president of BBYO, turns 58
Richard Strauss, president of Strauss Media Strategies, during the Clinton administration he became the first-ever White House radio director, turns 57
Ketanji Brown Jackson, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, turns 56
Mark A. Semer, managing director at Gasthalter & Co., he is a past president of the Young Israel of New Rochelle
Elon Gold, comedian, television actor, writer and producer, turns 56
Elliot S. Berke, managing partner of Berke Farah LLP, his clients include Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
Jennifer Jacobs, senior White House reporter for CBS News
Dana Sheanin, CEO of San Francisco-based Jewish LearningWorks
Courtney Cohen Flantzer, senior booking producer at CNN’s “Inside Politics with Dana Bash”
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and former 2024 POTUS candidate, turns 48
Hani Furstenberg, Israeli-American Actor, turns 47
Marisa Scheinfeld, artist, photographer and educator, turns 46
Russell Berman, staff writer at The Atlantic since 2014
Leah Greenberg, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive Indivisible movement
Roxana Pourshalimi, Los Angeles-based attorney working as a contracts supervisor at MarketCast
Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times reporter since 2011, now focused on in-depth profiles
Jeremy Moskowitz, EVP at Voyager Global Mobility
Arkadiy Abramovich, founder and owner of ARA Capital, a British firm with holdings in e-commerce and energy, he is the son of Roman Abramovich, turns 33
Julia Savel, MSW graduate at Yeshiva University
Lihie Raz, artistic gymnast, she represented Israel at the 2020 (Tokyo) and 2024 (Paris) Summer Olympics, turns 23
The Israeli prime minister’s trip could spark protests and ‘a perfect storm’ of political and logistical complications for Zohran Mamdani and Jessica Tisch
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses world leaders during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the United Nations headquarters on September 26, 2025 in New York City.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to New York City for the U.N. General Assembly later this month is expected to set up political and logistical challenges for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, one of Netanyahu’s foremost U.S. critics, experts tell Jewish Insider — a challenge that protests, which Mamdani has tacitly encouraged, may only exacerbate.
The Israeli leader is scheduled to arrive in New York on Sept. 23 and address the global gathering the following day, during which time the NYPD’s dignitary protection detail will help ensure Netanyahu’s personal protection, its intelligence and counterterrorism teams will work to secure the gathering as a whole and an array of its officers will manage the Manhattan streets. The department reports to the mayor’s office.
The various law enforcement veterans who spoke to JI all underscored the scale of the department’s annual efforts to head off potential threats to the diplomatic summit, even without this year’s furor around Netanyahu’s attendance, the ongoing conflict with Iran and the proximity to both the Jewish High Holy Days and the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
“It’s a perfect storm of high-intensity events,” said Mitchell Silber, the former NYPD director of intelligence analysis who now serves as CEO of the Community Security Initiative, which helps address safety concerns for Jewish groups in the New York metro area. “At the same time, [the] NYPD is trying to bend over backwards to make sure that freedom of speech is allowed and robust.”
Silber noted that the struggle between the U.S., Israel and Iran has already spawned an alleged bomb plot against a New York synagogue from one of Tehran’s proxies. If recent remarks from Mamdani draw out larger than normal demonstrations, Silber warned such a scenario could create additional issues for both the department and the city’s Jewish institutions.
“They do have a possibility of reverberating, and have a chance of turning those forces and their ire against the Jewish community,” warned Silber, though he added that there was no specific threat. “It’s just going to make the NYPD’s job harder.”
Retired NYPD detective and John Jay College of Criminal Justice adjunct professor Michael Alcazar, meanwhile, recalled a March incident in which dueling pro- and anti-Mamdani demonstrations at Gracie Mansion saw an alleged ISIS acolyte hurl improvised explosives — an example, he said, of the kind of security risks a protest can present. He predicted a beefed-up presence of uniformed officers in the streets following remarks from Mamdani earlier this year, on top of standard security protocols.
“I’m sure the NYPD is expecting a lot more protests because of what the mayor said in support of protesting against Netanyahu,” said Alcazar. “You know his supporters are reading between the lines.”
Mamdani, for his part, has recently stepped up outreach to the Jewish community and vowed to “work tirelessly” for their security, though he has not backed away from his criticism of Israel. Asked in an August interview how he planned to host Netanyahu, he told commentator Joy Reid the city was readying “in the manner that we prepare every year.”
When JI asked the NYPD what special precautions it would take around Netanyahu’s visit, including around houses of worship, the agency provided only a general statement.
“As we do every year, the NYPD works with the Secret Service, the State Department, and other federal agencies to provide protection to foreign dignitaries traveling to New York City based on the level of threat assessed,” the public affairs office wrote in an email to JI.
New York has already seen, however, the result of tensions between a mayor’s political sympathies and executive duties.
In 2014, his first year in office, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio — whom Mamdani has cited as a role model — seemed a rising progressive star, having ascended to office on a platform of law enforcement reform, a cause many Democrats had hesitated to champion. Then Eric Garner, a Black man from Staten Island, died after an NYPD officer placed him in a banned chokehold, and thousands took to the streets. De Blasio was expected to stand with the protesters, but he also ran the police department that was policing them.
The demonstrations swelled into a national spectacle and saw violent altercations between protesters and police, followed by the killings of two officers and cops turning their backs on the mayor during the patrolmen’s funerals. As the situation spiraled, the mayor sought to align himself more with his politically moderate police commissioner, Bill Bratton. But this cost de Blasio much of his credibility on the left, both in New York and nationwide.
De Blasio went on to win reelection, but he lost much of his ability to project political power. His subsequent efforts to influence the direction of the Democratic Party across the state and nation ended in embarrassment.
Mamdani too captured the left’s affections, and ultimately Gracie Mansion, by embracing a scorching political issue his co-partisans had avoided: Israel and its military campaign in Gaza. As a candidate he pledged to arrest Netanyahu, and continued to float the notion long after city lawyers told him it lay outside his power. When he finally acknowledged he lacked the authority to do so, he made the comments in a viral video with the caption, “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal,” in which he accused the Israeli leader of being a mass murderer responsible for the “maiming” of Palestinian children.
Pressed as to what opponents of the Israeli leader should do about his impending visit to New York, the mayor signaled his support for street demonstrations.
“One of the bedrocks of our city is protest,” the mayor said. “This is a city where, if anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect. I leave it to New Yorkers themselves to make that decision.”
What made 2014 “a year of chaos,” according to John Jay lecturer Jillian Snider, was a large number of unpermitted protests with no central organization that drew large crowds and at times escalated into vandalism and violence. She warned that if similar “pop-up” demonstrations broke out during the U.N. General Assembly, it could complicate the work of the department.
“I would hope that a political figure would not encourage these large demonstrations, especially these undocumented events where we don’t have advance notice,” said Snider, who managed protests as an NYPD officer. “Members of the public often are influenced by city leaders. If they really, really, support that leader, they are going to do what that person supports.”
Veteran political consultant Chris Coffey, who counted the city’s largest police union among his clients during the de Blasio administration, noted that Mamdani is a far more agile politician than his progressive predecessor. Further, he argued Mamdani learned from de Blasio’s experience that he cannot alienate the department or allow the appearance of public disorder.
Yet Netanyahu’s visit could prove an exception.
“The one place where it’s a little bit unclear is that the Israel stuff is so personal to him that it might trump that philosophy,” Coffey said. “Or they’ve just decided they can do both, ‘we can condemn Netanyahu, we can encourage protest, and the police department can handle it.’”
But short of “something horrific” occurring during the General Assembly, Coffey argued that intense political polarization around Israel and Mamdani’s fervent personal following would likely allow the mayor to escape any political fallout. He also pointed out that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch is a strong Israel supporter, and that the mayor has granted her broad latitude in her role as the city’s top cop.
Alcazar and Snider agreed, both lauding Tisch’s independence — with Snider even comparing Mamdani favorably with former Mayor Eric Adams, an ex-police captain who she complained excessively inserted himself into NYPD policy. Both predicted Mamdani’s views on Israel would have little influence on her handling of the U.N. event.
Silber, for his part, urged Jewish New Yorkers not to allow tension around Netanyahu’s visit or General Assembly security to interfere with their participation in religious and civic life.
“Keep calm and carry on,” he advised.
Plus, Iran reconstitutes underground
Courtesy Miznon
Miznon green beans at the US Open
Good Thursday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
The International Atomic Energy Agency has observed construction activity at Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected underground nuclear site, IAEA head Rafael Grossi told Bloomberg Television. President Donald Trump said similarly yesterday, “We notice there’s a little activity at Pickaxe,” and warned Iran “not to get cute because we will have to hit them very hard”…
Iran has also resumed producing ballistic missiles, officials told The Wall Street Journal, working in underground facilities with components it had stockpiled before the war began…
Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the GOP nominee for Senate in Michigan, plans to take aim at his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, in his remarks at the GOP midterm convention today, calling out in particular El-Sayed’s relationship with streamer Hasan Piker.
Rogers will highlight Piker’s comments that America “deserved 9/11,” according to Axios, as other Republican candidates also campaign around the 25th anniversary of the attacks…
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee attended a ceremony today at the 9/11 Living Memorial Plaza in Jerusalem, the only memorial outside of the U.S. to list the name of each victim killed in the terror attacks…
The next round of negotiations between Israel and Lebanon will be held over two days next week in Rome, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel…
Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod last week that he’s likely to support the administration’s proposed nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, which would reportedly allow for joint U.S.-Saudi nuclear enrichment efforts inside the Gulf country.
Mast’s support, as the chair of a committee that will be responsible for reviewing the deal during a mandatory congressional oversight period, is a strong sign that many congressional Republicans will coalesce behind the administration in support of the agreement…
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law wrote to Qatari Ambassador to the U.S. Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad al-Thani yesterday amid a back-and-forth online, urging the Qatari Embassy to release a full public accounting of its funding to U.S. colleges and universities, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
“There is a straightforward way for the Government of Qatar to demonstrate that public accounts of its activities are inaccurate or misleading: full disclosure,” Brandeis Center CEO Ken Marcus said in a letter to Al-Thani, after the ambassador claimed that critics of Qatar are engaged in a “coordinated disinformation campaign” to manipulate data on foreign funding in U.S. higher education…
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” today that the U.S. should take a “very tough position” if Israeli voters reelect the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s upcoming elections, but said a new Israeli government could provide opportunities for more constructive progress…
The Honey Deuce — the U.S. Open’s iconic signature cocktail — is facing fierce competition for the tennis tournament’s most popular menu item this year. Surrounded by greasy fried foods, the unexpected breakout star is a green bean bowl from Eyal Shani‘s Tel Aviv-born eatery Miznon, whose head of operations spoke with JI’s Haley Cohen about the craze…
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel announced that his interview with Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico will not air on his show tonight, and will instead be posted online, after the Trump administration threatened the show, host network ABC and local stations.
The move comes months after former “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert said his show was also prevented from airing an interview with Talarico due to threats from the Federal Communications Commission…
The J50, a forum of Diaspora Jewish organizations, issued a declaration signed by 59 organizations representing 40 countries that states anti-Zionism, “as manifested today through efforts to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination, or demand that Jews renounce Zionism as the price of acceptance in political, academic, professional, or cultural life,” is antisemitic, and reaffirms the principles of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…
Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon launched a Task Force on Combating Antisemitism at the global body yesterday. Its first meeting was attended by representatives from several countries including the U.K., Australia, Argentina and Slovakia…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at how New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the NYPD are preparing for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming visit for the U.N. General Assembly.
President Donald Trump will attend the Pentagon memorial ceremony for the 9/11 anniversary tomorrow, while Vice President JD Vance will attend the memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations will host its annual policy conference and gala in Washington over the weekend, with speakers including New York City Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier; New Jersey Democratic congressional nominee Adam Hamawy; Virginia state Del. Sam Rasoul; anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour; Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin; Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim; and commentator Cenk Uygur.
The annual All-In Summit — the influential tech-and-politics gathering run by the “All-In Podcast” — kicks off in Los Angeles on Sunday with speakers including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman; SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell; California GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton; and former L.A. mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.
We’ll be back with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shana tovah u’metukah!
Stories You May Have Missed
BEYOND WORDS
Rabbi Ronald Kaplan, who volunteered as a spiritual first responder after 9/11, was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer traced to his time on the pile — a battle he’s still fighting on the 25th anniversary of the attacks
DOHA DEALINGS
The network’s new ‘Global Perspectives’ forum comes amid ongoing concerns about its ability to cover the Gulf state objectively
Mayor and police commissioner vow tight security as anniversary of attack coincides with start of Jewish New Year, intensifying antisemitism and Iran war
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attend an unveiling ceremony for a new 9/11 Memorial Wall at One Police Plaza on Sept. 9, 2026 in New York City.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch revealed plans on Wednesday to step up security measures at the 9/11 memorial on Friday and around Jewish institutions that evening and on Saturday for Rosh Hashanah — asserting that the department is unaware of any impending threat, but acknowledging a dangerous environment amid rising antisemitism and the conflict with Iran.
The mayor and police chief appeared together at City Hall to discuss measures to ensure safety around both observances, including “heightened” local and federal security and restricted street and transit access around Ground Zero during the 25th anniversary ceremony for the victims of the attack during the day. In the evening, they said Jewish New Yorkers can expect police deployment to synagogues, yeshivas and other communal spaces, to deter any person hoping to replicate the acts of violence and vandalism inflicted in recent months.
“We know that for many Jewish New Yorkers, there have been moments of immense sadness over this past year. Too many of our neighbors have been the victims of antisemitic hate crimes and too many are understandably afraid to come together and celebrate openly,” said Mamdani, addressing his comments directly to the city’s Jewish community. “Your safety during these sacred days is of the utmost importance to our administration and we will work tirelessly to ensure that you can observe the holiday securely.”
Antisemitic hate crimes have spiked under Mamdani, according to NYPD statistics, which some Jewish leaders have blamed on the mayor’s broadsides against Israel. Yet he has kept in place Tisch, a scion of a prominent Jewish family and a strong supporter of the Jewish state, who on Wednesday vowed a “massive security operation” for the 9/11 memorial — and a “major” one for the Jewish High Holy Days.
“I want all Jewish New Yorkers to know this. You have a partner in the NYPD now and throughout the year. As of today, there are no specific credible threats directed at High Holy Day celebrations in New York City, but we remain vigilant,” Tisch said, even as she acknowledged the rise in antisemitic attacks. “There will be assets you see and others that you don’t. Our intelligence and counterterrorism bureau is watching the threat environment here at home and around the world, working closely with our federal, state, local and international partners.”
“So whether New Yorkers are gathered Friday morning to remember those we lost 25 years ago or entering a synagogue that evening to welcome the new year, they should know that the NYPD will be there,” she concluded.
Tisch acknowledged that the ongoing struggle with Iran has “amped up” NYPD deployments for large events. Meanwhile, Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner, the department’s top intelligence official, told reporters that terror had become more “individualized and idiosyncratic” in the quarter-century since the destruction of the World Trade Center towers — and the department’s focus has pivoted from Islamism to the homegrown political extremes.
“It’s diversified tremendously ideologically. Now, we’re not primarily dealing with al-Qaida or even al-Qaida ISIS, but a proliferation of threats coming from conspiracy theories, grievances, nihilistic violence, far-left, far-right, anti-government, all of those things,” said Weiner. “A lot of the trip wires that we established in those early years post-9/11 had to be altered and that’s just what we’ve done here at the NYPD.”
Plus, Trump predicts war ends after Election Day
Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images
Vice President JD Vance boards Air Force Two on August 31, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
Good Wednesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Asked about the U.K., France and Canada enacting sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, President Donald Trump told reporters this afternoon on his way to Dallas for the GOP midterm convention that he’ll be “speaking to Israel” about the issue. “I understand exactly what’s going on, but I want to find out why all of a sudden does that happen,” he added…
Trump also predicted the Iran war “will end immediately after” the midterm elections because the Iranian regime is “desperate to affect the election”…
White House officials and GOP elected officials told Axios that they’ve stopped trying to persuade Trump on anything and find it futile to push back on his decisions, with one longtime advisor telling the outlet, “Why bother? He’s the boss”…
A new poll of American Jewish voters commissioned by the nonpartisan Jewish Voters Resource Center found that Vice President JD Vance is viewed negatively by 82% of Jewish voters, including 39% of Jewish Republicans, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. Vance’s approval numbers are markedly lower than those of Trump — who is viewed positively by 89% of Jewish Republicans — and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at 93%…
A new CNN poll of the Senate races in Michigan and Maine found the Democratic candidates leading, though both were within the margin of error, indicating the races remain neck-and-neck in the lead-up to November. In Michigan, Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed led former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) 47%-44%, while in Maine, Democratic nominee Troy Jackson led Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) 48%-45%…
Trump has begun tapping his super PAC’s $400 million war chest through a new group, No Going Back PAC — financially backed by his main super PAC, MAGA Inc. — which has reserved at least $47 million in ads across six contested Senate races and one House race, The New York Times reports. The PAC’s top investments include nearly $15 million in Michigan, $11 million in Ohio and $9.6 million in New Hampshire…
Pakistan transmitted a warning from Saudi Arabia to Iran to rein in its Houthi proxies in Yemen amid an escalation in hostilities between the terror group and Riyadh, Reuters reports. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif also sounded a cautionary note in an interview reminding global actors that attacks on Saudi Arabia could now trigger its mutual defense pact with Pakistan and Turkey…
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors voted today for the first time in two decades to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for violating its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, diplomats told Reuters. The move marks an escalation that opens Iran to possible U.N. sanctions, though Russia and China’s vetoes on the UNSC make actual punitive action unlikely…
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar inaugurated the first Israeli Embassy in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana…
Israel and the Palestinian technocratic committee governing Gaza have successfully vetted roughly 16,500 Palestinians to serve in the Board of Peace’s new police force, though Jerusalem has not yet given its approval for the recruits to leave the Gaza Strip for training, two Board of Peace officials told The Times of Israel…
Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL), Craig Goldman (R-TX), Ann Wagner (R-MO), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) urged Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to take steps to ensure Hamas cannot “exploit” economic instability in the West Bank, raising concerns about Israel’s decision to withhold tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority…
Former Secretary of State Tony Blinken rejected as “complete fiction” a Haaretz report that he delayed an offer by Hamas immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks to release some of the hostages it had captured…
White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff earned more than $100 million — including nearly $69 million in cash and $38 million in crypto — from the trust that owns his stake in World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency venture he co-founded with Trump and his family in 2024, according to a new financial disclosure…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for reactions from Texas officials and Jewish leaders to the decision by the University of Texas’ Democratic student group to host far-left streamer Hasan Piker on campus later this month.
The GOP midterm convention, which offers a test of whether President Donald Trump can boost the prospects of Republicans in competitive general election races, concludes tomorrow with closing remarks from the president and a keynote address from Vice President JD Vance.
Also speaking at the summit tomorrow are Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Michigan GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Donald Trump Jr.
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A FATHER’S LOVE
Chen — father of Itay Chen, whose body was held by Hamas for more than two years — is continuing to advocate to ensure that American victims of Oct. 7 are remembered, and that his son’s ‘sacrifice was not in vain’
BOOKSHELF
Jerusalem Post military correspondent Yonah Jeremy Bob and Wall Street Journal editorial writer Elliot Kaufman draw on years of interviews with top Israeli leadership
Plus, Rick Scott floats refuge for Canadian Jews
Amir Levy/Getty Images
A view over the Jewish settlement of Kedumim in the West Bank on Sept. 8, 2026 in Kedumim, West Bank.
Good Tuesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a sweeping new sanctions regime today targeting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, marking a major escalation in Britain’s diplomatic stance toward Israel, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Addressing the House of Commons, Miliband unveiled an import ban on goods produced in settlements alongside targeted sanctions against individuals and corporations involved in constructing, advertising or financing settlement expansion. Miliband went further than any previous British official in accusing Israeli settlers of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians in the West Bank and calling them “terrorists” with the tacit backing of the Israeli government…
Denouncing what he described as a “hostile sanctions package,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Israel would be taking swift retaliatory measures, including closing the British Consulate in Jerusalem, expelling British representatives from the U.S.-backed International Gaza Support Center, terminating the British Support Team in Ramallah tasked with training members of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces and barring 12 British officials, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who are “involved in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity”…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters about Miliband’s announcement, “Obviously, we’re not going to do what the U.K. did,” but declined to comment further. He said Washington and London “share the goal of stability” and “don’t want to see some uptick in violence” in the West Bank…
All the while, Israel Space Agency head Shimrit Maman met today in Brussels with Ekaterina Zaharieva, the European commissioner for startups, research and innovation, as more European countries turn to Israel for their defense technology needs and as the EU looks to increase its presence in space. The moves mark a shift from 2024, when a plan for an EU air-defense shield was reportedly scrapped as officials realized they would need to rely on Israeli technology to construct it…
CENTCOM carried out strikes near Iran’s Kharg Island this afternoon, including on Iranian oil tankers, a U.S. official told Fox News. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to retaliate against U.S. forces in the region…
The Treasury Department announced sanctions today against 27 Iranian airlines as well as several front companies, foreign intermediaries and other aviation-related actors for supporting the regime’s illicit activities…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied reports that he was warned by the UAE ahead of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks: “If there was any relevant information, it was passed through intelligence channels between the two countries,” the PMO said.
Meanwhile, an Emirati source confirmed to The Times of Israel that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed personally transmitted the warning in a phone call to Netanyahu days ahead of the attacks…
A coalition of Michigan rabbis and Jewish leaders launched a petition laying out their five “nonnegotiables” for candidates to receive their backing, an effort ostensibly aimed at Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
The list includes a candidate’s support for Jewish safety, including for Zionist Jews; for Jews to be able to define their own identities, including a connection to the State of Israel; for Israel’s existence as a Jewish state; for full Jewish participation in American political life; and for an affirmative vision for the Middle East moving forward…
In a letter obtained by JI’s Emily Jacobs, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) urged President Donald Trump to establish an expedited legal pathway for Jewish Canadians to obtain refugee status in the United States amid rising antisemitism in their home country…
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced today the release of $70 million in state hate crimes funding to “fortify” religious facilities across the state — as well as a “surge” in police presence — as the High Holy Days begin this weekend, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.
Nearly 300 schools, houses of worship and civic groups — not exclusively Jewish ones — will receive grants of up to $250,000 each for cameras, alarms, security training and cybersecurity enhancements…
Spotted at the “Freedom 250” celebration hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem today to celebrate the American semiquincentennial were U.S. Ambassdor to Israel Mike Huckabee and his wife, Janet; former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman; Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana; Miriam Adelson; Museum of Tolerance chair and co-founder Larry Mizel; former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren; National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir; Argentine Ambassador to Israel Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish; Meta’s Jordana Cutler; United Hatzalah President Eli Beer; venture capitalist Eric Reiner; businessman Simon Falic; and singer Ishay Ribo, who performed for the guests…
The 59th season premiere of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” this Sunday will feature an interview with one of the officers who was shot down in his F-15 fighter jet over Iran in April. The officer, known as “Dude 44,” will be interviewed by correspondent Norah O’Donnell in his first on-camera sitdown…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for an interview with Elliot Kaufman and Yonah Jeremy Bob on their new book, In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel’s Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis.
The Republican National Committee will kick off its first-ever midterm convention tomorrow afternoon in Dallas, with dozens of candidates and elected officials scheduled to speak over the two days of programming.
President Donald Trump will deliver the keynote address tomorrow night (as well as closing remarks on Thursday), with additional remarks throughout the convention by Vice President JD Vance; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Attorney General Todd Blanche; House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA); Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jon Husted (R-OH) and Dave McCormick (R-PA); Texas attorney general and Senate candidate Ken Paxton; Georgia Senate nominee Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA); Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers; and North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley.
Some GOP candidates in tight races, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), former Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), will not be attending the convention, in what appears to be a pointed effort to keep their distance from Trump.
The MEAD conference, a summit of government officials, policymakers and leaders in Middle East policy, will conclude in Washington tomorrow. Representatives from 24 countries, including several that have no diplomatic relations with Israel, are reportedly in attendance.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington will host its Rosh Hashanah celebration tomorrow evening.
New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Comptroller Mark Levine will walk the runway at the Metropolitan Opera House during Style Across the Aisle, where they will be dressed by Jewish designers Elie Tahari and Yosel Tiefenbrun.
Stories You May Have Missed
MAMDANI’S MENSCH
Uri Fraenkel made an improbable ascent from bus-managing bureaucrat to Mamdani’s Borough Park chaperone
PAPPAS UNDER PRESSURE
The pro-Israel moderate has been recalibrating his foreign policy views under pressure from a far-left anti-Israel opponent
Uri Fraenkel made an improbable ascent from bus-managing bureaucrat to Mamdani’s Borough Park chaperone
Uri Fraenkel blows a shofar during New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's visit to Borough Park.
Footage from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s visit to a Brooklyn Judaica store showed a little-known Orthodox City Hall staffer blowing the shofar and explaining aspects of Hasidic garb to the democratic socialist — as well as ushering aside a heckler — provoking questions and commentary from Jewish observers.
Uri Fraenkel, who accompanied Mamdani and faith liaison Rabbi Miriam Grossman on the pre-High Holidays trip to Borough Park, cuts an unlikely figure in a leftist City Hall: an Israel-supporting Lubavitcher from Crown Heights, whose social media features multiple photos with former Mayor Eric Adams (“a true Mayor who fights for all New Yorkers,” a caption on LinkedIn reads), in whose administration he previously served.
Even more ironic, for a man all sources Jewish Insider spoke to described as apolitical, is the arm of the mayor’s office he now works in: the new Office of Mass Engagement, created with the explicit mission of “bringing the people-powered movement that elected Mayor Mamdani to the work of governance” — an office stocked with members of the Democratic Socialists of America all the way up to Commissioner Tascha Van Auken.
But Fraenkel, whom Mamdani’s team would not make available for an interview, followed an unorthodox route to City Hall in the first place. Rather than being a political appointee, of the type that typically resigns or gets removed when a new mayor enters office, he is a longtime civil servant. And he rose to the role of director of special projects for Adams’ Community Affairs Unit not on the strength of personal ties, but from a career in the city Department of Education.
“Usually people who come in that position, they come in because they’re loud enough and they have a lot of connections,” said Benny Polatseck, another Adams administration veteran. “Uri’s a quiet guy.”
Fraenkel oversaw student transportation, including for yeshivas, under both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Meanwhile, at home in Crown Heights, he was “just a member of the community,” according to Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, who handles public relations for Chabad headquarters.
“Community Affairs would get a call from somebody about buses, for Jewish schools or not Jewish: ‘The routes don’t make sense,’” Behrman remembered. “They would go to Uri and ask him, ‘Does this person have a point?’”
He transitioned to City Hall in 2024 at a moment of strained municipal finances. Because he was already a public employee, the move did not require a new salary or the standard hiring process. Inside Adams’ office, according to Behrman and others, he continued to work in a purely technical capacity, helping people from diverse communities with issues involving city agencies and permitting processes.
However, sources — who requested anonymity to speak freely — told JI that Fraenkel long wanted to work more specifically on Jewish issues, and to increase his personal visibility. But this was difficult in the Adams administration, where multiple Orthodox Jews held high-profile roles, including Fred Kreizman, then-head of the Community Affairs Unit.
Behrman, however, disputed that Fraenkel held any such ambitions.
“He’s a very humble guy. He likes helping, he likes doing stuff, he likes being involved,” he said. “He’s a very genuine guy.”
Either way, Mamdani’s election represented an odd sort of opportunity. Because of his civil service designation, the new administration could not quickly fire Fraenkel as it did other Adams staffers; at most, it could demote him back into the Department of Education. But the new Office of Mass Engagement, staffed largely with activists and political professionals, lacked personnel who understood city government, insiders said.
Despite the new office’s political tenor, Behrman and others who know Fraenkel emphasized he continues to handle strictly bureaucratic matters in his new role of director of constituent services at Mass Engagement.
“I’ll reach out to Uri for the Parks Department, or issues with city agencies,” said Behrman. “An organizational need, a community need. But never for political things.”
In the job, Fraenkel continues to engage with New Yorkers from across various backgrounds, though he has also featured in a number of Jewish events to date. He handed the mayor a mishloach manot gift at Purim, and sat with Mamdani and an array of Orthodox leaders at a roundtable later in March.
“Uri Fraenkel represents the very best of public service. Every day, he helps New Yorkers navigate our city’s complex network of services and resources and connects people across the five boroughs with the support they deserve,” Van Auken, the Office of Mass Engagement commissioner, said in a statement to JI. “We are incredibly lucky to have Uri on our team.”
However, his prominent appearance alongside Mamdani at Eichler’s Judaica, and on-camera encounter with frequent Mamdani protester Stephanie Ben Shimol at the store, sparked a heated online reaction.
“I feel bad for him. I’ve had so many calls in the last 24 hours: ‘Why was he there, and why was he legitimizing them?’” Polatseck said. “He is there to represent the mayor and the community. What do you want him to do? Somebody screams at your boss and you’re standing right next to him, what are you going to do?”
Behrman agreed.
“If the mayor didn’t hire an Orthodox Jew, we would scream he doesn’t have an Orthodox Jew in the administration,” the rabbi said. “What if a person in a yeshiva needs to work with somebody in the city? Do you want them not to have anybody they’re comfortable with in the administration?”
Plus, Mahdawi's defenders go quiet on resurfaced posts
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Vice President JD Vance speaks during a news briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Sept. 3, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Good Thursday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Vice President JD Vance defended his friendship with far-right commentator Tucker Carlson at a White House press briefing this afternoon, saying that he would not “play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them,” Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
“Everybody knows that Tucker Carlson and I are friends. And I think it’s very obvious that Tucker has said some things that I disagree with,” Vance said. He criticized Carlson’s attacks on President Donald Trump and his recent comments expressing support for Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed over former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race, though he did not mention Carlson’s extreme antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric…
On the other side of the spectrum, asked by Stephen A. Smith if there was anything antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker could say that could cause El-Sayed to publicly disavow him, El-Sayed responded, “I mean, sure,” but said the “idea that you just categorically disavow an individual, that to me doesn’t make sense.” He added that Piker has 3 million listeners, to whom he wants to “offer … a pathway into an electoral movement”…
Many of the liberal Jewish and civil rights organizations and lawmakers who protested federal efforts to deport Columbia University anti-Israel protest leader Mohsen Mahdawi are so far silent on new revelations about Mahdawi’s lengthy history of antisemitic and pro-terrorist social media posts, JI’s Haley Cohen and Marc Rod report.
Mahdawi, a 35-year-old Green Card holder and West Bank native, pledged in a 2010 Facebook post, “soon, very soon, we will annihilate the Jews.” He also praised Hamas and honored deceased terrorists in several posts on Instagram and Facebook, declaring that Palestinians have the capacity and conviction “to kill and to wound”…
Iran fired missiles and drones at Kuwait and Bahrain early today local time, according to the Kuwaiti Defense Ministry and Bahraini Foreign Ministry…
Trump disputed reports that the U.S. is running low on munitions, writing on Truth Social that the U.S. has “virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition” and is “stockpiling” more but that “sales to Allies will soon again, begin”…
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said at an event for Defense Ministry employees today that Jerusalem is “seeing signs” that the pressure campaign on the Iranian regime “could push them to desperate measures,” and warned that if Iran is to attack Israel, “we will strike all infrastructure — including energy infrastructure — and return Iran to the Stone Age”…
Israel is releasing five Lebanese civilians who had been detained in southern Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said today, in exchange for Beirut’s assistance in locating the remains of Lebanese Jewish community figures. The PMO said the individuals being released were determined through questioning not to be involved in terror activities…
A new study by the Jewish Federations of North America found that Jewish institutions’ security spending has surpassed $1 billion per year, a 33% increase from 2024. The total breaks down to about $225,000 per institution, including community centers, synagogues, schools, summer camps and nonprofits, with the largest share of the cost allocated to security personnel…
As a group of leading Hasidic rabbis exited their Oval Office meeting with Trump this afternoon, communal leader Yossi Gestetner told reporters that the gathering was “an opportunity for the first time in over 50 years for the president of the United States to meet with the grand rabbis of the largest Hasidic sects … We had the opportunity to thank the president for all that he does for the United States.”
Among the attendees were Vance; Jared Kushner; Satmar leaders Rav Aharon Teitelbaum and Rav Zalman Leib Teitelbaum; Rav Malkiel Kotler, rosh yeshiva of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J.; New Square Mayor Israel Spitzer; Rav Aron Mendel Twersky; and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who represents large Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities in Rockland County, including Monsey and New Square…
House Democrats overwhelmingly voted against the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act, a bill that would strip federal funding from colleges and universities engaged in boycotts of Israel, with just 33 Democrats supporting the measure, JI’s Marc Rod reports. The bill ultimately passed 237-169, with two Republicans voting against the measure along with the majority of Democrats…
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told JI’s Marc Rod that he’s hoping to take action in the committee on several bills regarding antisemitism in the remaining months of the congressional term, and also previewed plans for a hearing on the International Criminal Court.
“We’ve been supportive of all of those [antisemitism bills] in the past, so we’ll see what we can get done here in the last few weeks of September, or maybe even in the lame-duck session” after the midterm elections, Jordan said…
The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights issued a “Dear Colleague” letter today to all healthcare providers that receive HHS funding, explaining how antisemitic conduct can violate federal civil rights law in patient care, medical education, provider training and other settings.
It’s the first such letter from the federal government to incorporate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, according to the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for an interview with Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) about his views on the Democratic Socialists of America, being pro-Israel in the Democratic Party and more.
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed will speak on a panel at the Islamic Society of North America‘s annual convention in Detroit on Saturday alongside outspoken Israel critics Cenk Uygur and Zaid Shakir.
Meanwhile, former Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner will no longer speak at a Labor Day rally hosted by the progressive group Hancock County Activists, in what was supposed to be his first public appearance following the suspension of his campaign after a former romantic partner accused him of rape. The group said he was dropped as a speaker because “the media frenzy got just too insane,” and he will instead lead a march for veterans after the rally.
In observance of Labor Day, we’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Tuesday. Shabbat shalom!
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CULTURE CLASH
Sheikha Al Mayassa, who chairs Qatar’s top cultural bodies, shared panels from a Venice Biennale tapestry she said ‘powerfully captures the human atrocity’ in Gaza
REPUBLICAN RECKONING
McCormick also offered a strong defense of America’s role in the world and commitment to its alliances
Plus, Trump tells Israel not to sweat Iran
Uri Fraenkel blows a shofar during New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's visit to Borough Park.
Good Wednesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
In a phone interview with Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, President Donald Trump said Israel “should not worry” amid renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. “You know why? Because I’m the president and I will take care of Israel,” he added.
Asked separately by reporters today how long the military action will last, Trump said, “I don’t think too long”…
An Oakland, Calif., coffee shop that drew national scrutiny for promoting Hamas and forcibly removing Jewish patrons announced it has indefinitely suspended operations amid lawsuits brought by the Justice Department, Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law over its alleged harassment of the Jewish customers, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
About its decision to close down, the cafe wrote on Substack, “These lawsuits represent the ongoing efforts of zionist organizations and the federal government to use the courts as a tool to repress free speech and public political commitments to Palestine”…
Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, the sister of Qatar’s emir, promoted a divisive exhibition at the Venice Biennale called “Gaza — No Words — See the Exhibit,” which highlights allegations that Israel deliberately targeted children in Gaza among other actions that the exhibit portrays as constituting genocide, JI’s Matthew Kassel reports.
The Qatari royal, who chairs several of the Gulf state’s leading cultural organizations, hailed the display — which features a textile collection of 100 hand-stitched panels made by Palestinian women called the “Gaza Genocide Tapestry” — as “a powerful exhibition, one not to miss”…
Actor Mark Ruffalo reportedly tried to enlist Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt — with the assistance of Greenblatt’s former Obama administration colleague Norm Eisen — to help Ruffalo make amends after remarks he made opposing the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery were characterized by critics as antisemitic, an offer which Greenblatt refused.
Eisen then worked to gather support from over 180 Jewish figures in entertainment who signed an open letter supporting Ruffalo amid what they allege is a “smear campaign” against him…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani today visited Borough Park in Brooklyn, home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities in the city and the world, a week and a half before the Jewish New Year, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.
Footage released by Mamdani’s office of his visit to Eichler’s Judaica — a purveyor of Jewish books and religious items that has been in business for nearly 40 years — showed the mayor discussing garbage pickup and curriculum at yeshivas with local leaders, who gifted him honey for Rosh Hashanah…
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee met yesterday with U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss progress made in the U.S.-mediated negotiations between Jerusalem and Beirut, which Huckabee called a “historic process, only impeded by Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah”…
Around 30 Jews remain unaccounted for among the thousands of people missing after last week’s devastating flash floods near the Nepal-Tibet border, according to Rabbi Chezky Lifshitz, who leads the Chabad House of Kathmandu. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has also confirmed that at least two Israelis are missing…
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, wrote on X today that the “Israelization of our societies is a fact,” claiming Israel is “a model of containment/repression dressed as democracy” and that pro-Israel advocacy groups “sell that image abroad”…
In an interview with Rolling Stone, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said it “makes sense” that Jews are sensitive to criticism of Israel crossing into antisemitism, highlighting recent FBI statistics showing anti-Jewish hate crimes make up the majority of religiously motivated hate crimes in the country. “You’ve heard the joke, but it’s serious: Paranoid people have enemies too,” he said.
About his potential decision to run for president in 2028, he said, “I’m more yes than no. I haven’t made a full decision because I want to make sure that we get through this successfully, meaning winning the midterms, and then I’m going to make a final decision”…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at the continued concern within the GOP to Vice President JD Vance’s ongoing failure to distance himself from far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, a dynamic highlighted in Vance’s remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition summit on Monday.
President Donald Trump will host several Hasidic rabbis in the Oval Office tomorrow to convey his Rosh Hashanah greetings, a meeting the White House claimed is the first of its kind since 1979. The gathering will reportedly include members of the Satmar community, an anti-Zionist Hasidic sect.
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TEHRAN TALK
Democrats say the administration has no clear endgame in its standoff with Tehran, while Republicans maintain the pressure campaign is working
HOUTHI HARASSMENT
Rep. Mike Lawler: ‘Iran and its Houthi proxies have now simultaneously put pressure on two of the world’s most important maritime checkpoints’
The NYC mayor engaged with local Hasidic leaders, who gifted him honey for Rosh Hashanah
Uri Fraenkel blows a shofar during New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's visit to Borough Park.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday visited Borough Park in Brooklyn, home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities in the city and the world, a week and a half before the Jewish New Year.
Footage released by Mamdani’s office of his visit to Eichler’s Judaica — a purveyor of Jewish books and religious items that has been in business for nearly 40 years — showed the mayor discussing garbage pickup and curriculum at yeshivas with local leaders, who gifted him honey for Rosh Hashanah. In the recording, Uri Fraenkel, who works as director special projects at the mayor’s office, demonstrated the blowing of the shofar and explained elements of Hasidic garb.
In a brief statement to the invited press, the mayor wished them an early shanah tova, and thanked those who welcomed him for the “conversations.”
Despite facing strong criticism from many Jewish civic and religious leaders over his stance and statements toward Israel, Mamdani in his first year has cultivated relationships with figures from the city’s diverse Hasidic communities, including rabbis from the Satmar sects in Williamsburg and the Jewish Children’s Museum in Crown Heights.
Plus, Rahm Emanuel offers Piker a 'two-by-four' education
Photo by Elke Scholiers/Getty Images
Crude oil tankers, bulk carriers and vessels sit anchored around Qaboos Port on June 22, 2026 in Muscat, Oman.
Good Tuesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
The U.S. struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets in Iran today, CENTCOM announced, following Iranian attacks on U.S. forces in the region over the weekend as well as strikes on two tankers carrying Saudi oil in the Strait of Hormuz yesterday.
Iranian officials told The New York Times that the strikes hit several targets in southern Iran including a military base and the perimeter of a commercial airport. Tehran retaliated by firing missiles once again at U.S. bases in Jordan, according to Jordanian state media…
President Donald Trump had warned on Truth Social that if Iran retaliates for “this very justified attack,” the U.S. will strike Iran again “at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all,” which he said “is waiting in the wings.” He told Fox News that the U.S. was targeting Iranian radar capabilities as it attempted to rebuild and said an agreement with the regime “isn’t worth the paper it’s written on”…
Even so, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on the sidelines of a gathering of G20 finance ministers in Asheville, N.C., today that the Strait of Hormuz “will be bypassed in two years” as “a worthless piece of water.”
Bessent also said his department is likely to announce sanctions on other banks this week and next after targeting Egyptian Banque Misr for its connections to the Iranian regime…
Russia has been helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles, according to a Financial Times investigation of leaked Russian communications. The highly sophisticated weapons technology, which can travel at several times the speed of sound, could assist Tehran in targeting U.S. aircraft carriers and other assets in the region…
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said at a press conference today that Israel and Syria are engaged in negotiations mediated by the U.S. and that Damascus is “still committed” to reaching a diplomatic agreement, despite what he described as dozens of ongoing IDF incursions into Syrian territory…
The Justice Department announced today that the FBI seized $560,000 in cryptocurrency donations intended for Hamas as well as fundraising and recruitment communication infrastructure belonging to the terror group.
John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, said the seizures “deprive Hamas of resources it relies on to recruit and radicalize individuals online and finance barbaric attacks like the one on Oct. 7, 2023”…
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he would go on Hasan Piker’s Twitch show to give the antisemitic streamer “a lesson in what he is perpetuating and the advocacy and the rhetoric of what he’s doing,” Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. “I can give him a two-by-four upside his head because of what he said,” Emanuel said in a CNN interview yesterday, referring to recent comments in which Piker had claimed that Jews who support Israel are inviting violence against themselves.
Piker criticized what he called the “violent death threats from rahm israel emanuel” in a post on X responding to JI’s story, a day after he said on his Twitch stream that he had deleted the social media app…
Ahead of his address at the Republican Jewish Coalition summit last night in Las Vegas, Vice President JD Vance’s team reached out to several prominent Jewish GOP donors to test the waters of how he might be received, The New York Times reports, in a reflection of how the vice president hoped to use the appearance to assuage concerns among the key constituency for his potential 2028 presidential run…
California’s state Legislature passed a bill yesterday adding Jewish as an ethnicity option on state forms that collect demographic data. The bill, which now awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature or veto, has raised some historical concerns around government records of Jews, while its proponents say the state’s privacy protections should prevent improper use of the data…
FBI Director Kash Patel hosted Shin Bet head David Zini in Washington today where they discussed counterterrorism efforts including breaking terrorist financing networks, intelligence sharing and counter-drone technologies, according to Patel…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul held a joint press conference this morning ahead of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks calling on the Trump administration to release what they said is $87 million in frozen counter-terror funding owed to the state.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin held a dueling presser elsewhere in the city accusing the two leaders of failing to address crime and highlighting the administration’s work to detain thousands of illegal immigrants across New York…
A trade union issued a strike notice to Brussels Airlines as workers said they are being forced to staff flights to Israel, a breach of the union’s contract that says employees may volunteer but may not be compelled to fly to Tel Aviv. The workers have “serious concerns about both their physical safety and the mental and ethical impact of these flights,” a union spokesperson told The Brussels Times…
Jewish leaders from 59 communal organizations from around the world convened in Jerusalem this week for a meeting of the J50 Forum, a body established by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and currently chaired by William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Meeting with the group today, Sa’ar said they discussed “our shared and deepening concern over the global rise in antisemitism, and the clear connection between the obsessive anti-Israel rhetoric of many governments and the growing attacks against Jewish communities”…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for perspectives from lawmakers on whether the U.S. or Iran has the upper hand as the war currently stands.
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COURTING SKEPTICS
Confronting a skeptical crowd, the vice president expressed support for Israel and the Jewish community; he wasn’t pressed directly on his past comments and affiliations that have most concerned Jewish Republicans
MONEY MATTERS
Former Iran envoy Elliott Abrams: ‘His policy is working right now, but the enemy gets a vote’
Plus, Trump previews Iran retribution
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel speaks on stage during the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 21, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. Delegates, politicians, and Democratic Party supporters are in Chicago for the convention, concluding with current Vice President Kamala Harris accepting her party's presidential nomination.
Good Monday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump told Fox News this morning that the U.S. will respond to Iran’s attacks yesterday on U.S. forces in Jordan: “We’re going to hit them hard. There will be a response,” he said…
CENTCOM and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have proposed to Trump a campaign of limited strikes around the Strait of Hormuz to prevent Iran from rebuilding its radar and missile capacities, U.S. officials told Axios, a plan that may draw the president’s approval following the renewed hostilities over the weekend…
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Jewish Democrat, encouraged Jewish voters on Sunday to put aside concerns about their safety “in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity,” regarding Michigan’s closely contested Senate election this November, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
“We have a moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival,” Nessel told attendees in her remarks at the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus’ annual “Summer Simcha” gathering…
Vice President JD Vance, appearing at a GOP rally in Michigan, attacked the state’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, as a terror sympathizer, targeting him for his comments following the violent attack on Temple Israel earlier this year where he said “hurt people hurt people.” Vance spotlighted a rabbi and security guards from the synagogue who were in the audience…
El-Sayed’s campaign is working to hire a Jewish community liaison, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports, as he seeks to make inroads with the Jewish community after apologizing over the weekend for his remarks regarding the Temple Israel attack…
Politico speaks with Detroit-area Arab Americanleaders who helped rally their community to support Trump in his 2024 campaign, many of whom are now souring on the GOP amid the war in Iran and the president’s attacks on El-Sayed — a potentially meaningful shift for the swing constituency that could have an impact in the Senate race…
San Francisco congressional nominee Connie Chan endorsed the “Oakland People’s Arms Embargo,” an activist movement seeking to halt what it claims are arms shipments out of Oakland Airport heading to Israel, as she seeks to best state Sen. Scott Wiener in the Democrat-on-Democrat race with the backing of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)…
New York City congressional nominee Brad Lander addressed an incident over the weekend where he was accosted by individuals who accused him of being a Zionist while participating in a protest against a Hindu nationalist leader at Madison Square Garden: Lander in response claimed once again that Israel is carrying out genocide, occupation and apartheid against Palestinians and said he was “glad to participate” in the protest, despite the blowback from “a couple of fringe a**holes with drums and bullhorns”…
Former Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer told attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit to give Vance a “warm welcome” when he speaks at the summit this evening, JI’s Marc Rod reports from Las Vegas. Dermer praised the vice president for playing a “critical role” in the 12-day war against Iran in June 2025, “and particularly the first day, where that element of surprise was so critical to our success”…
In his remarks at the RJC summit, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemned Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood for their spending to influence U.S. education with anti-Israel sentiment, JI’s Marc Rod reports — a notable comment from a representative of the Trump administration, which has largely embraced Doha…
Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP nominee for governor of Ohio, told the RJC audience that they “represent the most successful demographic group in America” and therefore antisemitism “is an attack on the idea of success. It is an attack on the idea of meritocracy. It is an attack on the idea of capitalism. It is an attack on the very idea of America itself”…
British designer John Galliano and the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that a planned exhibit honoring Galliano’s work would not move forward after the project faced backlash due to Galliano’s history of being convicted of an antisemitic hate crime, JI’s Haley Cohen reports.
“I remain fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past … I understand that meaningful atonement is not achieved through an exhibition, institutional recognition or a single public gesture. It is a continuing responsibility, demonstrated through listening, learning and one’s conduct over time,” Galliano said in a statement…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at where Israel’s elections stand with less than two months until voters head to the polls.
Massachusetts will hold its primary elections, where Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) hopes to fend off a generational primary challenge from Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA).
With the House back from its August recess, the Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the threat posed by the Houthi terror group to U.S. interests in the Red Sea.
The leaders of China, Russia, India, Iran and several other countries gathered in Kyrgyzstan today for a two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization focused on political and security issues.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent kicked off a two-day meeting of the G20 finance ministers in Asheville, N.C., today, where he is expected to push U.S. allies to cooperate in the Trump administration’s economic isolation campaign against Iran. Also in attendance are several Fortune 500 executives, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs.
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TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?
One member of the Michigan Democrats’ Jewish Caucus said Jewish Democrats ‘remain divided’ on El-Sayed after his outreach
OHIO HOT SEAT
The union ironworker has drawn backing from J Street, JDCA and Bernie Sanders while declining to take firm positions on the Jewish state
NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin will be dressed by Israeli American designer Elie Tahari, while Comptroller Mark Levine will be paired with a Chabad rabbi-turned-tailor
Style Across the Aisle
New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin atwalks the runway at Style Across the Aisle 2025.
When New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin walks the runway at the Metropolitan Opera House next week, she will be dressed by Israeli American designer Elie Tahari. The pairing is driven by their shared history of entrepreneurship and building success from the ground up, but amid heightened antisemitism, the moment also spotlights two proud Jewish and Zionist New Yorkers.
Now in its third year, Style Across the Aisle — set to coincide with New York Fashion Week — pairs 30 bipartisan elected officials with New York City designers based on shared geography, heritage or life experience.
This year’s lineup arrives against a backdrop of rising antisemitic attacks in New York City, which some Jewish leaders say has been fueled by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rhetoric targeting Israel. It includes several openly Jewish, pro-Israel lawmakers — among them Menin and City Comptroller Mark Levine — walking in pieces by Jewish designers Tahari and Yosel Tiefenbrun, a Chabad rabbi-turned-tailor whose Tribeca studio sits blocks from Levine’s office.
Menin, the city’s first Jewish council speaker, will be dressed by Jerusalem-born Tahari — the designer credited with creating the tube top — due to a shared history of resilience, according to the event organizers. Both began their journeys as self-made entrepreneurs: Menin rebuilt her career after a downtown restaurant she owned was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, while Tahari arrived in New York penniless — sleeping on Central Park benches — before transforming his vision into a billion-dollar fashion empire.
Style Across the Aisle founder Skye Ostreicher, a New York political personality, told Jewish Insider the event’s goal is to build bridges and remove labels — designer labels as well as political and religious ones — that make it easy to reduce people to caricatures. “Very often, when we label someone ‘Jew’ or ‘Zionist,’ it’s easy to hate them versus if you see them as a human first,” she said.
Ostreicher, who identifies as “a proud Jewish woman,” said she worked to include participants of every background. Yusef Salaam, a Muslim member of the New York City Council once wrongly imprisoned as one of the Central Park Five, will walk this year’s runway in a suit designed by a fellow Harlem native who also served time behind bars.
Ostreicher said her red line are designers “who hate Israel,” whom she would not invite to participate. She’d hoped to welcome Mamdani, who — like Mayor Eric Adams before him — was invited to strut the runway, but he won’t be attending, citing a scheduling conflict, Ostreicher said.
“Of course we’re including Jewish designers. I like including everyone, that is always my intention. If Mamdani did want to walk and wear a Muslim designer we would make that happen,” she said.
This year’s event lands on Sept. 9, days before the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a milestone that Ostreicher asserted makes the case for unity even more timely.
The runway show also comes as the Met Gala — widely known as fashion’s biggest and most glamorous night, held annually in New York City in May — is facing mounting backlash for its plans to honor British fashion designer John Galliano, who was convicted more than a decade ago of a hate crime in France for antisemitic remarks.
Plus, Ossoff joins Piker pushback
(Win McNamee/Getty Images)
U.S. President, Donald Trump (R), speaks to Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as he arrives at Etimesgut Air Base for the annual NATO Summit on July 7, 2026 in Ankara, Turkey.
Good Thursday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) joined the growing list of Democrats condemning far-left streamer Hasan Piker’s recent comments suggesting American Jews incite antisemitic attacks due to their support for Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports: An Ossoff spokesperson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the Georgia senator “unreservedly rejects reckless and dangerous rhetoric suggesting that policy advocacy invites violence against the Jewish community or any community.”
Piker had in March named Ossoff as his “dark-horse pick” for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, alongside a series of further-left candidates. Ossoff, at the time, did not respond to questions from JI about Piker…
Meanwhile, Ossoff’s opponent, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), is again facing criticism over the extremist activity of an associate, following a Washington Post report that a former staffer shared images of a swastika and of himself in a KKK robe…
The State Department sent a cable to U.S. embassies around the world urging them to work with local governments to shore up security for global Jewish communities ahead of the High Holy Days and the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks…
The Turkish government has retained Ballard Partners — a lobbying firm with deep ties to President Donald Trump — to represent Ankara’s Ministry of National Defense in Washington, as Turkey and the U.S. continue to improve ties under the Trump administration.
The firm’s team on the contract includes former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a pro-Turkey and pro-Israel voice on Capitol Hill who co-founded the Congressional Caucus on U.S.-Turkey Relations in 2001. Speaking with JI’s Matthew Shea, Wexler framed the partnership as aiming to strengthen U.S.-Turkish ties while also attempting to mend severely strained relations between Ankara and Jerusalem…
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met today in Tehran with Iranian officials including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, President Masoud Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, where he discussed with them “efforts being made to reduce escalation and create appropriate conditions for dialogue,” according to the Qatari Foreign Ministry.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said during his meeting with Al Thani that Iran “[does] not trust the Americans” and threatened that “if America starts evil against the Islamic Republic, we will bring disaster on their military and economic interests”…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani met with Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, this morning — weeks after Waltz denounced the mayor’s suggestion that he might arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and weeks before the leader of the Jewish state is set to arrive in the city for the U.N. General Assembly, JI’s Will Bredderman reports…
More than 70% of Jewish educators in teachers’ unions fear that speaking up about antisemitism in their union could harm their careers or reputations, according to a study published today by the Anti-Defamation League.
Nearly three-quarters of respondents (73%) said they feel compelled to self-censor in teachers’ union spaces, and almost half (47%) reported reducing their participation in union activities because of harmful rhetoric or behavior targeting Jews, Zionists or Israel, JI’s Haley Cohen reports…
A dozen countries issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s move this week to dismantle a vocational training center run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in east Jerusalem, which came following the passage of a 2024 law banning the organization from operating in Israel after several of its employees were found to have participated in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom called for Israel to immediately “halt all disruptions to UNRWA’s activities.” Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rebutted the statement, claiming UNRWA has never had land rights to the area, which Jerusalem claims is owned by the Jewish National Fund…
Trump highlighted on Truth Social today a statement by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of the Inspector General that it had referred for suspension or debarment 101 current or former UNRWA staff for participating in the Oct. 7 attacks or for affiliation with Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades. Among those referred were “UNRWA school principals, teachers, security personnel, attendants, psychosocial counselors, and medical professionals,” USAID OIG said…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at how the civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia sent to Congress by the Trump administration may unfold.
Tomorrow marks the six-month anniversary of the outbreak of the Iran war, with the conflict now largely stalled. The Trump administration has reportedly conveyed to mediators that it has no interest in returning to the terms of the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding reached in June that quickly fell apart, while the White House maintains that there are “no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled” with Tehran.
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, will be one of the keynote speakers at tomorrow’s March on Washington commemoration at the Lincoln Memorial, marking the 63rd anniversary of the historic march co-led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Other speakers at the event include Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and civil rights leaders.
On Saturday, Sanders will join Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) at a rally for Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) ahead of his primary next week against Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA).
The Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus will hold its Summer Simcha on Sunday honoring Attorney General Dana Nessel, where Michigan Democrats including Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and congressional nominee Jeremy Moss are slated to speak.
The Jewish American Summit will be held in Los Angeles on Sunday, with speakers including Jay Sures, vice chairman of United Talent Agency; U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee; Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter; educator and activist Yossi Farro; GOP California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton; and Jewish communal professionals and leaders.
The Republican Jewish Coalition’s Annual Leadership Summit will kick off Sunday evening in Las Vegas with a welcome reception. Vice President JD Vance is expected to address the gathering. If you’ll be in attendance, be on the lookout for JI’s Marc Rod!
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat shalom!
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IN IT TO WIN IT
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The summit between the NYC mayor and Waltz comes ahead of the U.N. General Assembly next month
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani briefly speaks with reporters as he leaves the Dirksen Senate Office Building on July 16, 2025 in Washington, DC.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani met with Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Thursday morning — weeks after Waltz denounced the mayor’s suggestion that he might arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and weeks before the leader of the Jewish state is set to arrive in the Big Apple for the U.N. General Assembly.
City Hall released an updated schedule for the mayor just minutes before the 10 a.m. meeting was set to begin, and did not disclose the location. No readout or statement from either official regarding the gathering had been released as of Thursday afternoon.
In July, Waltz took to X to castigate Mamdani for continuing to toy with a campaign promise to execute an International Criminal Court warrant against Netanyahu should he visit New York for the diplomatic summit. Waltz noted what, according to subsequent New York Times reporting, the mayor already knew from the city’s lawyers and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch: he lacked authority to act on the pledge.
“Mayor Mamdani: here’s why your threat to arrest PM Netanyahu’s in NYC during UNGA is not going to happen,” the former Florida congressman wrote, before noting the U.S. is not a party to the ICC, that Netanyahu enjoys various legal protections as a head of state and participant in U.N. proceedings and that federal decision-making power preempts that of the city. “This is pure political theater.”
Mamdani subsequently admitted Waltz’s points in a fiery social media video that drew denunciations from leading Jewish groups and leaders.
Netanyahu has announced he intends to gathering the session in New York, which begins Sept. 8. High-level week, featuring heads of state, will run from Sept. 22-28.
Plus, Treasury tags Palestine Action as terror group
Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel speaks on Oct. 16, 2022 in East Lansing, Michigan.
Good Wednesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel raised concerns that Senate Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed has not yet walked back his comments about the violent attack on Temple Israel in March, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. El-Sayed had said about the attacker — whose relatives, including a Hezbollah commander brother, had been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon — that “hurt people hurt people.”
“A lot of us perceived that as sort of making excuses for somebody who sought to murder over 100 pre-K school children, and that’s the kind of mentality that bothers me a lot,” Nessel, who is Jewish, explained in a podcast interview with The Atlantic’s David Frum. “You can’t make excuses for that kind of domestic terrorism,” she added…
Nearly all Senate Democrats signed on to a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to address growing settler violence in the West Bank by issuing “clear directives” to the Israel Police and IDF to intervene in such incidents; ensuring that individuals responsible for harassment or violence against Palestinians are held accountable; and ending Israeli settlement expansion, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
The letter, led by Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), who have generally been supportive of Israel, was signed by every Senate Democrat except for Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and John Fetterman (D-PA) — who stand at opposite ends of the caucus on Israel issues…
Addressing the U.N. Security Council today, Board of Peace head Nickolay Mladenov said neither Israel nor Hamas are yet fulfilling their obligations under the Gaza disarmament road map.
“After three years of war and 20 years of military operations, I ask, will another [Israeli] strike on a munitions depot stop Hamas from rearming or tightening its grip on Gaza? It will not. … In the opposite direction, every weapon still carried, every tunnel still worked on and every convoy still obstructed [by Hamas] sets the process back,” Mladenov said…
White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner reportedly visited CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Fla., today for briefings on Iran…
The Treasury Department named as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization the U.K.-based group Palestine Action, which has been involved in multiple high-profile break-ins and vandalism incidents at weapons manufacturers and British military installations.
The department also proscribed the transnational organization Masar Badil for being a front for Samidoun, which is itself a sanctioned front group for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, JI’s Matthew Shea reports…
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, thanked China — Iran’s largest trading partner — for rejecting the U.S.’ economic campaign against Iran, in which Washington has said it will ask all nations to help isolate Tehran. Iran’s relationship with China “needs no one’s permission,” Ghalibaf wrote on X, after China’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday that Beijing rejects the sanctions “that have no basis in international law”…
The New York Times looks at the operations of Iran’s largest bank — Bank Melli — after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said each of its branches around the world “must be shuttered and dark”…
Saudi Arabia is working to reroute its oil exports once again, this time through the costlier Suez Canal, as its ships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — itself a backup route to the Strait of Hormuz — have come under attack by the Houthis…
In his first international media interview, former Israeli hostage Evyatar David told CNN about the extreme starvation and psychological distress he suffered during his more than 700 days in Hamas captivity…
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) renewed her membership with the Democratic Socialists of America this month, the organization told City & State New York, after the DSA “recently noticed” her membership had lapsed in 2019. The congresswoman also recently met with leaders of the DSA’s New York City chapter…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for an interview with the Republican Minnesota state senator who’s hoping a “boring,” common-sense campaign can beat the far-left Democratic nominee for the House seat currently held by Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN).
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani will visit Tehran for meetings with Iranian officials.
Israeli singer Ishay Ribo will perform with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
The four-day Milken Institute Hamptons Dialogues will kick off in New York.
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EXCLUSIVE
The Jewish civil rights group pointed to $737 million in Qatari funding and communications showing Qatar Foundation officials trying to shape Northwestern’s post-Oct. 7 messaging
Plus, Moskowitz named to powerful Mideast post
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro speaks before Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 6, 2024.
Good Tuesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social today that the Navy informed him that “all mines have been removed and/or detonated” in the Strait of Hormuz, and that the U.S. has notified Iran “that any ship or boat placing new mines will be immediately and systematically destroyed.” The U.S. Space Force is monitoring the strait as well as Iran’s nuclear sites, including Pickaxe Mountain, for any suspicious activity, he added…
Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said following a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Tehran today that he is hopeful the two countries “will soon announce a temporary corridor for the Strait of Hormuz and practical arrangements to restore safe navigation,” while continuing to work towards a permanent agreement on administering the waterway. The Omani Foreign Ministry further specified that the parties aim to establish a joint effort to clear the strait of mines — despite Trump’s announcement that all have been cleared…
The State Department is preparing to send some foreign service officers and other diplomats back to work at embassies in Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, Iraq and Kuwait that were evacuated or had staffing reductions during the Iran war, according to a State Department document obtained by The New York Times, potentially indicating the Trump administration does not expect hostilities to resume…
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that Israel has expelled officials from the Netherlands from the military and humanitarian coordination hub for Gaza located in Kiryat Gat due to “a series of anti-Israel moves by the Dutch government,” including a new law prohibiting trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank…
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed doubled down on his anti-Israel rhetoric during an event at a Dearborn church today, Jewish Insider‘s Matthew Kassel reports, a day after the nominee drew renewed scrutiny over his ongoing association with antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker.
El-Sayed declined to confirm if he hopes to win an endorsement from state Sen. Jeremy Moss — a Jewish Democratic nominee for a congressional seat in the Detroit area who is a key holdout in offering his backing — and said that his support for ending aid to Israel is “about making sure that in our foreign policy, we substantiate equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for Palestinian folk”…
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) was named ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, where he said he will “work to strengthen America’s relationships with Israel and our Gulf allies.”
A source familiar with the situation told JI’s Marc Rod that, since outgoing ranking member Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) would have been unable to remain in the post next year, he decided to give up the position early to help support Moskowitz in his reelection race — in a South Florida district with a substantial pro-Israel constituency where the leadership position will further bolster Moskowitz’s profile — and to pass off committee leadership to a preferred successor….
A new New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena University poll released today found that nearly half of voters in Pennsylvania view Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat mulling a presidential bid in 2028, as “about right on support of Israel,” even as he has faced skepticism from the far left over his pro-Israel views, JI’s Matthew Kassel reports. Sixty percent of Democrats said they were satisfied with his support for the Jewish state; 39% of Republicans said the same, while another 40% said he is not supportive enough…
The Department of Justice announced today that a 26-year-old Ohio man had been arrested and charged for sending an email threatening to kill Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) and his family, saying he would behead the Jewish congressman and calling him a Nazi, JI’s Marc Rod reports…
The IDF said it views with “utmost severity” an incident involving far-right MK Zvi Sukkot and his aides who, during a requested tour of the Palestinian town of Madama, attacked a memorial — dubbed the “Martyrs’ Monument” — with a sledgehammer, an incident which was captured on video. The IDF said the tour participants “acted deceptively and manipulatively” while accompanied by IDF soldiers “who had been diverted from their operational activities for this purpose … while the IDF is operating under significant operational strain”…
The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish group that was backed by the U.S. in the fight against ISIS, has officially dissolved, SDF head Mazloum Abdi announced at the presidential palace in Damascus today. The group has completed its merger into the Syrian army under President Ahmad al-Sharaa, Abdi said — the culmination of a fraught integration process that followed months of deadly clashes between government and Kurdish forces…
Assouline, the luxury publisher known for turning global cities into vibrant $100 coffee-table books, has focused its lens on several Middle Eastern capitals over the years — most recently Beirut. But out of hundreds of titles spanning the globe, not a single Israeli city has made the cut, despite co-founder Prosper Assouline‘s Moroccan Jewish roots, JI’s Haley Cohen reports…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at how Jewish leaders are viewing Rep. Jamie Raskin‘s (D-MD) investigation into the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on campus antisemitism.
Israeli singer Omer Adam will marry his partner Sacha Israelovich at a converted 14th-century Christian monastery in the Italian seaside village of Portofino tomorrow, after having held a civil ceremony today. Hassidic singer Motty Steinmetz is expected to perform at the celebration, reportedly prompting gender-segregated seating for the guests.
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Plus, Bessent's plan to make Iran an 'economic outcast'
Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks during his weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on March 19, 2026.
Good Monday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced this afternoon that the Trump administration is launching “Operation Economic Outcast” against Iran, an effort aimed at severing Tehran’s global economic ties in order to “collapse every last option” for the regime, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
The Treasury Department designated over 60 entities, individuals and vessels “that enable the Iranian regime to procure illicit nuclear and missile technology, conduct cyber operations and generate oil revenue,” Bessent said, while President Donald Trump “is making phone calls to world leaders with specific requests to cease their interactions with the regime”…
The Treasury Department also redesignated Hezbollah, already a Foreign Terrorist Organization, for acting as a proxy of the Iranian regime under the direction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and sanctioned 10 individuals who were part of a network transferring funds to Hezbollah through couriers on commercial flights between Lebanon, Turkey, the UAE and Iran…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed today that Iran tried to assassinate one of his sons: “Iran tried to kill, to murder one of my sons,” he said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 14, without specifying which of his two sons was the target…
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) today denounced comments by antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker claiming that Jews are inviting antisemitic attacks against themselves by supporting Israel, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
Jeffries wrote on X that the “malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves is dangerous and antisemitic,” without naming Piker directly. “We will fight the cancer of antisemitism with the fierce urgency of now,” he said…
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, meanwhile, distanced himself from Piker but did not name him nor address the substance of his comments.
El-Sayed insisted that “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople,” despite having campaigned prominently with Piker, and went on to downplay Piker as “a Twitch streamer” who will not define the race or his campaign. He did not say whether his or his campaign’s relationship with Piker will change going forward…
Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) condemned Piker outright, calling him “a hack who thrives on hate, shock and awe because he lacks substance.” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who has previously appeared on Piker’s show, also rejected the streamer’s comments, telling JI’s Marc Rod that “Jews are not the cause of [antisemitism]. Neither are people who support Israel. Antisemites are to blame. That’s it”…
Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) attended three AIPAC-hosted fundraisers in Los Angeles yesterday with another planned for today, according to The New York Times, as reporting emerges about a growing rift between Rogers and the pro-Israel group as he runs for U.S. Senate.
Rogers reportedly told Michael Tuchin, AIPAC’s board chair, that the group should consider whether it is the best messenger against El-Sayed, though he did not explicitly say he did not want its support and its United Democracy Project super PAC is still considering running ads backing Rogers…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned comments by Brooklyn Democratic leader Carmella Charrington attacking Jewish investors with whom she is engaged in a property dispute as “Zionists” and suggesting some link between her situation and Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.
“Suggesting that an alleged deed theft in Brooklyn is part of a global conspiracy involving Jewish people is blatant, reprehensible antisemitism. Trafficking in these dangerous antisemitic tropes is vile and inexcusable,” the mayor’s office told JI’s Will Bredderman, after initially avoiding his questions on the issue at a press conference earlier today. However, the administration did not answer a follow-up question about whether the mayor believes Charrington should step aside from her district leader role…
Several leading Jewish and pro-Israel organizations condemned actor Mark Ruffalo for using what they deemed antisemitic rhetoric in his recent social media commentary targeting the Ellison family amid the pending merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, JI’s Haley Cohen reports.
Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of Jewish Federation Los Angeles, said Ruffalo’s “unhinged rant, which combined Jewish wealth, media control, secret technology and sinister global power, is not legitimate criticism. It draws on recognizable antisemitic tropes with a long and dangerous history”…
As New York magazine continues to come under fire for a recent cover issue depicting the rise of Southwest Asian and North African culture in New York City while taking a hostile view of Israel, the magazine said its editors decided “genocide” is an “accurate description” of Israel’s actions in Gaza and therefore “its use would be allowed in our pages,” claiming that “accusations of antisemitic intent” in usage of the word “were in fact obfuscating an overwhelming scholarly consensus”…
The Trump administration formally revoked Syria’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism today at the end of the 45-day congressional notification period, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced, in order to “eliminate the final major barriers for private sector investment in Syria and promote Syria’s economic recovery and reintegration into the global economy.”
Rubio also revoked the designation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — a group that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa led until he assumed the presidency in January 2025 — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, after having removed HTS from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list last year…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a preview of tomorrow’s Senate special election runoff in South Carolina, where Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) still has the backing of much of the GOP establishment, including President Donald Trump, in her race against Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC).
Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi is expected to visit Iran tomorrow, as the two countries continue negotiations over administering the Strait of Hormuz amid the announcement of the new U.S. economic campaign against Tehran.
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The New York City mayor slammed a local party boss’ bid to retain power, but he did not do the same for antisemitic conspiracy-spreader Carmella Charrington
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, arrives to speak to members of the media in New York, on July 7, 2026.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused on Monday to answer questions about a Brooklyn Democratic leader who promoted Henry Ford’s The International Jew and blamed a property dispute on “Zionists.”
Following an unrelated event in Queens, the mayor refused to answer on three separate occasions when Jewish Insider pressed him about Carmella Charrington, elected in June to the unpaid but important role of Democratic district leader. As first reported by JI, Charrington shared an Instagram video last fall boosting the notorious pamphlet series by the founder of the Ford Motor Company, a clip that blamed Jewish people for a range of societal maladies from slavery to the proliferation of alcohol and drugs.
Charrington first rose to prominence over a dispute over control of her family home, describing herself as a victim of deed theft, while New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ office found that the battle over her brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant was simply a complicated dispute over the estate of her Alzheimer’s-stricken father. Charrington has attacked the Jewish investors involved as “Zionists” and suggested some link between her situation and Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.
After publication, Mamdani’s team reached out with a statement addressing Charrington’s attacks on the property investors.
“Suggesting that an alleged deed theft in Brooklyn is part of a global conspiracy involving Jewish people is blatant, reprehensible antisemitism,” the statement said. “Trafficking in these dangerous antisemitic tropes is vile and inexcusable.”
However, the administration did not answer a follow-up question about whether the mayor believed Charrington should step aside from her district leader role.
JI’s reporting on Charrington’s antisemitic posts prompted condemnations from James and from New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, though neither has called for her to step aside from her district leader position.
Meanwhile Democrats aligned with Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Rodneyse Bichotte — whom Charrington and her slate aim to remove — have demanded Charrington’s resignation.
“Jewish New Yorkers are being attacked. Synagogues are being targeted. Public officials have a duty to lower the temperature and not amplify rhetoric that endangers their neighbors,” district leader and Assembly candidate Joey Cohen-Saban wrote last week on X. “Charrington has repeatedly crossed that line without remorse. She is unfit for public office and must resign. Every Brooklyn Democratic leader and anyone seeking to lead this party must say so clearly and unequivocally. No excuses. No equivocation. Period.”
Charrington was elected to party leadership during the Mamdani-aligned progressive wave in June, with support from leading figures in the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, all with the aim of ousting Bichotte from power. Bichotte has controversially proposed changes to the Brooklyn Democratic organization’s internal leadership selection process that might let her retain power, despite several of her candidates for district leader losing in June.
Unlike with Charrington, Mamdani was not shy with his opinion about the local party leader and her machinations.
“I very much oppose these proposed changes by the current Brooklyn Democratic Party chair,” Mamdani said. “They are an attempt to circumnavigate the will of voters and what we should see is a reflection of what New Yorkers want to see in their home, as opposed to a representation of so much of what has led New Yorkers to become — and Americans to become — disengaged and disaffected in politics at large.”
Julio Peña, the favorite to replace Bichotte, has issued only a general condemnation of antisemitism but has refused to directly address the remarks from Charrington, with whom he ran on a slate.
Charrington won her race with backing from key figures in the Democratic Socialists of America, state Sen. Jabari Brisport and state Assembly nominee Eon Huntley. On her Instagram account last November, Charrington declared the video — which also urged viewers to watch a notorious Swedish neo-Nazi documentary and read Holocaust denial literature — “the truth” and asserted, “This better be the topic at the table.” In a subsequent conversation with JI, she told a reporter to “get your rabbi” for a “roundtable” she planned to hold on a “bullying community.”
However, she later issued an apology for the video in a statement to The New York Times.
This story was updated on Aug. 24 with a statement from Mamdani’s office.
Plus, Baltimore's Orthodox Jews get a day at the races
Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, left, and Kathy Hochul, governor of New York, during a news conference on 2026 FIFA World Cup transportation at the MTA Rail Control Center in New York, US, on Thursday, June 4, 2026.
Good Thursday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and a candidate for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, launched a TV ad this week hitting her primary opponent, military veteran Maura Sullivan, for receiving $300,000 in donations “bundled from AIPAC donors,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
The donations referenced in the ad appear to be from individual donors who have previously contributed to AIPAC, but the pro-Israel group itself has made no endorsement and has not been directly involved in the race…
Michigan Democratic congressional nominee Jeremy Moss declined to endorse his party’s Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, in an interview with Slate: “Abdul’s going to have to demonstrate some serious outreach to Oakland County’s Jewish community,” Moss said. The two candidates have “had an ongoing dialogue,” Moss added, as he said Democrats must ensure that “the liberal Jewish community is not politically homeless”…
Rabbi Asher Lopatin, director of community relations at the Ann Arbor Jewish federation who has been outspoken about the threat he believes El-Sayed poses to the Jewish community, appeared at a “Democrats for Rogers” press conference in Detroit today where he said, “I usually vote Democrat, but I’m gonna be voting for Mike Rogers … I’m sad to say this, that Abdul El-Sayed has made one thing very clear: We cannot let him anywhere near the U.S. Senate”…
A new poll commissioned by AARP found El-Sayed leading Rogers by one percentage point, 48-47%, but voters ages 50 and up were 16 points more likely than younger voters to say they were motivated to participate in the general election — a population that swings heavily towards Rogers. Voters ages 50-64 favored Rogers over El-Sayed 51-46%, and voters above 65 favored the Republican by 13 points (54-41%)…
Asked in a New York Times interview about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s call for the federal government to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in the city for the U.N. General Assembly next month, Gov. Kathy Hochul advised the mayor, “Let’s focus on the blocking and tackling of city government. That is where I believe the main focus should be”…
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is weighing in on another official’s appearance at the UNGA: The White House intends to prevent Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from attending for the second year in a row, a U.S. official told The Times of Israel…
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained on CNBC today that in order to implement the new U.S. economic campaign against Iran, the Trump administration will approach “all of our allies” and tell them, “You are either with us or against us.”
“If you insist on doing business with [Iran] — either transferring money, buying their oil, doing seaborne ship transfers — then the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. government will put its full might and force toward enforcing against you,” he added…
The NYT looks at which countries do the most business with Iran and could therefore be hardest hit by the new measures, including China, India and several Middle East nations…
Georgia state Rep. Esther Panitch, the only Jewish member of the state’s Legislature, denounced the Georgia branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations for featuring extremist anti-Israel voices including Zahra Billoo, Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur as keynote speakers at its gala next month.
CAIR-GA has “dropped the mask at this point,” Panitch told the Jerusalem News Syndicate. “This is actual straight-out, Nazi-level Protocols of the Elders of Zion kind of antisemitism. They’re doing it, and they can’t say they didn’t know”…
For more than 150 years, Baltimore’s Orthodox Jews have walked to synagogue on Preakness Saturday and listened to the roar of the crowd from Pimlico Race Course less than a mile away, never able to join it. That changes in 2027, when the second jewel in horse racing’s Triple Crown — following the Kentucky Derby and preceding the Belmont Stakes — moves from Saturday to Sunday, finally opening the gates at Pimlico to the local Shabbat-observant community for the first time since the race started in 1873, JI’s Haley Cohen reports…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at the growing divide between the United States and Israel over how to approach post-Assad Syria.
Despite her recent debate stage snafu, which has led GOP operatives to question her chances in next week’s special runoff election, Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) is still enjoying the support of the party: Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the Senate majority whip, is in South Carolina today to support her race, and President Donald Trump will join her in Myrtle Beach for a rally tomorrow.
We’ll be back with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat shalom!
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Alleged straw-donor masterminds are selling tickets to an event with the Montana Republican — who says he’s not attending
Alleged straw-donor masterminds are selling tickets to an event with the Montana Republican — who says he’s not attending
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) arrives for the House Republican Conference caucus meeting at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington on Wednesday, May 13, 2026.
A Turkish-tied organization that launched in 2023 with an alleged straw-donor fundraiser for former New York City Mayor Eric Adams has spent recent weeks selling tickets for a Sept. 20 gathering listing Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) as a “featured speaker ” — even as Zinke’s office insists he’s not attending the event.
The CEO Club New York and Turkish-American Business Association have posted materials online and created a listing on Eventbrite advertising the “World Business Summit New York & Award Ceremony 2026,” to take place at a venue inside The New York Times building during the U.N. General Assembly next month. Prominently displayed is the name and photo of the retiring Montana congressman, who served as secretary of the interior during the first Trump administration.
“We’re bringing together global business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, and decision makers for a day of meaningful conversations, networking, and collaboration,” CEO Club Founder Jimmy Cuneyt Gurkan wrote on LinkedIn, adding that Zinke was “already confirmed” to appear along with a roster of private sector guests.
Previous reporting has identified Cuneyt Gurkan as the unnamed, unindicted “public relations representative” in the criminal complaint against Adams who plotted to illegally funnel large amounts of money from a Turkish-American businessman into the then-mayor’s later-aborted reelection campaign — and the CEO Club’s inaugural gathering in October 2023 has been identified as the event used to mask the donations as lawful gifts from attendees.
Prosecutors described the “public relations representative” as an associate of a “Turkish official” who directed foreign money into Adams’ campaign coffers and arranged perks from state-owned Turkish Airlines in exchange for favorable treatment.
The New York Times and other publications have outed that official as Reyhan Özgür, the former Turkish consul general. The indictment states that Özgür and a Turkish Airlines official shared a donation link for the 2023 CEO Club event.
Cuneyt Gurkan and the CEO Club did not respond to repeated inquiries for this story. The Times Center, the event space in the paper’s Manhattan headquarters, told Jewish Insider that it has “been in touch with” the CEO Club about using the space in the 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. slot listed in the promotions but does not yet have a contract in place.
But, after initially avoiding answering questions about whether Zinke would attend the event, the congressman’s team told JI that he will not be there. Asked if the congressman had ever intended to participate in the event, and if he will be in New York City on that date, his office would only answer that it was never on his official schedule and that his House staff never interacted with the CEO Club.
Zinke has a mixed history with Turkey — but has had past contact with the network allegedly involved in the Adams bribery scheme. Foreign Agent Registration Act filings show that as a congressman he has had contact with lobbyists for Turkey’s government and ruling political party both before joining the first Trump administration and since returning to the Hill.
As interior secretary, Zinke came under fire from ethics watchdogs in 2018 for bringing an official security team on a vacation to Turkey, a trip that also included a stop in Greece.
While that controversy received broad coverage, few U.S. outlets reported that Zinke’s wife — who had previously lived in Turkey — received an award from Turk of America magazine and TOA Consulting. Turk of America’s publisher was Cuneyt Gurkan’s co-conspirator in the CEO Club’s straw-donor scheme for Adams, while Cuneyt Gurkan at the time served as TOA Consulting’s chief operating officer, according to LinkedIn and media appearances.
Personally presenting the award to Lola Zinke was another key figure in the Adams scandal: Turkish Airlines executive Cenk Ocal. Cuneyt Gurkan took a selfie with the interior secretary at the event, and the secretary lauded the U.S. partnership with Turkey.
“Certainly, they’re regional and strategic partners, and the people of the United States and Turkey, they love each other, as shown here,” video posted to YouTube shows Zinke saying. “Look at our mutual values and our core strengths, and it’s about the people, that there’s a long-time bond and a relationship between the Turkish people and the United States.”
Just months later, however, the Republican was briefly the target of retaliatory Turkish sanctions after the U.S. sought to penalize the Mediterranean nation for detaining an American pastor. Experts attributed the move against Zinke to confusion by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over the U.S. Department of the Interior’s remit, as a similarly named ministry in Ankara handles domestic security.
Back in Congress, Zinke — who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — has coupled praise for Turkey as a NATO ally with concern about Ankara’s support for Hamas. In a markup session last fall, he opposed an amendment that would compel consideration of Israeli military advantage when making arms sales to the country, a standard applied to all other Middle Eastern countries.
Plus, ICE detains Jewish bridal shop owner
Sarah Rice/Getty Images
Senate candidate Mike Rogers greets supporters at his election watch party with the MIGOP on November 5, 2024 in Novi, Michigan.
Good Wednesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Jewish leaders in Michigan are circulating an open letter, obtained by Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel, urging Jewish Democrats and independents in the battleground state to sign their names in support of former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) as he faces Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed in the race for U.S. Senate.
If El-Sayed were to claim victory in the general election, the authors say, “we fear the far-left and anti-Jewish elements in the Democratic party would become dominant … We cannot allow him to become the Democratic standard-bearer or Michigan’s senator”…
California state Sen. Aisha Wahab still holds a narrow lead as of this afternoon over former Dublin, Calif., Mayor Melissa Hernandez in the special election runoff for an East Bay House seat that drew a late surge of outside spending from AIPAC.
With 62% of the vote counted in yesterday’s election, Wahab had 51%, leading Hernandez by two percentage points or 1,356 votes, according to the unofficial initial returns. “We made a race that wasn’t close when we started into a nail-biter,” Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC, told JI’s Matthew Kassel…
ICE detained a Jewish bridal shop owner and his mother living in Englewood, N.J., a local elected official confirmed today to JI’s Haley Cohen: Ari Ladino and his mother, Chava, who are originally from Bogotá, Colombia, run Luana Rose Modestly in Teaneck — a dress shop specializing in modest special occasion gowns popular among local Orthodox Jewish women. The reason for their arrest remains unclear…
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post today, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack doubled down on his criticism of Israeli strikes on a Syrian air base earlier in the week, which Israel said had been prompted by Turkish involvement at the base. “Turkish forces were not aware that the Israeli aircraft were en route to that specific Syrian base … [and] could potentially have been inclined to scramble their own jets in the belief that they themselves were under attack,” Barrack said.
He announced that the U.S. is looking to relaunch a deconfliction cell between Israel and Syria, with potential Turkish participation, and downplayed reported Israeli concerns over a specific Turkish radar system said to be deployed at the base. “We remain convinced that this technical requirement need not pose a security concern, and that further conversations can help clarify the matter to everyone’s satisfaction,” Barrack said…
Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff, visited Israeli troops in southern Syria today, where he said Israel is “monitoring the changes on the Syrian front” and “know[s] how to use our power precisely where it is needed and when it is needed”…
The IDF announced it is opening an investigation into the killing of 5-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza in January 2024 after finding that troops had indeed fired at her family’s vehicle as it was traveling opposite the direction of an evacuation route. The military had previously denied responsibility for the incident, which drew global attention and inspired an Oscar-nominated film titled “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”
The IDF will also investigate the killing of 15 rescue workers traveling in emergency vehicles in March 2025, and closed investigations into a strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy and into the deaths of several Doctors Without Borders members, finding that troops’ actions in those incidents did not rise to the level of criminal offenses…
The New York Times examines CENTCOM’s efforts to keep oil traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, including utilizing air- and water-based assets to intercept Iranian drones and missiles targeting commercial traffic.
Beyond protecting tankers loaded with oil, the U.S. military has also reportedly established its own corridor to help empty ships enter the strait, load up and exit largely undetected…
The New York State Department of Financial Services issued a notice warning Holocaust survivors and their families about potential fraud by an organization calling itself the “Jewish Holocaust Claims Center” that is contacting such individuals about their eligibility for compensation…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at how Sen. Darline Graham‘s (R-SC) debate stage flub on national security may impact her chances in next week’s South Carolina special runoff election for Senate.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and his primary opponent, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), will face off in their final debate before the election. Moulton, 47, is mounting a generational challenge to the 80-year-old Markey and has taken an increasingly critical stance against Israel and AIPAC on the campaign trail, while Markey has long staked out staunchly anti-Israel positions.
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Plus, Central Synagogue attacker faces federal charges
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) speaks during the House Administration Committee hearing on June 10, 2026.
Good Tuesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social this morning that “There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” directly contradicting a statement from Jared Kushner yesterday that dialogue between the White House and “different areas of the Iranian government” is “probably more robust than it’s maybe ever been”…
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who also serves as special envoy for Syria and Iraq, said on X this morning that he’s “deeply concerned” over what he called “confirmed Israeli airstrikes” on Syria’s Abu al-Duhur Airbase overnight, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strikes.
“The United States has in the past, and will continue in the future, to host discussions to encourage diplomatic cadence over kinetic frustration for both nations,” Barrack said, calling the incident an “unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who has been a pro-Israel stalwart, also condemned what he called “one-sided aggression”…
U.N. inspectors visited some nuclear sites tied to the deposed Assad regime in Syria this week, the first time that International Atomic Energy Agency officials have been given full access to the sites. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said at a press conference with IAEA head Rafael Grossi that nuclear material found at the locations, including several tons of uranium, will be placed “under IAEA safeguards”…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions today against Tomoko Akane, president of the International Criminal Court, and Abdoulaye Seye, a senior trial lawyer, as part of the Trump administration’s recently announced campaign to target the body.
Rubio said the two individuals “have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction,” likely in reference to Israeli leaders…
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, claimed today that the Trump administration’s probes into campus antisemitism were “fake” and that schools found to have violated federal civil rights law were effectively framed, pointing to whistleblower reports that claimed the administration had manipulated evidence to show violations of law despite lacking sufficient evidence.
Raskin announced that he is launching an investigation of the alleged “misconduct” of the Department of Justice and intends to assess potential changes to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act “in light of this Administration’s shockingly reckless and unethical actions,” JI’s Marc Rod reports…
The DOJ charged a New York man, Larry Montes, with two federal hate crimes charges and one count of destruction of religious property for disrupting Shabbat services at Central Synagogue in Manhattan over the weekend, where he struck a congregant, damaged synagogue property and spat on and headbutted a security guard. Montes has already been charged with hate crimes by local prosecutors…
The DOJ also charged 17 members of the Mabna Institute — an Iran-based company that federal prosecutors say ran a state-sponsored cyber campaign on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps since at least 2013 — with hacking 144 U.S. and 178 foreign universities, dozens of private companies and several U.S. government agencies to steal research, academic data and intellectual property…
The Department of Defense instructed 30 U.S. academic institutions to conduct reviews of their ties with “foreign entities of concern,” threatening future Pentagon funding for research projects if they fail to do so and terminate “problematic partnerships”…
Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, pushed back today against what he alleged was a doctored audio clip circulating online designed to portray him as more loyal to Israel than the United States, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
“There is a manipulated and unsourced audio, with things I never did and never would say, that is nothing more than political disinformation intended to portray me as anti-American,” Moss, who is Jewish, said on X…
Rebecca Weininger, senior regional director of Anti-Defamation League Midwest, called out the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America’s “fixation on Israel” after the group’s 2027 city council endorsement questionnaire asked local candidates to explain whether they consider themselves anti-Zionists and if they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
The group’s outsized focus on the Jewish state, Weininger said, is “not only far removed from the responsibilities and priorities of an alderman, but also risks fueling anti-Jewish sentiment, harassment, and ultimately, violence against Chicago’s Jewish community”…
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) suggested in an interview with The Washington Post that he believes Democrats can still win the Senate even if far-left Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, whom Schumer has endorsed, loses in November, JI’s Marc Rod reports. “A path to winning back the Senate clearly goes through Michigan, but we have a whole bunch of different paths,” Schumer said.
The Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, is spending $3 million on a new ad campaign to defeat Republican nominee Mike Rogers, portraying him as a career politician who enriched himself while in Washington…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for results from today’s key races in Florida and California. Polls close in the Sunshine State at 7 p.m. ET, and in the Golden State at 11 p.m. ET.
Hannan Lis, Brian Hermelin and Rob Orley, three prominent Jewish Democratic bundlers in Michigan, are hosting a fundraiser tonight for the state’s Republican Senate nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), as some Jewish Democrats in the Wolverine State consider flipping their votes against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed. Read Lis’ comments to JI here.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) will face off in a debate tonight hosted by the South Carolina GOP, a week ahead of their runoff election.
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HATE BY THE NUMBERS
Anti-Jewish hate crimes also constituted the second-largest category of reported hate crimes of any kind in 2025
BLAME GAME
After pushing Henry Ford’s The International Jew, Democratic district leader Carmella Charrington said her ongoing housing dispute is the ‘same thing they’re doing in the West Bank’
Plus, Trump puts Oman in the crosshairs
Shalev Shalom
Israeli President Isaac Herzog meets with Jared Kushner at the President's Residence in Jerusalem on Aug. 17, 2026.
Good Monday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump confirmed to Fox News this morning that the White House is communicating directly with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and said that Tehran should “raise the white flag of surrender,” as the 60-day memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran — which was intended to lead to the creation of a permanent peace agreement but was quickly deemed moot by both parties — officially expired today without a deal in sight.
Jared Kushner separately told Fox News about the status of talks with Iran that Trump is “focused on economic pressure” but is still open to reaching an agreement, adding that dialogue between the White House and “different areas of the Iranian government” is “probably more robust than it’s maybe ever been” and that the conversations are “positive”…
Trump also threatened in his interview to “bomb the sh*t out of” Oman if the country “gets in the way,” amid Muscat’s negotiations with Tehran over the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking later to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said he doesn’t think Oman “behave[s] very well” and that the U.S. would “handle them very easily.” He also reaffirmed his recent claim that he intends to declare the strait a U.S. territory, saying he “think[s] it’s a great idea”…
Responding to Trump’s threat, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) announced he intends to introduce a war powers resolution when the Senate returns from recess to prohibit U.S. military action against Oman…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had “deep and constructive discussions” with Board of Peace head Nickolay Mladenov and Kushner in Jerusalem today, where the parties agreed to establish two working groups: one on the “disarmament and demilitarization of Gaza,” which they agreed should happen before “any reconstruction,” and a second on sanitation and public health concerns in the enclave.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also met with the group and said he was “impressed that Israel’s security interests are an important and central element of their plan”…
After the meetings, Kushner told Fox News that he predicts there will be progress in starting to demilitarize Gaza “in as little as 30 days” and beginning to fill in Hamas’ terror tunnels “in the next 60 to 90 days.”
Despite Trump stating in his interview that Israel should not be conducting any more strikes in Gaza, Kushner said the Board of Peace would “not restrict Israel’s right to defend itself” and that if Hamas doesn’t follow through on its commitments, Israel will “have a lot more support from the U.S.” to “finish the job.” He called his Sunday meeting with Hamas leaders “cordial” and said they “said all the right things” but that they are “hard to trust”…
Trump said today it’s “most appropriate” that he “stay out of” Israel’s upcoming elections but added that he “may endorse somebody” anyway….
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi disputed claims by Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the region of Kurdistan, that his office was attacked by Iranian drones: “Kurdish friends should be vigilant against false-flag ploys to sow discord between neighbors,” Araghchi said on X, claiming that Iran has historically “protected” the Kurds. It was a striking characterization given that Iran has repeatedly struck Kurdish opposition bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, including during the current war, and has a decades-long history of suppressing its own Kurdish population…
New York City leaders are condemning a series of inflammatory posters opposing a new housing development in Chelsea that use antisemitic, racist and homophobic language, including a call to “stop Zionist occupation of Manhattan,” tying the project to “foreign wealth dirty zionist money” and claiming that “Talmudists are trained to cheat.”
City Hall called the posters “vile” and claimed the rhetoric “has absolutely no place in our city’s political discourse,” while Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, said, “Disagreement over housing policy is legitimate. Dehumanizing your neighbors is not”…
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Dan Goldman (D-NY) continued to spar this week over the University of Washington’s decision to cancel a planned speech by antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
After Goldman argued initially against Jayapal’s denunciation of the school, the congresswoman said she “completely disagree[s] with [Goldman’s] analysis of free speech”; Goldman responded that students have ample access to “Piker’s racist and anti-American views,” but the university has a responsibility to prevent discriminatory conduct or a hostile environment for Jewish students that could interfere in their ability to participate on campus…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at AIPAC’s involvement in tomorrow’s special election in California’s 14th Congressional District, where state Sen. Aisha Wahab is facing off against former Dublin, Calif., Mayor Melissa Hernandez, who is backed by the pro-Israel group.
Florida will also hold its primary elections tomorrow, where several pro-Israel and Jewish candidates are facing off against far-right and far-left extremists. Read more on the races and their implications here.
The Sephardic Rabbinical Conference will conclude in New York with speakers including Israeli Consul General Ofir Akunis; Daniel Rosenthal, vice president for government relations at UJA-Federation of New York; Rabbi Elie Buechler, director of programs at the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center; and rabbis from around the world.
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The senator told JI he was worried that fringe ideas could gain momentum if Republicans don’t aggressively push back
SEPHARDIC SUMMIT
The second annual Sephardic Rabbinic Conference, backed by the Orthodox Union and UJA-Federation, will bring together around 150 participants from a dozen countries to address leadership gaps and Diaspora institution-building
46-year old Larry Montes of the Bronx will be prosecuted for assault and criminal mischief after he struck a woman and damaged synagogue property
New York City's Central Synagogue on Lexington Avenue (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
New York City authorities have leveled hate crimes charges against a Bronx man arrested on Friday for attacking a woman and a guard during Shabbat services at Central Synagogue in Manhattan — marking the latest in a wave of antisemitic incidents targeting the world’s largest Jewish community outside Israel.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch revealed that 46-year-old Larry Montes will be prosecuted for assault and criminal mischief as hate crimes, “among other charges,” after police arrested him for striking a woman, damaging property and head-butting a member of the Reform synagogue’s security detail.
Video from the Upper East Side synagogue’s livestream captured the terrified reaction as a man, whom police have identified as Montes, burst screaming into Friday night Shabbat services before a guard forced him from the premises.
It was during his exit that Montes became physically violent, though victims experienced only minor injuries, Tisch wrote on X.
“I’m relieved that no one was seriously injured. Those who were hurt were evaluated at the scene and are doing well. There are no known additional threats at this time, and additional NYPD resources have been deployed to the synagogue,” Tisch posted, noting her personal connection to the congregation. “Central Synagogue is where I grew up. In joy and in sorrow, it has always been a place of comfort and peace. What happened there tonight is deeply painful. A place of worship should never be a crime scene.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered his own condolences and assurances following the assault.
“I can only imagine the pain and fear an attack like this, during Shabbat services, causes for the congregation and for Jewish New Yorkers across our city,” he wrote in a post on X. “Every New Yorker must be able to observe their religion without fear of violence. This despicable act has no place in our city, and our administration will do everything in our power to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe.”
The arrest comes just weeks after Central Synagogue Rabbi Angela Buchdahl publicly castigated the mayor over a viral video released on his official social media channels denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal.” Buchdahl warned that singling out the Jewish state as “uniquely monstrous” put Jewish New Yorkers in danger.
“You say you want to keep the Jews of New York City safe. But safety is not just about providing extra protection at parades and synagogues. Safety is about creating a climate in which Jews do not need to feel maligned or indicted by the city’s leaders, where we do not need to feel there is a bullseye on our backs,” Buchdahl wrote. “You cannot claim to protect Jews while using the power of your office to make Jewish identity morally tainted and imperiled.”
Days after Mamdani’s video, a Jewish man leaving another Manhattan synagogue was one of two victims of another alleged antisemitic attack, although a link between the mayor’s social media clip and the Upper West Side stabbing has not been established. The incident prompted Jewish civic and political leaders to demand Mamdani tone down his rhetoric about Israel, a call to which he did not respond.
Mamdani, whose anti-Israel activism helped propel him to prominence on the left, faced near-identical calls from a roundtable of rabbis he invited to City Hall on Monday. Among the groups represented at the event was the Union for Reform Judaism, which responded to the attack on Friday by encouraging Congress to pass the bipartisan Jewish American Security Act, and highlighting the funding the legislation would provide for enhanced security at synagogues.
“Jewish spiritual practice includes study, prayer and yes, action. Let us double down on all three,” URJ said in a statement.
Plus, CA considers making Jews an ethnicity
Leonardo MUNOZ / AFP via Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani arrives for a news conference at Gracie Mansion in New York City on March 9, 2026.
Good Thursday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced today that his Office to Combat Antisemitism will be releasing a municipal plan to combat antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.
The mayor marketed the plan as the “first-in-the-nation,” even as former Mayor Eric Adams already released a “blueprint” for combating antisemitism on his last day in office, which included the city adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism — a policy that Mamdani repealed on his first day.
The move comes days after Mamdani hosted a roundtable with rabbis in the city who asked the mayor to back off his attacks on Israel, a request that Mamdani did not reference or commit to addressing in his remarks…
The California state Legislature is considering a bill to require state agencies to include “Jewish” as an ethnicity option on all forms that collect demographic data. The move would make California the first state to officially consider Judaism as more than a religion for identification purposes…
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit yesterday brought by the Trump administration against Harvard University alleging that the school showed “deliberate indifference” to antisemitism on campus in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.
The judge ruled that the few campus incidents cited by the administration were “too isolated and episodic” to find “any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day”…
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on X today that she had communicated her “concerns” to the University of Washington about its decision to cancel an appearance by far-left, antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker, and encouraged student groups who “want to hear from Mr. Piker to work with the University to ensure they can proceed.”
Piker had earlier this week denounced Democrats who didn’t “speak out against this clear violation” of the First Amendment due to his “position as a prominent critic of Israel”…
Former Democratic Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner is expected to headline a Labor Day rally for the Hancock County Maine Democrats next month, his first public appearance since dropping out of the Senate race after he was accused of rape by a former romantic partner…
White House advisor Jared Kushner is planning a trip to Israel next week with Board of Peace head Nickolay Mladenov to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials to discuss the Hamas disarmament deal, Axios reports…
CENTCOM announced today it is undertaking efforts to establish the “first-ever multi-domain, multinational attack drone task force,” including consulting with and inviting regional partners to join, that will work to utilize unmanned, one-way attack drones “from above, on, and below the sea” in the Middle East…
The U.S. has lost roughly a quarter of its fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones in the war with Iran, sources told The Washington Post, as the armed drones have been targeted by Tehran and its proxies in Yemen and Iraq…
The Pentagon is sending the USS George Washington aircraft carrier to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East, as reports and lawmakers indicate that conditions aboard the ship are deteriorating after a record 200 days without a port call; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed the concerns about the Abraham Lincoln today as “completely misrepresented”…
Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC), facing a runoff special election to be the GOP nominee for her late brother’s Senate seat, announced she is co-sponsoring the Jewish American Security Act, the U.S.-Israel FUTURES Act, a bill on Iran sanctions and a bill on Iranian human rights and internet access…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at how Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is avoiding contending with the anti-Israel turn of her preferred successor, San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, in her race against state Sen. Scott Wiener.
President Donald Trump will appear with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the GOP candidate for New York governor, at an event on Long Island honoring law enforcement officials.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), a member of the Squad, will appear at a rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., alongside anti-Israel progressives running against Jewish Democrats Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), as well as socialist Colorado Democratic congressional nominee Melat Kiros.
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat shalom!
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There’s widespread interest within the Jewish community to develop efforts to counter the growing populist rage and anti-Jewish hate, city by city
SCOUT’S HONOR
The group’s new national chair, Ricky Mason, is believed to be the first national chair to receive an aliyah at the Scouts’ Torah service
The mayor touted his forthcoming plan following his meeting with rabbis who voiced concerns about his anti-Israel rhetoric, which he did not mention or vow to adjust
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference on Aug. 12, 2026 in New York City.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani followed up his meeting with a group of rabbis earlier this week by touting a plan to battle antisemitism in the five boroughs — without committing to making changes in his rhetoric toward Israel that the group of Jewish religious leaders demanded.
“I had a candid and productive conversation with rabbis representing a wide swath of New York’s Jewish communities and affiliations, and I appreciated hearing from them,” Mamdani said after an unrelated event in Manhattan on Thursday.
During the mayor’s roundtable with Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative and Modern Orthodox rabbis from predominantly liberal-leaning parts of the city, the rabbis made a near-unanimous call for Mamdani to back off his excoriations of Israel, warning that his focus on the Jewish state was alienating and even endangering Jewish New Yorkers.
But Mamdani did not explicitly state on Thursday that he would act on their recommendations, instead touting his increased spending on groups that run anti-hate crime initiatives and a plan his Office to Combat Antisemitism will release next month to tamp down on the anti-Jewish bias incidents that have risen on his watch.
“Our administration has been making steps, taking steps over the last many months of enacting that,” he said. “Expanding our city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism to its largest-ever size while developing a first-in-the-nation municipal response to combating antisemitism.”
“My door will always be open to every Jewish New Yorker. That is a door that is open not only to a conversation but to a commitment of what it actually looks like to deliver on an ideal of a city where not only is everyone safe but everyone belongs, everyone is made to feel as if this is their home,” he continued.
Mayor Eric Adams, Mamdani’s predecessor, released a “blueprint” for tackling antisemitism on his last day in office, largely detailing steps his office had already taken. This included an executive order Adams signed adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism as official city policy. Mamdani repealed that order the day he assumed office.
Plus, Josh Kushner and Bob Iger ball out
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Breakthrough T1D)
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) questions witnesses during a hearing held to examine a future without Type 1 Diabetes with a focus on accelerating breakthroughs and creating hope at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on July 09, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Good Wednesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
A State Department official pushed back on Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s comments in southern Lebanon today, where he said the IDF would remain deployed in a security zone, contrary to the agreement signed between Washington, Jerusalem and Beirut.
“The United States expects all parties to act in a manner consistent with the Framework they agreed to, and Israel clearly stated that it has no territorial ambitions in Lebanon. A permanent military presence in South Lebanon is not consistent with the commitments made in the Framework, or the long-term peace and security of both states,” the official told Axios…
Sources told Reuters that Israel and Lebanon have agreed that countries including Britain, Italy, Switzerland and Indonesia could contribute troops to an international force meant to oversee Hezbollah’s disarmament; an Israeli official denied any decisions had been made on the issue…
President Donald Trump continued to boast about the success of the U.S. campaign against Iran, stating again in a post on Truth Social today that the U.S. “has total control over the Strait of Hormuz” and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is “decimated and fleeing.”
Meanwhile, out of the 166 ships that have transited the strait so far this month — a significant decrease from the average before the war — only two are known to have used the U.S.- and Oman-backed route, according to The Wall Street Journal…
In a rare interview with Western media, top IRGC advisor Mohammad Reza Naqdi told “PBS News Hour” that Iran is prepared to continue hostilities through the end of Trump’s term and accused the U.S. of waging a “war without strategy”…
The New York Times documents the efforts being made by Gulf countries to construct routes to move oil out of the region that do not rely on the Strait of Hormuz…
Board of Peace head Nickolay Mladenov denied in a post in Hebrew today that there is any financial agreement between the board and Hamas, refuting a report by Israeli public broadcaster Kan that the board would cover Hamas’ debts up to $400 million.
The disarmament roadmap states that the new Palestinian technocratic government will “assess the legitimate commitments to suppliers, contractors and other parties — up to a total amount of no more than $400M — and address them”; Mladenov said in his post that such processes “are not channeled through Hamas” and that “all accounts are open to full scrutiny by the donor governments”…
The publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Michael Morris, penned an open letter to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) today pressing the senator over his repeated votes to block U.S. military sales to Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
“I apologize for being blunt, but please, stop lying to me and your constituents. I hear you claim, over and over again, that you support Israel — that your support is ‘ironclad.’ It is not,” Morris wrote…
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) denied today that the more than $30 million of support she received from AIPAC’s super PAC in her failed run for U.S. Senate backfired, saying on CNN that those who criticize AIPAC “maybe don’t understand what the group is” and that she’s “proud of the friendships and the relationships I have there [and] the really good Americans” who make up its membership…
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is stepping away from her role at the end of the month, Trump announced today, in order to spend more time with her family. The president said Leavitt will now serve as “one of my top outside advisors”…
Josh Kushner, managing partner of the venture capital firm Thrive Capital, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger have agreed to purchase a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Lakers for a record-breaking price of $12.5 billion, JI’s Matthew Shea reports…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at local Jewish political organizing efforts in major cities across the country.
The Hudson Institute will hold an event examining the state of the ongoing conflicts in the Gulf with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Behnam Ben Taleblu and Hudson’s Michael Doran, Ludo Hood and Zineb Riboua.
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Mamdani’s antisemitism czar invited a cross-section of rabbis and Jewish leaders broadly sympathetic to the mayor for the candid conversation
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Mamdani’s antisemitism czar invited a cross-section of rabbis and Jewish leaders broadly sympathetic to the mayor for the candid conversation
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a food distribution center on July 27, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
A roundtable with New York City rabbis held at City Hall on Monday gave participants a chance to voice growing concerns about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Israel rhetoric they felt had before gone unheard — with several attendees telling Jewish Insider the strong collective message, and Mamdani’s reaction, gave them hope he would change tack.
Multiple attendees of the meeting told JI that they had been in contact with Mamdani’s Office to Combat Antisemitism for months about his “single fixation” on Israel and his characterization of the Jewish state’s most politically active supporters as “monsters,” only to see the mayor dismiss such criticism. They said they viewed the gathering as an opportunity to bring their fears directly to him and to demonstrate communal unity amid a period of spiking antisemitic hate crimes.
“People talked about their own concerns, their families’ concerns, their congregations’ concerns. I think he heard them,” said one participant, who requested anonymity to speak freely about their ongoing contact with Mamdani’s antisemitism czar, Phylisa Wisdom, and her deputy, Josh Binderman. “When they framed the meeting, they said it was going to be an ‘open, honest dialogue.’”
A City Hall official said in a statement to JI that Mamdani’s team had “brought together a group of rabbis that reflects the diversity of New York’s Jewish community — including leaders from several major denominations and four of the city’s five boroughs who have leadership roles in some of the city’s largest congregations and denominations — so the mayor could hear directly from rabbis with a broad range of experiences and viewpoints.”
Several participants JI spoke with similarly remarked on the multi-denominational nature of the meeting, though one attendee noted the absence of more religiously conservative Orthodox leaders. The mayor met last week with leaders of Brooklyn’s anti-Zionist Satmar community.
Even as some critics of Mamdani said they were pleased he had taken the meeting on Monday, they expressed skepticism that the mayor would be open to acting on the message the group of rabbis shared.
The New York Board of Rabbis, the organization that has historically represented the city’s Jewish religious leadership, was not involved in planning the meeting, and an executive of the group suggested that Mamdani’s team had deliberately handpicked rabbis and Jewish leaders sympathetic to his political agenda.
Howard Wolfson, a longtime advisor to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said that he was “glad” Mamdani had heard the feedback from Jewish leaders, but argued that “action, not just talk,” would help “create the conditions for a new relationship.”
“A good start would be to stop referring to American orgs that represent many Jews as monsters,” Wolfson said in a text message to JI, referring to controversial June remarks in which the mayor had singled out the pro-Israel group AIPAC while speaking at a campaign rally. Mamdani defended his rhetoric after it sparked an outcry from Jewish organizations that said he had invoked an antisemitic trope.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s anticipated visit to New York City next month for the U.N. General Assembly “will be a big test,” Wolfson added of the mayor, who encouraged protests of the prime minister even as he acknowledged he cannot order his arrest. “How much does he want to focus on it? How much does he want to grandstand?”
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a Reform congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, who serves as the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said he was not asked to attend the meeting on Monday but was encouraged by what he had heard about it. “If in fact it was a very frank conversation,” he told JI, “then that’s a good thing.”
“It’s not that the mayor is not aware of this. He’s heard it many times,” Hirsch added. “Hopefully it’ll make a difference,” he said, particularly ahead of the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when security concerns are top of mind for synagogues across the city. “It hasn’t made a difference so far.”
“He knows our fear, he is aware of our fear” and “he is pursuing it nonetheless,” Hirsch said.
One of the attendees, who asked for anonymity to talk openly, told JI that he came away suspecting that the Office to Combat Antisemitism had selected himself and his peers as a group that could communicate anxieties over the mayor’s heightened focus on Israel and its local repercussions in a manner Mamdani might be receptive and responsive to.
“The consistent message was, we have to address the mayor’s rhetoric around Israel, because that’s an obstacle to addressing anything else effectively,” said the attendee, who noted that the mayor’s team had told him they would be discussing an upcoming report on antisemitism in the city and initiatives to confront it at the meeting. “I shared similar sentiments to my colleagues about the desire to work together on so many issues of shared concern, and the feeling of alienation as a result of the mayor’s rhetoric, and the belief that it could be different.”
Both attendees who spoke to JI on the condition on anonymity praised Mamdani’s handling of the meeting, characterizing him as an active listener who asked thoughtful questions and took notes throughout the discussion, and who acknowledged synagogues’ charitable work assisting immigrants and feeding the needy. They admitted, however, that the gathering ended without any specific concessions or commitments.
“I’m suspending judgment and waiting to see,” one said.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, came away from the gathering with similar impressions.
“Look, they picked a minyan of rabbis to come sit with the mayor, and I’m sure there are rabbis who just really would’ve just, you know, laid into him,” said Jacobs, known for both his pro-Israel record and outspoken criticism of the Israeli government. “Everybody was thoughtful, everybody was respectful, but everybody made sure that he knew that this is really deeply harmful to our community.”
Jacobs said he had brought his concerns to Mamdani personally in the past, but said he hoped that hearing the same message from so many rabbis would bring about change.
Wisdom said in a statement that the hourlong discussion had “focused on strategies to strengthen Jewish safety and belonging, maintain candid lines of communication and collaborate on issues where we have shared values and goals.”
“It was an open, positive and constructive conversation,” she added. “Mayor Mamdani has and will continue to engage with Jewish life in New York City in order to meet the needs of our communities and reaffirm his commitment to the thriving of Jewish communities across the five boroughs.”
The administration has been increasing its engagement with Jewish leaders ahead of the unveiling of the citywide strategy to combat antisemitism, expected next month.
One Jewish leader who was not invited to the Monday gathering, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue, said he also met privately a few weeks ago with Wisdom and Binderman and raised concerns about Mamdani. “They listened,” he told JI. “They didn’t argue.”
After Mamdani shot a lengthy video last month in which he walked back his campaign vow to arrest Netanyahu while calling the prime minster a “war criminal” and “the architect of a horrific genocide,” the Jewish leader said he followed up with Wisdom and Binderman in a phone call to voice reservations. There was “not a lot of pushback,” he recalled of their conversation.
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, lamented that the mayor had not reached out to his group and urged the mayor to engage more with the city’s longstanding Jewish communal organizations.
“When you’re the mayor of New York City, you have to be accustomed, or have to learn to deal with people who like you, don’t like you, agree with you, don’t agree with you. That comes with the territory,” he said. “I was glad to hear the people in the room pushed back on the rhetoric. That was heartening to hear.”
Plus, City Hall and NYPD clash over Rama Duwaji's travel plans
Javier Campos/NurPhoto via Getty Images
A woman waves a Venezuelan flag during a march in amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in Caracas, Venezuela on May 25, 2021. (Photo by )
Good Tuesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, insisted today that any agreement reached between Iran and Oman on administering the Strait of Hormuz is separate from Tehran’s broader closure of the waterway, which will only be lifted once the U.S. accedes to Iran’s demands.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, a key mediator between the U.S. and Iran, met today with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Tehran. Islamabad’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, told Bloomberg that developments are “shaping up again in favor of a peace arrangement”…
CENTCOM said it disabled a Panama-flagged cargo ship sailing toward Iranian ports today by firing two Hellfire missiles into the vessel’s engine room, the third such incident since the U.S. blockade began…
Ed Miliband, who last month was appointed by new U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham to be foreign secretary, said he had a “frank and constructive first call” with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar today, during which the British diplomat raised the issues of settler violence, settlement expansion and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, among others.
The discussion came a day after Miliband met with British Jewish community leaders, who said they were “impressed” by the foreign secretary’s “longer-term commitment to maintaining the conversation”…
Sa’ar announced that Israel and Venezuela have agreed to renew consular relations — establishing a coordination mechanism to provide consular services to each country’s citizens — in the first official channel between the two since Caracas severed diplomatic ties in 2009. The move builds on the Israeli aid delegation dispatched to Venezuela after the June 24 earthquakes…
The Palestinian technocratic committee meant to govern Gaza convened a joint coordination meeting with several U.N. agencies — including the World Food Program, UNICEF and the World Health Organization — as well as representatives from the Board of Peace and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Institute for Global Change to coordinate on humanitarian aid and reconstruction issues…
Former Mossad head Yossi Cohen said at a conference in Israel today that Israeli operatives have “toured” Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility “many times” in order to “understand” it, and called the U.S. operation to bomb the site during the 12-day war in June 2025 “the fulfillment of all my dreams”…
The NYPD denied that its officers will be accompanying New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji on a trip to Lebanon and Syria next month after City Hall said that, “upon the strong recommendation of the NYPD, the First Lady’s security detail will be joining her” on the trip.
“The NYPD does not send officers to countries with level four travel advisories for discretionary reasons,” the NYPD said today, referring to the State Department’s ranking system that currently designates the two countries as “do not travel” locations. Mayor Zohran Mamdani later said the diverging statements stemmed from a “miscommunication,” and that when his wife makes the trip “it will be without any NYPD detail”…
Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has made private over 100 YouTube videos from his time as a podcaster and commentator, CNN reports, including videos in which he lambasted fireworks on the Fourth of July, floated replacing the Second Amendment and voiced support for prison abolition…
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added Brian Poindexter, the Democratic nominee in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, to its “Red to Blue” program as he aims to unseat Rep. Max Miller (R-OH). Democratic leadership will offer Poindexter strategic support as the district, previously considered a long shot for Democrats given its GOP leanings, is now seen as a key flip opportunity as Miller navigates accusations of domestic violence by his ex-wife…
The campaign of Francesca Hong, the socialist seen as the front-runner in today’s Democratic primary election for governor of Wisconsin, was rebuffed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as she sought his endorsement due to her perceived weaknesses as a candidate, Politico reports; her campaign is planning to overhaul its staff to address such issues if she proceeds to the general…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for results from key primaries taking place today in Minnesota, South Carolina, Connecticut and Wisconsin.
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THE CAPITAL’S KOSHER CONUNDRUM
D.C. has a kosher restaurant problem. Owners say to blame the math
DSA UNFILTERED
‘If you put people in an open-air concentration camp … you have to expect that they are going to not take that for that long,’ Megan Romer said of the Oct. 7 attacks
Plus, new app offers Shabbat experience ‘with training wheels’
Aaron Schwartz / AFP via Getty Images
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David in Maryland, on July 31, 2026.
Good Monday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Responding to a recent demand from Iran that the U.S. fully compensate it for its war costs in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump issued his own demand today that Tehran compensate the U.S. “for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts,” as well as pay reparations to the “families of the hundreds of thousands of innocent protestors that Iran has killed over the last 50 years.” Trump said he instructed U.S. representatives to “put this firmly into any, and all, future negotiations” with Tehran…
Shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that Israel rejects the Hamas disarmament deal, Board of Peace head Nickolay Mladenov told Israel’s Channel 12 that the deal is “the only way” that “guarantees” that the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, “will not occur again.”
“Nobody is required to do anything — last of all Israel — before we actually have verified steps on the ground,” Mladenov said, referring to the IDF’s eventual withdrawal from Gaza after all of Hamas’ weapons are “stored, and ultimately rendered unusable,” by the Palestinian technocratic government…
The International Atomic Energy Agency will remove nuclear material stored at a secret site in Syria tied to the fallen Assad regime, Axios reports, per an agreement reached between Trump, Jerusalem and Damascus…
Megan Romer, a national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, said in a podcast interview last week that the Oct. 7 attacks were “largely inevitable” — “If you put people in an open-air concentration camp and you deprive them of rights, of dignity, of food, of the ability to live in safety, you have to expect that they are going to not take that for that long,” she said — and that she would have attended the anti-Israel Times Square rally on Oct. 8 had she been in the area, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports…
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said on MS NOW today that Abdul El-Sayed, the state’s Democratic nominee for Senate, should “tone down his rhetoric” about Israel and AIPAC in order to help combat antisemitism in the Democratic Party.
“Not everything is about AIPAC, not everything is about Israel. … Even if we wiped Israel off the face of the earth tomorrow, you know, everyday Michiganders’ lives wouldn’t be better on” issues such as housing and healthcare, Nessel said…
The University of Washington on Friday reversed its decision to host far-left, antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker, citing a flawed planning process, JI’s Haley Cohen reports.
The event listing, which has since been removed from the university website, described Piker as a “journalist and wildly popular content creator” who has “become an authoritative voice for millennials and Gen Z,” and as someone who is “armed with sharp analysis and an irreverent wit”…
The new conservative government in Colombia, which recently returned its ambassador to Israel, today recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, becoming the second country to do so after the U.S.
Colombia’s Foreign Ministry announced the move shortly after a powerful earthquake struck the country, killing over 100 people…
A new app called Sabbath is selling an ancient pitch to a modern, phone-addicted crowd: lock technology away for one sacred day a week. The app — which founder Ben Springwater calls “Shabbat with training wheels” — is “trying to make a bigger tent, get more people to experience some of the benefits and virtues of what Shabbat offers,” he told JI’s Haley Cohen, by allowing users to block certain apps from sundown to sundown on either Saturday or Sunday…
The Cook Political Report updated its rating of Rep. Max Miller’s (R-OH) district from “Likely Republican” to “Toss Up” after the deadline passed for Miller to drop out of his reelection race, which he declined to do despite facing serious domestic abuse allegations. Miller has denied the accusations levied against him by his ex-wife and her father, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH)…
Politico explores how Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is using her political clout to boost her preferred successor, San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, over Chan’s opponent, state Sen. Scott Wiener, including lining up endorsements and hosting major fundraisers…
“Fauda” star Lior Raz announced that the fifth season of the series, set two years after the Oct. 7 attacks, is coming to Netflix on Sept. 8…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at D.C.’sever-evolving kosher food scene.
Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin will hold primary elections tomorrow, with South Carolina and Alabama holding special elections as well.
We’ll be watching the outcomes in Minnesota’s Senate race, where Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan are neck-and-neck, as well as the Wisconsin governor’s race, where democratic socialist Francesca Hong is favored to win the Democratic nomination.
In the South Carolina special Republican Senate primary, Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) is trying to hold her late brother’s seat in a race widely expected to head to an Aug. 25 runoff. And in Connecticut’s 1st District, longtime Rep. John Larson (D-CT) faces his first serious primary challenge in decades from former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin.
Kenneth Marcus, the chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, will testify before a hearing of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission tomorrow, urging the commission to repeal rules requiring employers to keep and submit yearly reports breaking down their workforce by race, sex and ethnicity.
Marcus argued to JI that the practice has “created the impression that the agency is pushing them to use racial preferences in order to improve their numbers.” He said the situation has left Jews either “invisible because we’re not counted, or potentially stigmatized because we are,” and that “counting by race or ethnicity has never been helpful for the Jewish people and has sometimes been dangerous.” He said that eliminating these requirements would allow the EEOC to focus more fully on specific complaints of alleged discrimination.
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GOPHER BROKE
Left-wing Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s anti-Israel message is being complicated by her outreach to AIPAC earlier in the campaign
CONNECTICUT COMPETITION
Rep. John Larson, a Democrat, supports continued U.S. aid to Israel, while former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin has said he would not back further offensive aid but does support Iron Dome
Plus, Israel and Turkey trade barbs over Syria
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) talks with reporters after the Senate luncheons in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, March 11, 2025.
Good Thursday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump disputed reports that the U.S. is running low on critical munitions as a result of the Iran war, claiming on Truth Social last night that the country has “massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types” and that more are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. “as needed”…
The IDF struck several targets in southern Lebanon again today “in response to the incident yesterday” during which two IDF soldiers were killed and four severely injured in an explosion that the army attributed to Hezbollah.
The strikes came during the last day of Israel-Lebanon talks in Rome, which a State Department official said were “productive on the technical and expert levels” and brought the parties “a lot closer on what needs to be done to advance and expand the pilot zone process”…
Jonathan Cowan, president of the center-left group Third Way, told The New York Times that the group plans to spend $15 million ahead of the 2028 presidential election to target the Democratic Socialists of America after Abdul El-Sayed’s primary win in the Michigan Senate race. “It is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states,” Cowan said. El-Sayed was not endorsed by the DSA, though he was championed by the far left…
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs that he believes El-Sayed’s victory has put Michigan in play for Republicans to win in November. “[El-Sayed] will quickly discover a primary is a much different situation in this state [than the general election], when you’re accountable for winning the other side. I can’t wait to see him campaign for the general. I have got my popcorn for that,” Fetterman said…
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) joined Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Reps. Brad Knott (R-NC) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) today in introducing the Right to Worship Act, a federal bill that would ban activity that knowingly disrupts or impedes access to scheduled religious services within 100 feet of the entrance of a house of worship, JI’s Marc Rod reports…
California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Lele Yutzy as the state’s first director of its Office of Civil Rights, which was created under a bill enacted last year that acknowledged the prevalence of antisemitism in the state’s public schools and pledged to tackle discrimination. The office is also required to appoint an antisemitism prevention coordinator…
Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) joined Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) in calling on Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), Moreno’s former son-in-law, to drop out of his reelection race and resign from Congress amid growing scrutiny of domestic violence allegations made against Miller, JI’s Marc Rod reports…
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill‘s Mission to Deliver PAC endorsed a series of Democratic candidates with national security or military backgrounds, including Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) in his primary campaign to oust Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA).
Asked in a debate on local news earlier this week if Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, Markey answered an emphatic “yes” and called to end all military aid to Israel, while Moulton called the conflict an “absolute moral atrocity” and highlighted his rejection of AIPAC’s support but did not answer in the affirmative…
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in a statement today that he has been discharged from the hospital after a fall in Juneand will continue his recovery at home, without indication of when he will return to Capitol Hill…
The feud between Jerusalem and Ankara continued today as Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan claimed Israel’s “attacks targeting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” are “among the greatest threats to the country’s stability.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in turnaccused Fidan of hypocrisy, arguing that Turkey currently occupies 5% of Syria while the IDF holds a buffer zone “that comprises just one-tenth of one percent of Syrian territory”…
An extremist Israeli settler, Yinon Levi, was charged by the Israeli State Attorney’s Office with reckless homicide over the July 2025 killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, who had been featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” about home demolitions in the West Bank…
The Yemeni Defense Ministry said the Houthis attacked the internationally recognized government’s military forces in several locations — reportedly killing dozens of soldiers — and that the military would retaliate against the terror group “at the appropriate time and place.”
The hostilities mark Yemen’s latest potential slide back towards its brutal civil war that devastated the country from 2014 until the Houthis and the Saudi-backed government reached a ceasefire in 2022…
The United Arab Emirates has successfully transported more oil through the Strait of Hormuz in the last two months than any other country despite ongoing military hostilities in the area, Bloomberg reports, by utilizing tankers that switch off their transponders during the risky crossing…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at the special election to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), where AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC is working to boost Dublin, Calif., Mayor Melissa Hernandez over state Sen. Aisha Wahab.
A deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz may still emerge, though its reported contours are raising concerns among experts that it could grant Tehran unprecedented oversight over the international shipping route, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
In the latest development, Iranian state media reported today that the country’s parliament is considering a preliminary bill to bar American, Israeli and other “hostile” vessels from utilizing the strait.
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat shalom!
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MICHIGAN MALAISE
Several Jewish Democrats in the battleground state are now indicating that they will break with a party they have long called home and instead vote for the Republican nominee, Mike Rogers, in the November election
CASE STUDY
A 42-year-old progressive state senator has quietly closed the gap on the 73-year-old pro-Israel incumbent, with internal polls showing a tightening race before Saturday’s vote
Plus, Israel-Lebanon talks wrap early after IDF strikes
Sarah Rice/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Abdul El-Sayed speaks during a primary election night watch party at The Majestic Theatre in Detroit, Michigan early on Aug. 5, 2026.
Good Wednesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Abdul El-Sayed’s victory today in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan rattled Jewish groups, who raised concerns about his rhetoric on Israel and the broader rise of the far left, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America congratulated El-Sayed but said it was “disappointed” by the result and stopped short of endorsing him, while AIPAC said its members “remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr. El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda in November”…
The Republican Jewish Coalition is urging Jewish Democrats to support the GOP nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), in the general election, calling El-Sayed “a direct threat to Michigan’s Jewish community.”
A Democratic fundraiser in Michigan told JI’s Matthew Kassel it is “absolutely certain” that “several large Jewish Democratic donors” will be backing Rogers. “I would guarantee there will be fundraisers for him hosted by high-profile Jewish Democrats,” they said…
Shortly after his win, El-Sayed previewed his evolving message to Jewish voters, saying he welcomes the opportunity to “break bread with you at Seder” and to “worship with you at shul.” He spoke of his “sisters and brothers who said, you know, ‘I want to join this movement because AIPAC doesn’t speak for me’” and vowed he would prioritize Jewish safety…
But just before he was declared the victor, El-Sayed appeared on MS NOW where he called Israel “bloodthirsty,” JI’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports. He said that “we’ve been talking about an illegal apartheid regime” in reference to Israel since before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to power, though “Netanyahu is a big reason why they’ve gotten so aggressive and frankly so bloodthirsty”…
Democrats, meanwhile, are quickly coalescing behind the new Senate nominee, JI’s Marc Rod reports. El-Sayed’s opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), promptly endorsed him upon conceding the race; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) offered their joint support; and former Vice President Kamala Harris is fundraising for El-Sayed’s campaign alongside her PAC.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is also backing his ideological ally and left open the possibility that he’ll travel to Michigan to campaign with El-Sayed ahead of the general election, per JI’s Will Bredderman…
In another consequential Michigan race, pro-Israel Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) was ousted in his primary, losing to state Rep. Donavan McKinney, a democratic socialist who cross-endorsed with El-Sayed, campaigned alongside him and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and ran on ending U.S. military aid to Israel…
Talks between Israel and Lebanon ended several hours early today “due to events on the ground,” the State Department said, but were “extremely productive” and are slated to restart tomorrow. The move came after the IDF conducted strikes in southern Lebanon due to what it said were “blatant violations“of the ongoing ceasefire by Hezbollah.
An Israeli source told The Times of Israel that the talks were cut off after Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter accused Lebanese representatives of leaking false information to the media…
The Israeli Foreign Ministry denounced a joint statement adopted by Arab states who convened in Jordan today to discuss Israel’s policies over Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem, which asserted that Israel “has no sovereignty” over the city and accused Israel of “altering the Arab Islamic and Christian identity of occupied Jerusalem.”
The countries also pledged to launch a “media platform to document and expose Israeli violations against the holy sites and worshipers” and hold a meeting at the U.N. General Assembly to further discuss the issue. Israel said the statement was “built on false accusations, historical distortions, and a complete disregard for the facts”…
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio today renewing its call for the Trump administration to press Jordan to honor its extradition treaty obligations and send Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi to the United States.
Al-Tamimi was convicted in Israel for her role in the 2001 bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, which killed 16 people, including three Americans. She has been charged by the Justice Department and remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted list…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at Rep. Ed Case‘s (D-HI) reelection race, a primary that has largely flown under the radar but could pose a threat to one of the House’s more reliably pro-Israel moderates. While the contest has not centered on Middle East policy, it reflects the pattern seen in several recent Democratic primaries where well-established pro-Israel incumbents have faced increasingly competitive challenges from their left.
It remains to be seen if a deal will materialize between Iran, Oman and the U.S. to reopen the Strait of Hormuz (again), after Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said today that Tehran and Muscat were finalizing a bilateral agreement without Washington. The latest reporting indicates that such an agreement would preclude any fees or tolls for a temporary period of time.
Tennessee will hold its primary elections tomorrow, where Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep. John Rose (R-TN) are the front-runners for the open governorship, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) is expected to win renomination and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) is running in the redrawn 5th Congressional District.
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The mayor lauded the Democratic Senate nominee while downplaying his weak performance among working-class voters
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a primary-night watch party for NYC congressional candidate Claire Valdez on June 23, 2026.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to close the door on a trip to Michigan to campaign for newly minted Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, whom Mamdani praised for what he described as a focus on “the concerns of working-class Americans” — even as he tried to explain away El-Sayed’s poor performance in the areas where working-class voters live.
The mayor extended his congratulations from Manhattan to the Wolverine State, lauding in particular El-Sayed’s slogan of “money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.” Unlike fellow democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Mamdani did not travel to Michigan during the primary to support El-Sayed, but left open the possibility he would visit before the general election.
“My focus thus far has been on New York City. And what I will tell you is I know that many New Yorkers were incredibly excited at the results,” Mamdani, speaking after an unrelated event, said in answer to a question of whether he would consider making the trip. Asked whether he would completely rule out such a campaign jaunt, he answered: “I’m here right now.”
Mamdani answered in the affirmative when asked whether El-Sayed was the kind of candidate he hoped to see change the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, he stayed clear of the issue that fueled their most fervent support online: Israel.
“I am proud to be part of a movement of politicians and candidates who are looking to put working-class Americans back at the heart of our politics,” the mayor said. “And that’s our focus here in New York City, and just from what we’re seeing in Michigan, that’s what Michiganders want … to be their focus come November.”
Yet the mayor struggled to answer why, like his own map in the 2025 primary against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the results from Tuesday night showed El-Sayed performing poorly among the lower-income voters whose interests he purportedly championed. El-Sayed’s strongest precincts, like Mamdani’s, were home to many college students and well-compensated professionals.
Mamdani suggested those voters had been duped by ad campaigns.
“When you are facing $60 million in outside spending, you are facing almost what feels like surround sound,” he said. “People are hearing a message about you again and again and again. And to win this race as someone who is not currently holding elected office, it’s a testament to what he ran on, and also to the way he ran the campaign.”
Plus, Mamdani's anti-Bibi video features in synagogue vandal's feed
Nathan Howard-Pool/Getty Images
Delegation staff members meet in the lobby during a quadrilateral meeting between the U.S., Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar at the Lake Lucerne Summit, aimed at advancing a deal to end the Middle East conflict at the Buergenstock Resort, Lake Lucerne on June 21, 2026 near Stansstad, Switzerland.
Good Tuesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed today that the IDF will “not withdraw from the current lines in Gaza until Hamas is completely disarmed.” President Donald Trump “thinks, and his team thinks, that Hamas can be totally disarmed and Gaza demilitarized. We’re looking into it,” Netanyahu continued in a video posted to Facebook in Hebrew. “They sent us a draft, we didn’t agree. It wasn’t our draft. We sent our responses”…
Evoking a sense of déjà vu, U.S. and Iranian officials are signaling a deal over the Strait of Hormuz is near at hand: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC this morning that “there is a chance” the U.S. and Iran “may have a deal today or tomorrow to open” the strait, while Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari told reporters that talks are in “very progressive stages” and that draft agreement language has been “circulated among the parties.”
Trump called Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani this afternoon to discuss “ongoing efforts to deescalate tensions” between Washington and Tehran, the emir’s office said, in order “to bring their views closer together”…
Reuters reports that the U.S. Army has depleted“virtually all” of its long-range surface-to-surface missiles in the course of the war with Iran, raising concerns about readiness for future conflicts and the potential need to carry out riskier missions if hostilities with Iran escalate. The White House disputed the report, with Trump insisting that the U.S. has “far more munitions than anyone in the world”…
A brewery in Michigan apologized for hosting an event last night for Rep. Haley Stevens’ (D-MI) campaign for Senate ahead of today’s primary election due to her support for Israel, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
“We DO NOT endorse Haley Stevens,” Pux Taphouse wrote on Instagram, claiming it was not aware the event was being hosted by the campaign. “We are heartbroken as we pride ourselves on being not only a queer friendly space but also have advocated and continue to call for a Free Palestine,” the company said…
A Florida man accused of hurling a brick through the front window of a Sarasota Chabad house shared New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s video labeling Netanyahu a “war criminal” just days before the crime, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.
The Sarasota Police Department stated that the alleged perpetrator, Brayton Laschinger, had admitted to targeting the synagogue in an attack last week “because it was a Jewish place of worship” — and had blamed “propaganda on social media” for enraging him in the hours before the vandalism. An Instagram account bearing Laschinger’s name, and featuring photos of him dating back more than a decade, reposted the clip, which Mamdani had published the week prior to the attack…
The Anti-Defamation League called out far-left streamer Hasan Piker for promoting a conspiracy theory claiming Israel is behind the recent migration crisis in Ceuta, Spain, going as far as to claim on his Twitch stream that Israel is working to make the antisemitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion“come true.”
“Saying Israel looks at those conspiracy theories and decides to make them ‘come true’ shifts responsibility for antisemitism onto the Jewish state,” the ADL said…
The Colorado Democratic Party called on Victor Marx, the GOP nominee for governor, and other state Republicans to denounce an image that Marx and others have boosted of Phil Weiser, the state’s Jewish attorney general who is Marx’s opponent, depicting Weiser with devil horns, which critics have said evokes a classic antisemitic trope.
Montrose County Commissioner Sean Pond, who created the image, claimed he was unaware Weiser is Jewish and said, “Weiser does not receive immunity from political satire because of a personal fact I did not even know”…
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor declined a request by the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization to pause a $656 million judgment won by families of American victims of Palestinian terror attacks during the Second Intifada. The PA and PLO had argued that paying the sum now would “destabilize” government services in the West Bank as the bodies appeal the ruling…
Ellen Germain ended her five-year tenure as the State Department’s special envoy for Holocaust issues last week; it remains unclear if someone else will be tapped to lead the office — which deals with issues including restitution of Holocaust-era assets, Holocaust remembrance and combating Holocaust denial around the world — or if its remit will be wrapped into the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, currently headed by Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun. Jewish communal organizations have advocated both for and against the prospect of the consolidation…
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison spoke out in a New York Times op-ed against those who oppose Paramount‘s ongoing acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which he argued is at its core a concern about his own political views. “I have regularly voted for candidates of both parties; I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans; and when it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views,” he wrote…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for election results from key races taking place today in Michigan and Missouri.
Talks between Israel and Lebanon will continue in Rome, where technical teams are working to advance the pilot zone process, Hezbollah’s disarmament and the IDF’s redeployment from southern Lebanon, the State Department said today.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Federal Courts subcommittee are planning to boycott a hearing tomorrow set to examine Muslim Brotherhood networks in the United States, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports, calling the hearing a “political creepshow” designed to attack Muslims broadly.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will receive a classified update on the ongoing civil war in Sudan.
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SOUTH CAROLINA STATE OF PLAY
Polls show she’s largely unknown to South Carolina voters as she struggles to win a majority of Republican support
MONEY MATTERS
Only 20% of the more than 8,000 institutions that requested funding ultimately received it
An account under the name Brayton Laschinger, charged with throwing a brick through the window of a Sarasota shul, reposted the mayor’s video declaring the Israeli prime minister a ‘war criminal’
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, arrives to speak to members of the media in New York, on July 7, 2026.
A Florida man accused of hurling a brick through the front window of a Sarasota Chabad House shared New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s video labeling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” just days before the crime.
Local police arrested 30-year-old Brayton Laschinger on July 31 and charged him with felony criminal mischief for the attack two days prior on the Lubavitch Chabad of Downtown SRQ. The Sarasota Police Department stated that Laschinger had admitted to targeting the synagogue “because it was a Jewish place of worship” — and had blamed “propaganda on social media” for enraging him in the hours before the vandalism.
The police statements make no mention of Mamdani’s controversial July 21 video assailing Netanyahu as “the architect of a horrific genocide” and a mass maimer of women and children, which the mayor released as a way of confessing he could not make good on his campaign pledge to arrest the Israeli leader during the United Nations General Assembly in September. But an Instagram account bearing Laschinger’s name, and featuring photos of him dating back more than a decade, reposted the clip, which went out on City Hall’s official social media channels a week prior to the attack.
The only other politically tinged shares on Laschinger’s page deal with wildlife conservation.
Jewish leaders had warned that the mayor’s singular and relentless excoriation of Israel and its government could inspire violence against Jews — concerns that only intensified after the double-stabbing of an Asian American and a Jewish man wearing a kippah in Manhattan days after the social media post. There is no proven link between the attack, which authorities have deemed a hate crime, and the mayor’s video.
The accused assailant of the Manhattan stabbing allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” and “Justice for Islam” while passing a synagogue displaying the Israeli flag, before ramming a screwdriver into the chest of Moshe Grunhaus. Mamdani has to date refused to engage with suggestions from fellow Democrats that he temper his rhetoric about the Jewish state, even as he has vowed to combat the hate crimes against Jewish New Yorkers that have spiked under his watch.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt reiterated his call for the mayor to tone down his criticism of Israel on X in a post after highlighting Laschinger’s social media history.
“Words have consequences. Your inflammatory rhetoric can lead to violence,” Greenblatt wrote. “Jewish people and institutions are being attacked in NYC and across the country because of hateful and demonizing rhetoric.”
Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin noted that the democratic socialist had explicitly denounced violence against Jewish people and institutions, and maintained his broadsides are meant for Israeli leadership alone.
“The mayor’s criticism has always been directed at Benjamin Netanyahu and the actions of his government. He has been clear that no political disagreement, no foreign conflict, and no public statement can ever justify antisemitism or violence against Jewish people or Jewish institutions,” Raskin said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “Every Jewish person deserves to be safe in their home, in their synagogue, and in every neighborhood across our city. The vandalism of a synagogue — whether in New York City or anywhere else — is an abhorrent act of antisemitism. It has no place in our city and stands in direct opposition to the values of this administration.”
Raskin did not answer whether the mayor would dial back his commentary if he believed there was any chance it could inspire violence.
Hate crimes against Jewish New Yorkers rose more than 50% in July and by almost 9% over the first seven months of Zohran Mamdani’s administration
Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images
Members of the NYPD Crime Scene Unit investigate the scene of a stabbing attack at the intersection of West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, New York, United States, on July 23, 2026.
Hate crimes — particularly against Jews — have spiked in New York City during the first seven months of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, new data from the NYPD shows.
The police department’s July statistics show general declines thus far in 2026 shootings and murders, and even in hate crimes against certain ethnic groups. But bias offenses were up overall last month, and during the entire period since Mamdani took office on the first of the year, with hate crimes targeting Jewish New Yorkers continuing to make up the majority of such incidents.
“More than half of the confirmed hate crimes for the first seven months of the year, or 56.9%, were anti-Jewish hate crimes, despite Jewish New Yorkers making up only 10% of the city’s population,” the NYPD’s report states.
There were 23 confirmed hate crimes against Jewish people in July of this year, compared to 15 in July 2025. To date, the Jewish community has suffered 205 confirmed criminal antisemitic incidents during Mamdani’s first seven months at City Hall, compared to 189 such transgressions up to this point in the final year of Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure.
Mamdani, whose broadsides against Israel and its leadership have both powered his political ascent and provoked warnings over potential repercussions for the city’s Jewish community, faced questions over the uptick in bias crimes after an unrelated press conference Monday morning.
“There’s no room for hate in our city. It will never be tolerated, it will never be accepted, and we know that this is something that we have to fight with every single tool at our disposal,” the democratic socialist mayor said. “The work to uproot antisemitism out of the city is one that will continue until we see hate crimes come to an end in the city.”
The mayor again underscored his increased investment in a hate crime prevention program, which allocates millions of dollars to a range of nonprofits.
July witnessed a double stabbing of an Asian American and a Jewish man on the holiday of Tisha B’Av, during which the assailant allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” and “Justice for Islam” as he passed a synagogue displaying the Israeli flag, before attacking the second victim, who was wearing a kippah. The accused, Raul Morales, now faces a raft of hate crimes charges.
Politico reported that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch visited The Jewish Center — the Modern Orthodox synagogue where the victim Moshe Grunhaus had been praying before the stabbing — on Friday to denounce “antisemitic rhetoric” and assure the community of her continued protection.
Mamdani decided to keep Tisch, an Adams appointee, in her role when he entered office. Tensions between the two have surfaced on several occasions, most recently when the mayor continued to publicly toy with the idea of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite lacking the legal authority to do so.
Anti-Muslim offenses have also risen under Mamdani, but in much smaller numbers: five this past month compared to two the July prior, and 26 so far this year as opposed to 16 during the same period in 2025.
Plus, Iran’s ‘unbelievably duplicitous’ leaders irk Trump
Amir Levy/Getty Images
Israeli tanks stationed near the border with the Gaza Strip on September 17, 2025 in southern Israel.
Good Monday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump lambasted Iranian leadership today, calling the regime “unbelievably duplicitous” for contradicting his claim that Washington and Tehran are currently conducting negotiations, after Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said that Tehran was only in discussion with Oman about the Strait of Hormuz and had no plans to speak to the U.S.
Trump claimed in his Truth Social post that the regime had “begged” for a meeting, “with more scheduled in the immediate future,” adding, “whether Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking of a solution to a problem that they have caused, for decades.” Trump later told reporters that the talks were “a last chance for Iran to sign a good document” and that he wants to give Iran “every last chance before decapitation”…
Board of Peace head Nickolay Mladenov held a “constructive and detailed” meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, the board said, after the IDF continued to strike targets in Gaza over the weekend — in contravention of the Board of Peace’s Hamas disarmament plan, which called for the immediate cessation of hostilities in the enclave.
The board clarified that the IDF’s withdrawal beyond the yellow line in Gaza “will take place only once decommissioning [of Hamas’ weapons] is complete,” including all light and heavy weapons as well as terror tunnels. Netanyahu has yet to officially comment on the deal, but a senior Israeli spokesman said earlier today that the agreement “does not reflect Israel’s positions” and another Israeli official declared that the IDF “will not withdraw from the current line in the Gaza Strip”…
Israeli President Isaac Herzog received the credentials of the new ambassadors from Chile and Honduras today; the two Latin American countries had pulled their ambassadors from the Jewish state shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in protest of the war in Gaza but have since elected new conservative governments that have sought to strengthen ties with Jerusalem…
Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a letter to every university in the country today asking their leadership to publish by the end of the year a statement committing to principles including transparency in admissions, free speech, diversity of thought and keeping foreign influence out of academics.
Yeshiva University President Rabbi Ari Berman applauded the initiative, which came after most universities rejected a compact from the Trump administration last year that had asked them to agree to a set of ideological principles in order to receive federal funding, and said YU would participate in the effort to rebuild public trust of higher education…
Brown University President Christina Paxson announced today that she will step down at the end of the 2026-27 academic year, concluding her 15-year tenure at the Ivy League, during which the school increased Jewish student enrollment even as most peer institutions experienced significant drops, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…
As the Israel on Campus Coalition’s National Summit continues in Washington, Noah Pollak, a senior advisor at the Education Department, debated Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, on whether the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus antisemitism has protected or threatened America’s liberal norms. After the debate, where Pollak argued in favor of the policy and Rauch argued against, students who were polled in the audience shifted their views to align more with Rauch, JI’s Haley Cohen reports…
New hate crime data released by the NYPD shows an uptick of 8.5% in hate crimes against Jews in New York City this year so far, accounting for more than half of all hate crimes in the city, despite Jewish New Yorkers only accounting for 10% of the city’s population…
A New York man was indicted on hate crimes charges on Friday for repeatedly vandalizing a kosher bagel shop, weeks after he was indicted for manslaughter for killing a prominent Jewish community member in a car crash…
Author Alyssa Rosenheck pushed back on arguments raised by Bell Bird Books, a local bookstore in Nashville, Tenn., that canceled a book launch event for Rosenheck’s White. Blond. Jew.,which the bookstore claimed was due to security concerns. Rosenheck said she had personally paid for a private firm to secure the event and was told there were no outstanding security concerns, alleging that the event was canceled “because I’m an unapologetic Jewish voice … and it provokes an online mob of hate”…
Trump is considering removing Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, according to CNN, after he said today that she “folded like an umbrella” when she withdrew a case against an alleged vandal of the Reflecting Pool and instead blamed the Interior Department for its botched renovation…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at Sen. Darline Graham’s (R-SC) bid for a full term in the Senate, where she is facing headwinds despite having secured President Donald Trump’s endorsement.
We’ll be watching tomorrow’s Democratic primaries in Michigan and Missouri — the sharpest tests yet of the party’s divide over Israel. In Michigan’s Senate race, far-left Abdul El-Sayed seems the favorite in recent polling over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI); in Missouri, Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) faces a rematch with former Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO). Also on the Michigan ballot: the battleground 7th District, where DSA-backed William Lawrence is the front-runner, and the 11th District, where Jewish state Sen. Jeremy Moss is running to succeed Stevens. Kansas, Virginia and Washington state will also hold their primaries tomorrow.
Israeli and Lebanese representatives will meet tomorrow to begin another round of U.S.-led negotiations in Rome. U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa sounded a cautious note today on the ongoing trilateral agreement, as the Lebanese Armed Forces and the IDF continue to work toward establishing the fragile pilot zones in southern Lebanon: “A great deal of technical work remains to ensure civilian safety on the ground,” Issa said. “There is a meaningful difference between drafting an agreement on paper and implementing it responsibly — moving too quickly risks jeopardizing the very civilians this process is meant to protect.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote tomorrow on whether to advance acting Attorney General Todd Blanche‘s nomination to lead the Justice Department, after Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) dropped their opposition to his nomination when the administration agreed to rescind its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.
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MICHIGAN MOVES
For many Jewish Democrats in Michigan who have long called the party home, the bruising lead-up to the primary on Tuesday has been difficult to experience
CAMPUS CLIMATE
‘The assumption is that it’s better by virtue of there being no encampments right now, there’s no buildings being sieged. But that being the bar is ridiculous,’ Columbia student Noah Lederman said of the challenges on campus
Plus, a Hamas disarmament deal — with caveats
Alex Wong/Getty Images
A visitor holds an AIPAC folder in an elevator in Rayburn House Office Building on March 12, 2024 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
Good Friday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we cover comments by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel that she will not attend the state Democratic convention due to fears over antisemitic harassment and report on an anti-AIPAC campaign against Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss — even though AIPAC has not endorsed him in his bid for Congress in a Detroit-area Democratic primary. We also report on President Donald Trump’s announcement that a deal has been reached for Hamas’ disarmament, and talk to analysts about Iran’s efforts to exploit Sudan’s civil war to deepen ties with Islamist factions. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Maor Shlomo, Boy George and Harriet and Mark Levin.
We also have a new on-demand Live Briefingthat you can access throughout the day via our new app (on Apple and Android) and on our website.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by Israel Editor Tamara Zieve and U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik, with an assist from 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: Jewish leaders worried about Michigan’s prime position on Dems’ 2028 calendar; How Debra Band revives a dying Jewish artform; and Family, friends of slain Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner launch foundation in her memory. Print the latest edition here.
What We’re Watching
- Tensions are high in the Middle East going into the weekend, as Iran has continued to strike U.S. assets around the region this week and Saudi Arabia has also faced attacks by Tehran’s proxies.
- We’re keeping an eye out for word from Jerusalem on its stance on Trump’s announcement of a deal for Hamas’ “complete disarmament” announced last night, which requires complete IDF withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. See more below.
- Amid the global developments, Trump will hold the 13th Cabinet meeting of his second administration this morning at the historic Camp David retreat in Maryland.
- The Democratic Socialists of America kicks off its three-day annual organizing conference today in Chicago. One programming track is set to focus on “anti-imperialist and pro-Palestine organizing strategy” to end the “U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine.”
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S WILL BREDDERMAN
In chatting with plugged-in Democratic strategists currently working on congressional campaigns, I was shocked — but not all that surprised — at the acceptance that the party has been all but dominated by the socialist faction, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), that has gotten more radical since his presidential campaign in 2016 and has played a key role in many Democratic primaries across the country.
Two Democratic operatives involved in Michigan and other targeted races bluntly told JI that left-wing candidates endorsed by Sanders and his band of far-left allies can now expect to win about one-third of the primary vote from the start if given the Sanders seal of approval. And far from being contained to deep-blue urban districts in New York, the trend is spreading into swing-district primaries and statewide nomination fights.
That’s certainly shaping up to be the case in Michigan’s 7th District, one of the biggest battleground districts in the country long held by now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI). Despite two candidates with cross-partisan credentials running — former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink — the Sanders-endorsed socialist activist William Lawrence is the front-runner, according to new polling conducted in the race.
And the socialist wave is building in statewide races in two of the biggest Midwestern battlegrounds, with Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed Francesca Hong running away with the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s governorship, despite her recent embrace of politically toxic views like supporting funding cuts to the police.
And as we’ve extensively covered in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed’s virulently anti-Israel and left-wing platform in the Senate race doesn’t appear to be stunting his primary campaign against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), even with popular Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s endorsement of Stevens.
IDENTITY POLITICS
Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss has a lot of endorsements in his campaign for Congress in a Detroit-area Democratic primary — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and several other state and local officials — but AIPAC is not one of them. That has not stopped Don Ufford, one of Moss’ opponents, from trying to tar the Jewish lawmaker as a pawn of the pro-Israel group in the final days of the race, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
You’ve got mail: A mailer that Ufford’s campaign sent to the homes of voters in the district described Moss as a “career politician who has taken thousands from AIPAC-linked donors.” A website operated by Ufford’s campaign, titled “AIPAC Jeremy Moss,” said that Moss is “for them, not for working Michiganders like you.” Moss told JI in an interview on Thursday, “The language on his mailers was very clear to say AIPAC-linked donors. One more dig deeper than that is just — it’s Jews.” Some of Moss’ donors have also supported AIPAC, but he does not think their involvement in the political system should be suspect.
SAFETY CONCERNS
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Jewish Democrat whose eight years in office will conclude at the end of December, said at an event in Lansing on Thursday that antisemitism in the state — and in the statewide Democratic Party — has gotten so bad that she will not attend the party’s nominating convention next month, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
What she said: “I don’t feel safe going,” Nessel said at the Thursday event, which was organized by the Anti-Defamation League and featured other Michigan Jews speaking about their own experiences of antisemitism. “I feel like my presence is not going to be welcomed. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. And I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying. And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen.”
ORGANIZING EFFORT
Members of Missouri’s Jewish community are working to turn out voters in Rep. Wesley Bell’s (D-MO) St. Louis-area congressional district as he faces down a rematch with former Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) on Tuesday. The Jewish Democratic Council of America has rallied its national membership, particularly in Bell’s district and the broader Midwest region, for an in-person canvassing effort as well as several phone-banking events, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Boosting Bell: “We are mobilizing our network across the Midwest to help get out the vote for Wesley Bell,” Jacob Spiegel, JDCA’s communications director, told JI. “We’re continuing to mobilize our awesome network of volunteers to get out the vote for the candidates that represent our values.”
DONE DEAL?
President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the Board of Peace had reached a “historic” agreement for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza, calling it a “monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY,” Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the agreement would be “carried out carefully in structured phases,” and that the IDF would withdraw when Hamas’ disarmament is “completed.”
Briefing: Following the announcement, a senior U.S. official said in a call with reporters that the document is “an agreement by Hamas to follow through on the decommissioning” of its weapons as well as its terror tunnels. The official noted that Iran tried to “convince [Hamas] not to do this deal,” but in the end, “the final communication came through the mediators that Hamas has agreed.”
Word of warning: A senior U.S. official told reporters, “We’re not asking Israel to do anything that isn’t in the 20-point plan that they agreed to initially, and so we’re very confident they will adhere to it. If they don’t, President Trump would be very, very disappointed.”
Yes, but: A Hamas source told Reuters the “draft agreement” says heavy weapons would only be stored and kept under the control of a Palestinian administration. Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas figure, told Al Jazeera, “We will not take any action regarding disarmament prior to Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip.” Meanwhile, Reuters cited an Israeli official as having said, prior to Trump’s announcement, “Israel demands the complete disarmament of Hamas, including the removal of weapons from Gaza and the complete demilitarization of the Strip as a precondition for any process.”
POWER PLAY
As Sudan’s devastating civil war drags through its third year, experts warn the conflict could become an arena for Iranian strategic expansion and Islamist extremism in Africa, as Tehran and the Sudanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood revive a long-standing alliance and threaten to turn the embattled nation into a staging ground for transnational jihadist operations, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Iran’s involvement: Under the cover of Sudan’s official military, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), armed Islamist brigades — most notably the U.S.-sanctioned Al-Bara ibn Malik Battalion (the armed wing of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood) — have mobilized to fight alongside state forces led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Supported by funding, weaponry and training pipelines linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, these factions have effectively embedded themselves within the state apparatus, raising alarm among counterterrorism officials and regional foreign policy experts.
SURVEY SAYS
The share of Israelis who believe President Donald Trump is “highly committed” to protecting Israel’s security interests has dropped to a new low, according to a new survey from Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Downward trend: The organization’s July 2026 National Security Survey found that only 14% of Israelis believe the country’s security interests are a top concern for Trump, representing a significant drop from the 35% recorded in March. This continues a downward trend observed as the conflict with Iran drags on, following an Israel Democracy Institute poll released earlier this month that found just 26% of Jewish Israelis believed Israel’s security was a key consideration for Trump – another record low at the time.
Worthy Reads
El-Sayed’s Villains: The Atlantic‘s Jonathan Chait argues that far-left Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s brand of anti-Israel rhetoric is uniquely dangerous. “But if El-Sayed’s anti-Zionism is obsessive, it is not a singular obsession. He talks about the Israel lobby the way he talks on the stump about nearly any other political issue. The El-Sayed formula is to describe just about any policy as a conspiracy by a corporate entity or wealthy cabal to enrich itself at the expense of the people. The villains in his stories are motivated by pure greed, and trade-offs do not exist. This is a rhetorical style that has long existed on the populist left. The trouble is that, when you apply it to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and especially to the question of why some Americans do not share El-Sayed’s position on it, his approach grows paranoid and menacing.” [TheAtlantic]
Take the Win: In her Substack, “Insight,” journalist Frida Ghitis posits that Iran is “overplaying its hand” by continuing to engage in hostilities against the U.S. “Instead of consolidating what it sees as a victory, Tehran continues to test Washington, seemingly inviting another round of war. It’s unclear what’s motivating Iran’s provocative actions after the U.S. had agreed to pause strikes against Iran. It may reflect overconfidence, ideological zeal, or even the belief among some regime hardliners that an apocalyptic confrontation will hasten the return of the Mahdi and usher in a global Islamic order. I’m inclined to believe the moves are not about the world to come but about the immediate future. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leaders not only see that they have won the first round, but they believe time is on their side because they pay close attention to Western politics and media. Another round, they may conclude, will solidify their gains.” [Substack]
The Iran Split: Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen argues that President Donald Trump’s military, intelligence and economic teams have delivered real results against Iran while the negotiated ceasefire, which he attributes to Vice President JD Vance, has trapped Trump in a repeating cycle of Iranian violations followed by U.S. strikes and renewed talks. “Case in point: Last weekend, as Trump was on the verge of ordering a resumption of major combat, he was told that the Iranians were desperate for a deal. So he paused to give peace a chance. Result? Iran fired five ballistic missiles at a U.S. military base in Jordan. This cycle has repeated for months. Like Lucy and the football, Trump keeps getting told that this time the Iranians are finally ready to make a deal — only to be set up for failure yet again. Indeed, by elevating a deal as the definition of victory, Vance has given Iran a veto over America’s ability to declare victory. All it has to do is refuse to agree — which it is doing.” [WashPost]
Netanyahu v. Mamdani: In The Free Press, constitutional law professor Jed Rubenfeld lays out the legal case for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sue New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for libel. “Mamdani specifically named Netanyahu and explicitly accused him of heinous crimes, including genocide and the maiming of children. As a result, while Netanyahu v. Mamdani would be an uphill battle, it could be won. … There is, however, an important limit on this immunity. It applies to Mamdani only if his statement concerned matters ‘within the ambit of [his] duties.’ There’s a strong argument that foreign policy is no part of the duties of a mayor. Indeed, despite Mamdani’s personal desire to arrest Netanyahu, the mayor himself has now admitted he has no legal authority to do so. It seems plausible, therefore, that Mamdani strayed far outside the ambit of his official duties in his attack on Netanyahu. If so, he forfeited New York’s absolute immunity.” [FP]
Word on the Street
The IDF carried out a “massive operation” on Thursday evening using approximately 700 tons of explosives to blow up a tunnel system in southern Lebanon that was “a central part of the Hezbollah terror organization’s invasion plan” into northern Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said…
The American Association of University Professors issued its first-ever political endorsement in its 110-year history on Thursday, backing far-left Abdul El-Sayed ahead of next week’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan. The professional organization has repeatedly faced criticism from Jewish groups and faculty members for straying from its mission by engaging in anti-Israel advocacy…
Columbia University’s student workers’ union dropped its demand that the university divest from Israel during a bargaining session on Tuesday, the Columbia Spectator reports, in a reversal of the union’s pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions advocacy…
Columbia will open a global center in Tel Aviv later this summer, reviving a plan first floated in April 2023 that drew faculty petitions and student protests…
A fire at the AgriStar meat and poultry plant in Postville, Iowa, one of the largest kosher meat processing plants in the country, “means a significant portion of kosher beef and chicken … will not enter the kosher supply chain,” Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the CEO of OU Kosher, said in a statement. Elefant warned that kosher consumers “will feel the impact of the tightening supply with reduction of availability”…
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) argued on Thursday that, without regime change in Iran, the U.S. will likely need to continue to conduct periodic military operations against Iran’s nuclear program to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
The Senate narrowly blocked another push by Democrats to force an end to the Iran war, 50-49, with the vote falling along now-predictable lines. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Rand Paul (R-KY) broke with their party to vote for the resolution with most Democrats, while Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) voted against it…
The Iran-backed Houthi terror group, based in Yemen, reportedly attacked Saudi Arabia this week from Iraqi territory, potentially with the assistance of militias in the country working with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in an indication of the growing coordination between Tehran’s proxies…
Facing renewed attacks by both Iran and the Houthis, Saudi Arabia hosted dozens of global military officials, including from the U.S., for a meeting on Thursday to establish a maritime defense alliance, the Saudi Defense Ministry said. Thirteen countries joined Riyadh in signing a statement of support for the effort: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia…
Meanwhile, Yemeni sources told The Guardian they believe Saudi Arabia is gearing up for a major military offensive against the Houthis in Yemen — by sea and possibly also by land — aimed at breaking the group’s grip on oil exports through the southern Red Sea…
Iranian hackers may have been behind a cyberattack on dozens of municipal water systems this week in Minnesota, state and federal officials told The New York Times…
The Treasury Department sanctioned Iranian airline Mahan Air, calling it the IRGC’s “airline of choice for moving weapons, military personnel, and equipment,” as well as an IRGC-affiliated front company that has sought the locations of American and Israeli equipment in the region…
A group of Democratic House and Senate lawmakers sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday announcing they are opening an investigation into the deaths of six U.S. service members in Kuwait, who were killed in an Iranian drone strike earlier this year, to determine whether the troops were adequately protected during the war…
The Wall Street Journal reports on how the Iran war has impacted the U.S.-Kuwait relationship and caused the U.S. to reconsider the scale of its military presence in the Gulf country…
Egypt confirmed that an explosion at a port on its Mediterranean coast on Wednesday, which set fire to two ships, including a U.S. gas-storage tanker, was caused by a drone attack. Egypt reportedly attributed the attack, which was not claimed by any country or group, to Iran. It marks the first time the country has been targeted during the war with Iran…
The U.S. has informed Israel that it is deploying additional military refueling aircraft to the country, amid growing concerns over a security escalation in the region, raising fears of major disruptions at Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s N12 news site reports…
Elon Musk has authorized his super PAC, called America PAC, to spend more than $100 million to help Republicans in eight states in the midterm elections, The New York Times reports, including key Senate battleground races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan and Ohio…
The Hackney Council in the U.K. gave initial approval to begin ending the city’s 58-year partnership with its sister city Haifa…
British singer Boy George withdrew from a West End production of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which he had been set to play Herod, following the release of his pro-Israel song “We Will Dance Again.” Without directly mentioning the song, which drew backlash, Boy George’s manager said: “In this instance, I felt it was right [for Boy George] to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill”…
Base44 founder Maor Shlomo launched a cancer research fund and has already backed seven treatment startups after losing his mother to the disease…
Wine of the Week
JI wine columnist Yitz Applbaum reviews the La Forêt Blanche Ariel Red 2021:
This week I had the honor of attending a dinner held in tribute to the memory of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Every guest at the table was a devoted friend of the senator, who was a steadfast friend of Israel, and the evening carried the quiet weight of remembrance and gratitude in equal measure. I wanted to pour something bold and unflinching, a wine in the senator’s own spirit, drawn from a corner of Israel he loved. The La Forêt Blanche Ariel Red 2021, its grapes raised in the storied heights of Mount Hebron in the Judean Hills, was the perfect answer.
The Ariel Red is 85% petit verdot and 15% syrah. The first sip delivers the firm grip one hopes for from a petit verdot of the Judean Hills: assertive, unapologetic, rooted in the soil that made it. The mid-palate softens, and the finish arrives with an elegance earned over 18 months in French and American oak. This is a wine that will only deepen over the next five years. Serve it beside a well-marbled rib steak hot off the fire, and raise your glass in a toast to the memory of the great senator from the great state of South Carolina.
Pic of the Day
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee spoke yesterday evening to Harriet and Mark Levin — the parents of U.S.-born IDF “lone soldier” Michael Levin, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War on Aug. 1, 2006 — at the 20th memorial ceremony for Levin alongside his grave on Jerusalem’s Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery, eJewishPhilanthropy‘s Judah Ari Gross reports.
During the ceremony, Huckabee praised Levin for his sacrifice and “giving his life, not just for Israel, but … for America as well.” Huckabee also hailed Levin’s parents, whom he said took their grief and channeled it into building a network of organizations to support “lone soldiers,” service members without families who care for them in Israel.
“They could have taken their grief and buried it in their souls and lived the rest of their lives in anguish and even bitterness. But they didn’t do that,” Huckabee said. “They took their love for Michael and the grief, and they did something that has now benefited thousands upon thousands of lone soldiers who have served and have had support that Michael never had. … I cannot help but think that, in so many ways, nothing could have been done more powerfully for Michael’s memory, for his sacrifice, than what his parents have done in their sacrifice to honor their son.”
Birthdays
CEO of Goliath Records and former CEO and chairman of Def Jam Recordings, best known as the manager of Eminem, Paul D. Rosenberg turns 55 on Saturday…
FRIDAY: British judge and barrister, he served as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and later as Master of the Rolls, John Anthony Dyson turns 83… Actor, who went on to become CEO of Paramount Pictures and president of production at 20th Century Fox, Sherry Lansing turns 82… Nobel laureate in economics in 1997, known for his quantitative analysis of options pricing, longtime professor at both Harvard and MIT, Robert C. Merton turns 82… Scholar, professor, rabbi, writer and filmmaker, who specializes in the study of the Holocaust, Michael Berenbaum turns 81… Co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, in 2015 he bought a 16th-century copy of the Babylonian Talmud for $9.3 million, Leon David Black turns 75… Software entrepreneur, he was president of Ameinu, which merged with Americans for Peace Now in 2024 to form New Jewish Narrative, and serves on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency, Kenneth Bob… Author of more than 30 best-selling mystery novels, many with Jewish themes, Faye Kellerman turns 74… Manhattan-based criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, radio talk show host and television commentator, Ronald L. Kuby turns 70… Chairman at Haifa-based Twin Digital Healthcare, Guido Benjamin Pardo-Roques turns 70… Owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks until its partial sale to Miriam Adelson in 2023, he was a “shark” investor on the ABC reality program Shark Tank from 2011 until May 2025, Mark Cuban turns 68… Israeli attorney, real estate developer and entrepreneur, Ilan Shavit turns 68… COO at Leenie Productions, she serves on the board of directors of the Northbrook, Ill.-based Haym Salomon Center, Helene Miller-Walsh turns 67… Technology investor and social entrepreneur, he is the founder and chairman of Tmura, Yadin B. Kaufmann turns 67… Israeli libertarian politician and activist, he was previously a member of the Knesset, Moshe Zalman Feiglin turns 64… Adjunct professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine, he was previously the director of the Los Angeles office of the American Jewish Committee, Dan Schnur… Born into a practicing Catholic family in Nazareth, Israel, billionaire investor and owner of the Detroit Pistons, Tom Gores turns 62… General manager of MLB’s Miami Marlins, he was an MLB outfielder for 13 seasons, Gabe Kapler turns 51… Author, actor and comedian, Benjamin Joseph (BJ) Novak turns 47… Founder and CEO at Wide Eye Creative, Ben Ostrower… The representative of the World Zionist Organization Executive in North America, Michal Slawny Cababia… Political activist and the founder and president of Stand Up America, a progressive advocacy community, Sean Simcha Eldridge turns 40… Head of global communications, social and film at Zipline, Danielle Meister Lurie… Technical Account Manager at CREW, Aryeh Samet Canter… Adam Rosenberg… David Goldenberg… Richard Rosenstein…
SATURDAY: Culver City, Calif., resident, Allene Prince… Formerly CEO of multibillion-dollar travel and hotel franchisor Cendant Corporation, then CEO of 54 Madison Partners, Henry R. Silverman turns 86… Founder and principal of NYC-based Midtown Equities, a major developer of nationwide real estate projects, Joseph Cayre turns 85… U.S. district court judge for the Southern District of New York, now on senior status, Judge Jed S. Rakoff turns 83… Former president of Brandeis University, now president and CEO of the Cleveland-based Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation, Jehuda Reinharz turns 82… British businessman, he has been described as “the father of British venture capital,” Sir Ronald Mourad Cohen turns 81… Israeli-born businessman and film producer, later CEO of Marvel Studios, he won the 2019 Academy Award for best animated feature, Avi Arad turns 78… Second-generation owner of a Los Angeles flooring business, Eric Kalman Biren… Immediate past president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Rhoda Smolow… Founder and president of Greystone Hotels, the IHA Group and Markev Realty Corporation, Eric Horodas 73… Media analyst and former host of “MediaBuzz” at Fox News, now a Fox News contributor, Howard Kurtz turns 73… Director of New York government relations at Agudath Israel of America, Yeruchim Silber… U.S. career diplomat who served as ambassador to South Korea during the Biden administration, Philip Seth Goldberg turns 70… United States secretary of the interior, Douglas James Burgum turns 70… Attorney, political strategist and former president of the American Jewish Congress, Richard Scott Gordon… Former CEO of Atlanta’s Jewish Family & Career Services, where she served for six years, she served for 11 years in the Minnesota state Senate, Terri E. Bonoff turns 69… Professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D. turns 67… Policy director in the D.C. office of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Andrew C. (“Drew”) Littman… Former senior rabbi of the British movement for Reform Judaism, now a rabbi at London’s Bromley Reform Synagogue, Laura Naomi Janner-Klausner turns 63… U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, Daniel B. “Dan” Shapiro turns 57… Producer for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Shachar Bar-On… Professor of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton and at Hebrew U, he was the winner of the 2010 Fields Medal, Elon Lindenstrauss turns 56… CEO of NYC’s Quantum Media Group, he is a HAFTR and YU graduate, Ari Zoldan… Israeli film director, writer and producer, Asaf Epstein turns 48… Venture partner in Leap Forward Ventures, she is also chief marketing and revenue officer at Blue Flame, Jessica Alter… Founder and CEO of Moishe House (now known as Mem Global), David Cygielman… Chief Jewish life officer at the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), Sheila Katz … Chief community relations officer at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Noam Gilboord… SVP of communications at Burford Capital, David Helfenbein… Board-certified family physician, Mor Toledano Shapiro, M.D…. CEO of PeaceWorks Foundation Roey Kruvi… Cross-country skier who competed for the U.S. at the Winter Olympics in 2014 (Sochi) and 2018 (Pyeongchang), now serving as an assistant attorney general fellow in the Consumer Protection section of the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, Noah Hoffman turns 37… Client relations specialist at Pacific Libra Insurance Agency, Yael Rabin… Television, stage and film actor, Benjamin “Ben” Rosenfield turns 34…
SUNDAY: Co-founder and chairman of NYC-based real estate development firm, Rockrose Development Corporation, Henry Elghanayan turns 86… Professor emeritus of Bible at London’s Leo Baeck College, Jonathan David Magonet turns 84… Former member of Knesset for 28 years, he then served as chairman of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems until 2023, Uzi Landau turns 83… Retired colonel in the U.S. Army and a recipient of the Medal of Honor and seven other medals, he serves as a military analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, Jack H. Jacobs turns 81… Longtime librarian, Irene Seff… Nationally syndicated radio talk show host, author and public speaker, Dennis Prager turns 78… Former ambassador and permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations, Robert Keith Rae turns 78… Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, he is international writer-at-large for The New York Times, Roger Cohen turns 71… U.S. senator from Nevada, Jacklyn Sheryl “Jacky” Rosen turns 69… Psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and brain researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Yoram Yovell turns 68… Strategic advisor at Breaking Through, Inc., Amy Aronoff Blumkin… Mayor of St. Petersburg, Fla., for eight years until 2022, now executive vice president and principal of the U.S. Cities Practice at Shumaker Advisors, Richard David “Rick” Kriseman turns 64… Owner of Newton, Mass.-based MPG Promotions, Elliot Mael… Senior vice president of operations and general counsel of Yeshiva University, Andrew J. “Avi” Lauer… Professional tennis player, who was once ranked No. 6 in the world, now the director of tennis at St. Andrews country club in Boca Raton, Fla., Aaron Krickstein turns 59… Former member of the Knesset, first for the Labor party and then the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Leon Litinetsky turns 59… Senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Steven A. Cook turns 58… EVP for Hearst Television and past chair of the NBC Television Affiliate Board, Eric J. Meyrowitz… Senior director for global trade and public affairs at confectionery, food and pet care firm, Mars Inc., Jay Eizenstat… Professional golfer, he won a PGA tournament in both 2003 and 2004, Jonathan Andrew Kaye turns 56… Pulitzer Prize-winning, D.C.-based national security reporter for The New York Times for 13 years until 2024, now doing investment research, Matthew Rosenberg turns 52… Senior executive communications lead at Adobe, Stephen L. Rabin… Labor law attorney in the Nashville, Tenn., office of Holland & Knight, he served on the national board of JFNA, Aron Zwi Karabel… Program director at the Jewish Fertility Foundation, Tamar Poupko Smith… CEO of Make It Real, he is also the co-founder and chair of The Jewish Entrepreneur (a mentoring program), Isaac William “Zevy” Wolman… Director of philanthropy (Israel) at The Paul E. Singer Foundation, Julia Nayfeld Schulman… Vice president of the United States, James David (JD) Vance turns 42… Actor best known for her 1999 “Pepsi Girl” role as a 7-year-old, and later for subsequent teen roles, Hallie Kate Eisenberg turns 34… Baseball pitcher, he played for Team Israel in 2017 and now manages a baseball training facility for young players in Philadelphia, Kenny Koplove turns 33… CEO of Petra Power in Solon, Ohio, Aaron Goodman turns 32…
Plus, Columbia student union drops BDS demand
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel speaks on stage during the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 21, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. Delegates, politicians, and Democratic Party supporters are in Chicago for the convention, concluding with current Vice President Kamala Harris accepting her party's presidential nomination.
Good Thursday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, said today at an antisemitism roundtable with local Jewish community leaders that she will not be attending the Michigan state Democratic Party convention in August because she would not feel safe there…
A new Emerson College pollof the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan found far-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed surging ahead of Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) by 15 points, 54-39%…
The American Association of University Professors issued its first-ever political endorsement in its 110-year history today, backing El-Sayed ahead of next week’s primary. The professional organization has repeatedly faced criticism from Jewish groups and faculty members for straying from its mission by engaging in anti-Israel advocacy…
An Emerson College poll of next month’s special primary election to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the ballot in South Carolina found Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) at the top of the pack, leading Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) 22-19%, with a quarter of likely primary voters still undecided. If no candidate receives a majority, the top two vote-getters will advance to a runoff…
Columbia University’s student workers’ union dropped its demand that the university divest from Israel during a bargaining session on Tuesday, the Columbia Spectator reports, in a significant reversal of the union’s pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions advocacy. Union President Grant Miner claimed the move was a natural part of the negotiation process: “As you bargain, you have to face the realities of where you are.”
Columbia is also set to open its global center in Tel Aviv this summer, professor Nadav Eyal said on an episode of Dan Senor’s “Call Me Back” podcast earlier this week. Plans for the center were announced in April 2023, but have been on hold since the Oct. 7 attacks…
Former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes dropped out of the Democratic primary for governor today. Barnes said in his announcement video that it’s “very clear who our nominee is going to be,” in an apparent reference to Democratic Socialists of America-backed Francesca Hong, though he did not offer her his endorsement.
Barnes dropped out shortly before The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the Wisconsin Democratic Party had investigated allegations in 2025 that he had taken advantage of his role in the party for sexual encounters with young women…
Negotiations between mediators and Hamas, taking place on Thursday in Cairo, are “making progress” on disarmament, a diplomatic official told The Times of Israel. The plan under discussion would see “all weapons decommissioned” as well as “the elimination of all tunnels, depots of weapons and any weapons production facilities” in Gaza, the official said…
Iranian hackers may have been behind a cyberattack on dozens of municipal water systems this week in Minnesota, state and federal officials told The New York Times…
The Iran-backed Houthi terror group, which is based in Yemen, reportedly attacked Saudi Arabia this week from Iraqi territory. The group may have operated with the assistance of militias in the country working with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in an indication of the growing coordination between Tehran’s proxies…
Amid the renewed attacks it has faced from both Iran and the Houthis, Saudi Arabia hosted dozens of military officials from around the world, including the U.S., for a meeting today to establish a maritime defense alliance. Thirteen countries joined Riyadh in signing a statement of support for the effort: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia…
The Senate narrowly blockedanother push by Democrats today to force an end to the Iran war, 50-49, with Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Rand Paul (R-KY) again breaking with their party to vote for the war powers resolution and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) voting against it…
The share of Israelis who believe President Donald Trump is “highly committed” to protecting Israel’s security interests has dropped to a new low, according to a survey from Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.
The organization’s July 2026 National Security Survey found that only 14% of Israelis believe the country’s security interests are a top concern for Trump, representing a significant drop from the 35% recorded in March, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports…
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) argued today at the Hudson Institute that, without regime change in Iran, the U.S. will likely need to continue to conduct periodic military operations against Iran’s nuclear program to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, JI’s Marc Rod reports…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at the dynamics in the Democratic primary for the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), where Jewish state Sen. Jeremy Moss’ challengers are targeting him for his ties to pro-Israel donors.
President Donald Trump is expected to hold a Cabinet meeting tomorrow at the historic Camp David retreat in Maryland.
The Democratic Socialists of America will hold its annual organizing conference this weekend in Chicago, where some programming will focus on “anti-imperialist and pro-Palestine organizing strategy” to end the “U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine.”
We’ll be back with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat shalom!
Stories You May Have Missed
LOSING YOUR HERITAGE
A former trade policy analyst at the conservative think tank said that many new hires were fixated on conspiracy theories about the Holocaust
SECURITY CONCERN
The agency said state administrative agencies and the extended DHS shutdown caused the lengthy delay in issuing the grants
Plus, 2025 NSGP grants come in low and slow
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
An exterior view of The Heritage Foundation building on July 30, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on new allegations of an antisemitic culture at the Heritage Foundation and cover New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s response to questions over the absence of Jews from his Advisory Committee on the Judiciary. We report on a conversation between Yasir Al-Rumayyan, a close associate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, during Tuesday’s funeral service in Washington for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and spotlight an announcement by the rabbinic arm of the Conservative movement to further welcome interfaith families. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. Roger Wicker, Adm. Brad Cooper and Erica Schwartz.
We also have a new on-demand Live Briefing that you can access throughout the day via our new app (on Apple and Android) and on our website.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by Israel Editor Tamara Zieve and U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik, with an assist from Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- CENTCOM said it conducted a “heavy wave of strikes” against Iran on Wednesday night, as a “powerful response” to Tehran’s attempted attacks on U.S. forces on Tuesday. The military said it struck dozens of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets in Iran, including military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites and maritime capabilities.
- Earlier Wednesday, President Donald Trump had warned that the U.S. would “beat the f**king sh*t out of” Iran following the attempted attack by the IRGC, even as he signaled a willingness to keep diplomatic channels open. “We’ll be hitting them hard,” Trump told Fox News’ Trey Yingst. “They’re going to get a beating.”
- The Senate is expected to hold a procedural vote this morning on a war powers resolution seeking to end those U.S. operations in Iran, after it was postponed yesterday.
- The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a nomination hearing for Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to be CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
- This morning, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is speaking at the Hudson Institute for a conversation on global threats.
- In the afternoon, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is co-hosting an antisemitism roundtable with the Anti-Defamation League to hear from Jewish community leaders about recent antisemitic incidents in the state.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S WILL BREDDERMAN
The morning after a double hate crime targeted an Asian American and a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke in Manhattan, during which the attacker allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” and “Justice for Islam” while passing a synagogue and stabbing the second victim, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine offered what may prove a eulogy for a political era in America’s greatest metropolis.
“There is no New York without us,” the Jewish Democrat said at a press conference outside The Jewish Center, the Modern Orthodox synagogue where the Jewish victim worshipped, invoking the deep history and contributions of Jews to the Big Apple.
But Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the lone citywide official not to attend the gathering, seems to wager that he can govern New York City without much support from the dense web of religious and civic organizations that historically shaped Jewish life there and helped guide the choices of his predecessors. Mamdani received only about one-third of the Jewish vote in the mayoral election, but little support from legacy Jewish groups.
One need only look to the state Assembly district covering the site of the assault to see how Mamdani is at odds with the mainstream Jewish leadership. As mayor, he endorsed an opponent of Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, the favorite of local Jewish Democratic leadership, as she sought the seat in June. The rabbi serves as associate dean of Jewish Theological Seminary, and is the daughter-in-law of retired longtime UJA-Federation of New York CEO John Ruskay. In doing so, Mamdani even spurned one of his most vocal Jewish supporters, former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, long a standard-bearer of a Jewish liberalism rooted in communal institutions.
LOSING YOUR HERITAGE
Nine months after the Heritage Foundation came under fire for defending Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with a neo-Nazi, the conservative think tank is facing fresh scrutiny over accusations that it has enabled an extreme culture in which new hires feel free to question the Holocaust and to engage in historically revisionist debates about World War II, with no apparent internal policing from leadership, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Internet influence: Andrew Hale, a trade policy analyst at Heritage who left in January to join a rival think tank launched by former Vice President Mike Pence, recalled that prior to departing he had found new hires were fixated on antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Holocaust and Israel of the sort popularized by Nick Fuentes, Carlson and Candace Owens, the extreme-right podcast host. Hale confirmed to JI in an interview on Wednesday that new, particularly younger, staffers at Heritage “openly said things which were antisemitic, whether they realized it or not,” crediting their views to an obsession with far-right social media channels.
HOT SEAT
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani continued to face questions on Wednesday about how he managed to appoint a panel of attorneys to recommend city judges that did not include a single Jewish member. The absence of any Jewish representation on the Advisory Committee on the Judiciary came despite a vow from the mayor’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, that the panel was “truly representative cross-section of the legal profession in New York City,” Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.
What he said: The mayor, at an unrelated event on Wednesday, maintained he had not inquired about nominees’ religious affiliations. “Any suggestion that there would be any decision made or motivated by religion, it does bother me,” Mamdani told reporters. “Any suggestion that the composition of the advisory committee was motivated by religion is false.”
RIYADH X REZA
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the powerful head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and a close associate of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was seen greeting and conversing with Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, during Tuesday’s funeral service in Washington for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Zoom in: In video footage first published Tuesday by the Christian Broadcasting Network, the two men shared an embrace and spoke briefly during the service. The interaction marked a rare public exchange between a top Saudi official and one of the most prominent Iranian opposition figures. Al-Rumayyan holds several key leadership roles across Saudi state interests, including as governor of the Saudi Public Investment fund and chair of oil giant Saudi Aramco, English football club Newcastle United and Riyadh Air.
SECURITY CONCERN
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced on Wednesday that 1,600 out of 6,000 applications received for the long-delayed 2025 Nonprofit Security Grant Program cycle were approved, meaning that less than 27% of organizations that applied received any funding — a significant dip from previous years, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Details: The grants were approved nearly a year after applications opened for the 2025 cycle on Aug. 13, 2025, and after applications for 2026 NSGP funding were already due last week. FEMA indicated that state agencies responsible for administering the grants on the state level and repeated Department of Homeland Security shutdowns relating to immigration enforcement disputes were responsible for the delays.
DEFENSE DOLLARS
Senate Republicans said this week that a House-passed budget reconciliation bill does not contain enough defense-related funding and that they want to significantly increase it, setting up a clash between GOP lawmakers in the two chambers, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What they’re saying: Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told JI, “I’d rather it be much bigger.” The bill passed by House Republicans includes $73 billion in defense-related funding, designed to largely cover the administration’s $87.6 billion supplemental funding request for the Iran war. But the administration has said it needs an additional $350 billion, separate from the Iran war funding, to help bring to fruition the $1.5 trillion defense budget it envisions for 2027.
Scoop: Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Ronny Jackson (R-TX) are set to introduce legislation on Friday to investigate whether the Iran-linked Polisario Front, a paramilitary group that claims sovereignty over parts of the Western Sahara, can be designated as a terrorist organization.
RABBINIC RULINGS
Eight months after the Conservative movement apologized to interfaith couples for treating them as if their relationships were a threat to Jewish survival, the rabbinic arm of the movement announced a new set of Jewish legal rulings to provide concrete ways congregations and rabbis can better welcome interfaith families. But the new reforms stop short of allowing Conservative rabbis to officiate at interfaith weddings, eJewish Philanthropy’s Jay Deitcher reports.
Majority vote: The announcement came in the form of a publication titled, “Gateways Into Jewish Living: Guiding the Conservative/Masorti Rabbi in Supporting Families with Non-Jewish Loved Ones,” authored by the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. The nine rulings were voted on by 23 rabbis from the committee, with most passing by a wide margin. The most contentious issue — passed with 14 votes in favor, five against and four abstentions — dealt with offering a Hanukkat Habayit, a dedication of the Jewish home, for interfaith families who are building an “exclusively” Jewish home.
Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.
Worthy Reads
Who Fills the Void? The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim examines the scramble to succeed the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), weighing the candidacy of former Gov. Mark Sanford against Graham’s own sister, Darline, drafted into the race by a Trump endorsement she didn’t seek. “Lindsey Graham and Mark Sanford were once close; so much so that Mr. and Mrs. Sanford, as they then were, named Graham godfather to their youngest son. Still I strongly suspect Mr. Sanford, a quasi-libertarian at heart, would view the hawkish policies advocated by Graham in narrowly fiscal terms and deem them too expensive … Will Ms. Graham carry on her brother’s ‘legacy,’ as her campaign literature claims? The task of replacing the ubiquitous Lindsey Graham seems undoable, but his sister signals the right attitude.” [WSJ]
Why Now? In his Substack, “It’s Noon in Israel,” Amit Segal explores the reasoning behind Iran’s renewed attacks on the U.S. “The logic is simple. Both sides are running out of time, but on different clocks. Iran’s runs on resources; [President Donald] Trump’s — whatever the reports of munitions shortages suggest — runs on patience. Iran can afford to lose resources if the spending drains Trump’s patience faster. Quiet slows his clock. Silence is Iran’s worst enemy. That is also why [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is not pushing for another military campaign. Such a campaign would drain Trump completely — and if the regime survived, as it is certain it would, then even amid the rubble it would have won. Iran thinks it can out-stubborn Trump. Netanyahu is working around that bet rather than trying the strategy himself.” [Substack]
Friends and Foes: In The Free Press, Elliott Abrams, the former diplomat who now serves as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Washington this week as the two allies bearing the heaviest burden for U.S. interests — yet still uncertain whether President Donald Trump will fully commit to backing them. “The issue this week is not so much the personal relationships, though those matter far more than they should to Trump. Instead, the issue is how Trump sees friends, partners, allies, and democracies, versus opponents and enemies. Trump continues to treat Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping with remarkable deference and respect despite the direct threats they pose to U.S. interests. There’s every reason to believe that Russia is providing Iran with intelligence helping it hit U.S. bases in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the U.S. is pampering an ally with far less skin in the game than Israel and Ukraine. Last week, the Trump administration announced its acceptance of a nuclear energy deal that will allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium, without subjecting it to inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency.” [FP]
Word on the Street
In an interview with ABC News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he discussed with President Donald Trump various options to proceed with handling the conflict with Iran, but ultimately, “It’s his decision.” Netanyahu said, “The truth is, we’re partners. We’re allies. He’s the senior partner. It’s the United States of America, let’s not forget. And I’m a junior partner. But I’m the prime minister of Israel, and when I have to stand up for the interest of my country and the security of my country, I do so”…
Addressing Vice President JD Vance’s comments to podcaster Joe Rogan this month that American politics are being swayed by Israeli “influence campaigns,” Netanyahu said he “had a very good conversation with the vice president this morning, and I think we straightened that out because we’re not. That’s not our policy”…
Netanyahu also met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Blair House on Wednesday morning. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and Israeli National Security Advisor Shmuel Ben Ezra participated in the meeting, along with Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, and Sean Parnell, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs…
The late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) worked privately with Netanyahu just before the 2024 election to organize a bipartisan group of senators to denounce the International Criminal Court‘s investigation of the Israeli leader — coordination captured in footage from filmmaker Alex Holder, in which Graham joked he should be paid “tons of shekels” for his help…
Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman traveled to Washington and met with Trump and Vance at the White House on Wednesday, according to Axios, where Prince Khalid told them that, despite Riyadh having engaged in joint strikes with the U.S. on Iranian proxies, the kingdom still wants to see hostilities with Iran de-escalate…
CENTCOM head Adm. Brad Cooper has prepared a two-week intensive bombing campaign against Iran as an option for Trump to consider, The Wall Street Journal reports, outlining a strategy to cripple Tehran’s missile capabilities in order to reduce the strain on U.S. defensive munitions…
The Treasury Department sanctioned the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, which are backed by the IRGC, for running “insurance” schemes in the Strait of Hormuz, whereby the terror group creates threats to commercial shipping and then charges vessels for insurance coverage…
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met on Wednesday in Ankara with new Hamas head Khalil Al-Hayya…
A Brooklyn federal judge sentenced Dan Sohail to serve six months in jail and pay $19,000 in restitution for ramming his car into Chabad’s world headquarters in Brooklyn in January…
The New York Times profiles Reihan Salam, the conservative Manhattan Institute president working to make the think tank the “intellectual engine of the resistance” to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani…
The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast on Wednesday spotlighted AIPAC and the role it is now playing in U.S. politics, describing it as a once-bipartisan organization that has now become partisan and a polarizing force in the Democratic Party. During the conversation, among other statements that drew the ire of AIPAC, guest Jonathan Mahler said the advocacy group’s actions “have provided an opening, honestly, for bad actors, but in particular, in a sort of worrying sense for people who are not just criticizing Israel but who are criticizing Jews and Jewish influence”…
In an X thread responding to several of the accusations made against it during the podcast, AIPAC said, “This is an outrageous accusation. Suggesting that politically active pro-Israel American citizens are to blame for antisemitism is shameful. Antisemites are responsible for the rise in antisemitism”…
The Associated Press spotlights a fringe group of Israeli settlers, the Pioneers of Bashan, who have repeatedly breached the border with Syria, with the ultimate goal of establishing Jewish settlements inside the country — despite condemnation from the IDF…
Opposition lawmakers in Israel filibustered an 11-hour Knesset Finance Committee session yesterday to block NIS 392 million ($127 million) for Haredi education and West Bank settlements…
The Forward tells the story of Nik Jakobs and his family — namely his grandmother, Edith, who was hidden by the entire Dutch town of Stadskanaal to survive the Holocaust, a story which the town recently restaged as a play — as Jakobs is now building a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield from the salvaged remnants of shuttered American shuls…
Jewish summer campers who were headed home to Baltimore during Tuesday night’s storms hauled a fallen tree off a Washington road, clearing the way for a blocked ambulance…
The Associated Press examines the growing far-left media ecosystem, including Drop Site News and Hasan Piker’s stream, that has helped to boost a range of progressive candidates during this primary cycle…
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) declined to answer questions from a Drop Site News reporter, responding, “Oh, you’re Drop Site! It’s like a race between who’s the more pro-Hamas: Drop Site or Zeteo?” Fetterman went on to reiterate his support for Israel and said he wanted Drop Site viewers to know “how much I love to watch Israel eliminating the Hamas leadership”…
A new Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 3 in 4 Democrats would consider backing a socialist for president, but only 39% of overall respondents would do the same…
Boston University’s Conference on the Jewish Left has rescinded its invitation to Curt Mills, editor of The American Conservative magazine and a prominent voice in MAGA’s anti-Israel wing, after backlash over his inclusion in the March 2027 program, reports Jewish Currents, a magazine associated with the anti-Zionist Jewish left…
CBS News announced that Wall Street Journal correspondent Dov Lieber will join its team in September as a senior reporter based in Israel…
The American Jewish Committee named Andrew Gross, who was previously director of international innovation and partnerships at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, as director of its New York regional office…
Frances “Fran” Belzberg, a Vancouver philanthropist and Order of Canada recipient whose family founded Israel’s OneFamily terror-victims organization, died last Shabbat at 99…
Pic of the Day
Erica Schwartz, founder of The Well, a new Jewish dating app, mingled with prospective users at the app’s launch event on Tuesday in Manhattan. The Well — named for the biblical story of Eliezer finding Isaac’s wife, Rebecca — is slated to launch in the coming weeks. The app matches Jewish day school alumni using AI and matchmakers, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Birthdays
Commissioner emeritus of Major League Baseball, his 2019 memoir is For the Good of the Game, Allan Huber “Bud” Selig turns 92…
Retired attorney from the firm of Hatton, Petrie & Stackler in Aliso Viejo, Calif., Ronald E. Stackler turns 89… The first woman justice on the Nebraska Supreme Court, as a teen she won two gold medals and a silver medal as a swimmer at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, Justice Lindsey Miller-Lerman turns 79… Actor, director and producer, Ken Olin turns 72… Philanthropist and investor, of Uzbek Bukhari background, known as the “King of Diamonds,” Lev Leviev turns 70… Sports executive, attorney and president of Paris Basketball, David Kahn turns 65… Former mayor of Arad and then a member of the Knesset for the Kulanu and Likud parties, Tali Ploskov turns 64… President of C&M Transcontinental, he served as COO for the first two Trump campaigns, Michael S. Glassner turns 63… Emmy Award-winning actor, comedian and producer, Lisa Kudrow turns 63… Head coach of men’s tennis and director of tennis operations at Columbia University, Howard Endelman turns 61… Best-selling nonfiction author, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone magazines, he is a co-creator of the HBO series “Vinyl,” Rich Cohen turns 58… District chief of staff for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Robert M. Gottheim turns 55… Assistant attorney general for antitrust at the DOJ during most of the Biden administration, Jonathan Seth Kanter turns 53… Motivational speaker, author and entrepreneur, he served as a law clerk in 2008 for Justices O’Connor and Ginsburg, the first blind person to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court, Isaac Lidsky turns 47… President of MS NOW, Rebecca M. Kutler… Member of the Knesset for the Otzma Yehudit party, Limor Son Har-Melech turns 47… Senior producer at Vox and host and producer of the podcast of the Association for Jewish Studies, Avishay Artsy… President and founder in 2014 of Dallas-based ECA Strategies, Eric Chaim Axel… Pittsburgh-based therapist, Lewis Sohinki… Author of Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered: One Woman’s Year in the Heart of the Christian, Muslim, Armenian and Jewish Quarters of Old Jerusalem, Sarah Tuttle-Singer turns 45… Former director of policy and public affairs for the Jewish Community of Denmark, now in the renewable energy and offshore wind industry, Jonas Herzberg Karpantschof… Attorney and member of the Los Angeles County GOP Central Committee for Assembly District 42, which includes Pacific Palisades, Elizabeth Barcohana turns 43… Former head of digital operations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, Tamar Schwarzbard… Managing principal of West Egg Development, a New York-based real estate development firm, Samuel Ezra Eshaghoff turns 34… Former trade officer at Israel’s economic mission to the South and Midwest U.S., Joshua Weintraub… Winner of the Miss Israel pageant in 2014, she is now an international businesswoman, Mor Maman turns 31… Actor, as a 10-year-old she starred in the comedy film “Ramona and Beezus,” and since then in many movies and television shows, Joey Lynn King turns 27…
If Mamdani is able to succeed by only playing to his base — still a big if — the city’s organized Jewish community risks getting written off entirely
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a food distribution center on July 27, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
The morning after a double hate crime targeted an Asian American and a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke in Manhattan, during which the attacker allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” and “Justice for Islam” while passing a synagogue and stabbing the second victim, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine offered what may prove a eulogy for a political era in America’s greatest metropolis.
“There is no New York without us,” the Jewish Democrat said at a press conference outside The Jewish Center, the Modern Orthodox synagogue where the Jewish victim worshipped, invoking the deep history and contributions of Jews to the Big Apple.
But Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the lone citywide official not to attend the gathering, seems to wager that he can govern New York City without much support from the dense web of religious and civic organizations that historically shaped Jewish life there and helped guide the choices of his predecessors. Mamdani received only about one-third of the Jewish vote in the mayoral election, but little support from legacy Jewish groups.
One need only look to the state Assembly district covering the site of the assault to see how Mamdani is at odds with the mainstream Jewish leadership. As mayor, he endorsed an opponent of Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay, the favorite of local Jewish Democratic leadership, as she sought the seat in June. The rabbi serves as associate dean of Jewish Theological Seminary, and is the daughter-in-law of retired longtime UJA-Federation of New York CEO John Ruskay. In doing so, Mamdani even spurned one of his most vocal Jewish supporters, former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, long a standard-bearer of a Jewish liberalism rooted in communal institutions.
The mayor instead backed Eli Northrup, a Jewish attorney and activist ambivalent about Israel but deeply engaged in the online left that propelled Mamdani to power.
And it was this very online, Democratic Socialists of America-dominated audience that the mayor addressed two days before the attack, when he released a video denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he admitted he could not honor his campaign vow to arrest him if he came to the city for the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. The social media post followed days of questions and criticism from local press and Jewish leaders over his continued toying with the idea of cuffing the Israeli leader, even though city attorneys had long apprised Mamdani that he had no authority to enforce an International Criminal Court warrant against the Israeli leader, as The New York Times subsequently reported.
But rather than plainly admitting he could not honor his promise, the mayor spun a real-world, local loss into an Internet triumph: releasing a dramatic, camera-facing address on his official social media channels with the caption “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.” The video itself focuses on denouncing the Israeli prime minister as the “architect of a horrific genocide” — without even mentioning the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack that set off the most recent round of the conflict. Only in the final moments of the video, which received more than 150 million views, does the mayor acknowledge he lacks legal grounds to arrest Netanyahu.
There is at present no evidence that the video inspired the Manhattan attack, much less a violent incident at a Jewish summer camp in Queens this week. But the video prompted fierce criticism from Jewish leaders — and calls from Levine and other prominent Democrats for a general tempering of rhetoric among elected officials. Mamdani has refused to even acknowledge suggestions that he turn down the temperature.
He also dismissed concerns from a suite of Jewish attorneys associations that a panel he appointed to recommend city judicial appointments did not include a single Jewish member, despite the prevalence of Jewish attorneys in New York. This kind of political faux pas, committed amid relentless criticism from Jewish leaders, would typically sap a leader’s political capital. But Mamdani built his political coalition online, apart from traditional bases of political influence, and it looks to have endured these incidents unscathed.
If anything, the mayor still appears empowered after helping to elect three leftist allies in New York City to Congress last month, ousting two sitting members of the House in the process. And the institutions, Jewish and otherwise, that have sought to stop him look weaker than ever.
He smashed the political organization of one-time ally Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), and humiliated the left-wing Working Families Party by using his clout to lift Assemblymember Claire Valdez over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in the primary for the retiring Velazquez’s seat.
He also potentially decimated the unique Jewish-Dominican political alliance — the kind of “only in New York” ethnic coalition that once defined city politics — that elevated Levine to power by taking out the comptroller’s most important ally, Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), with his own pick: radical grad student Darializa Avila Chevalier.
But Mamdani is not the only canny politician capitalizing on the emotionally heightened moment. Netanyahu, facing a tough election fight at home, has announced his intention to come to New York and challenge the mayor’s message and authority directly. Mamdani, who enjoys better poll numbers among American Jews than Netanyahu, has already tacitly urged his supporters to greet the Israeli leader with protests.
A collision between the two seems increasingly likely — with potential to again impact New York’s Jewish community.
Less sensationally, and often behind the scenes, the main challenge to Mamdani’s latitude in government have so far been two more moderate-minded Jewish women, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and City Council Speaker Julie Menin, both around issues of law and order. Tisch, a grand marshal in this year’s Israel Day on Fifth Ave parade, reportedly forced the mayor’s hand on the question of arresting Netanyahu, as her department prepared to publicly declare it could not take the Israeli politician into custody.
Menin helped shepherd bills mandating police buffer zones around religious institutions and schools at a time when the mayor struggled to condemn pro-Hamas protests outside synagogues.
Meanwhile, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten has fought the mayor politically. Her union helped bankroll PACs opposing his political candidates, and its New York branch — closely aligned with Menin and the city’s Jewish Democratic establishment — has threatened the mayor with “all-out war” in upcoming contract negotiations.
So far though, these struggles have barely slowed the mayor down. His social media-fueled movement has little appetite for compromise, at least on their core issues (which includes opposition to Israel). If Mamdani is able to succeed by only playing to his base — still a big if — the city’s organized Jewish community risks getting written off entirely.
Plus, a tale for Tu B'Av: matchmaking meets machines
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
President Donald Trump prepares to leave after speaking during an event at Verst Logistics on March 11, 2026 in Hebron, Kentucky.
Good Wednesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump warned this morning that the U.S. would “beat the f**king sh*t out of” Iran following an attempted surprise ballistic missile attack yesterday by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on U.S. forces, even as the president signaled a willingness to keep diplomatic channels open, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Asked later if Iran was involved in a drone attack today on a U.S.-owned gas storage tanker at a shipping terminal in Egypt, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the incident was “a little more of the same. … We’re going to be hitting [Iran] very hard ’cause it’s our turn to hit them. They know it’s coming,” he continued…
A U.S. official said last night’s retaliation by the U.S. and Saudi militaries against Iran-backed militias in Iraq resulted in the deaths of 20 Iran-linked individuals, who were a mix of IRGC members and technical advisors…
Before the latest escalation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump discussed in their Oval Office meeting yesterday several potential next steps in Iran: reaching a diplomatic agreement, increasing economic pressure or intensifying military strikes, Axios reports.
The two leaders also spoke about Netanyahu’s continued insistence that the U.S. wind down aid to Israel — an effort the Israeli prime minister wants to lead publicly to give GOP lawmakers cover to support it — as well as the IDF’s continued presence in Syria…
Wrapping up his trip in Washington, Netanyahu met with Vice President JD Vance last night and hosted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Blair House this morning…
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met today in Ankara with new Hamas head Khalil Al-Hayya…
The Treasury Department sanctioned the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, which are backed by the IRGC, for running “insurance” schemes in the Strait of Hormuz, whereby the terror group creates threats to commercial shipping and then charges vessels for insurance coverage…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani continued to face questions today about his decision to appoint a judicial advisory committee that did not include any Jews, which critics have noted is at stark odds with the large population of Jewish attorneys working in the five boroughs, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.
“Any suggestion that there would be any decision made or motivated by religion, it does bother me,” Mamdani told reporters today. “Any suggestion that the composition of the advisory committee was motivated by religion is false”…
Mamdani’s communications director disputed an account by former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel of his September 2025 meeting with Mamdani in which Emanuel said he told him, “You chant ‘[from the] river to the sea,’ and that means there will never be a homeland for Jews who had faced the Holocaust. I want you to hear this: Over my dead body.”
Anna Bahr, Mamdani’s staffer, said in a post replying to the clip of Emanuel on the “Unholy” podcast: “can confirm this … did not happen”…
A new pollof Michigan’s battleground 7th Congressional District shows progressive William Lawrence, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, leading the Democratic primary with a 38% plurality, followed by former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam (27%) and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink (19%). The survey, which was commissioned by a group backing Maasdam, also found 16% of voters are still undecided ahead of next week’s primary…
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) predicted Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro would be a “formidable” opponent if both men run in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary and told the Washington Examiner that Shapiro “very graciously” called him after Khanna claimed he was detained by Israeli settlers in the West Bank earlier this month…
A read for Tu B’Av, the Jewish holiday of love, happening today: A new Jewish dating app combining the benefits of traditional matchmakers with technology, set to launch in the coming weeks, is exclusively made for Jewish day school grads to find their bashert, founder Erica Schwartz told JI’s Haley Cohen. The app — called The Well, in a nod to the biblical story of Eliezer finding Isaac’s wife, Rebecca — utilizes a chatbot, human intuition and no swiping at all…
CBS News announced that Wall Street Journal correspondent Dov Lieber will join its team in September as a senior reporter based in Israel…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look into the reported far-right dynamics now at play among the new employees of the Heritage Foundation, following an exodus of the organization’s traditionally conservative staff under President Kevin Roberts.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel will co-host an antisemitism roundtable with the Anti-Defamation League to hear from Jewish community leaders about the impacts of recent antisemitic incidents in the state.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a nomination hearing for Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, to be CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Rogers was nominated for the role by President Donald Trump after a federal judge ruled that Kari Lake had been unlawfully serving as the agency’s acting chief executive, invalidating many of the actions she took while leading the agency.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) will appear at the Hudson Institute for a conversation on the global threat environment.
Stories You May Have Missed
SHUL POLITICS
Leading rabbis across the state are urging their congregants to vote for Stevens — even if they’re not saying so explicitly
AID ARGUMENTS
Many of the attendees at Temple Emanuel who listened to the congressman defend his position appeared critical of the stance he’d taken and unconvinced by his explanation, Jewish constituents said
The NYC mayor said he did not inquire about religious identification of the panelists and only excluded a Jewish nominee due to his work with Ghislaine Maxwell
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani answers questions on October 17, 2025 in New York City.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani continued to face questions on Wednesday about how he managed to appoint a panel of attorneys to recommend city judges that did not include a single Jewish member.
The absence of any Jewish representation on the Advisory Committee on the Judiciary — which evaluates potential appointees to New York’s family and misdemeanor courts — came despite a vow from the mayor’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, that the panel was “truly representative cross-section of the legal profession in New York City.”
The move sparked outcry from an array of Jewish legal groups and the Anti-Defamation League earlier this week, who noted that the absence of Jews on the body is at stark odds with the large number of Jewish New Yorkers working as attorneys in the five boroughs. Some estimates find that between a third and a half of all lawyers in New York City are Jewish.
The mayor, at an unrelated event on Wednesday, maintained he had not inquired about nominees’ religious affiliations.
“Any suggestion that there would be any decision made or motivated by religion, it does bother me,” Mamdani told reporters. “Any suggestion that the composition of the advisory committee was motivated by religion is false.”
The mayor defended his rejection of retired state Supreme Court Justice John Leventhal, one of nine recommendations to the panel to come from outside his office, on the grounds he had served on the legal defense team of accused sex criminal Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime partner of Jeffrey Epstein.
“As much as possible we thought it best to avoid any association between the committee that would be appointing judges and the Epstein world,” Mamdani said.
The mayor said that he had nominated and renominated multiple Jewish judges during his first months in office.
“That will continue because of the mere fact of, as a reflection of, what the city looks like,” he said.
Plus, Washington bids farewell to Lindsey Graham
Prime Minister's Office
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on July 28, 2026.
Good Tuesday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed his sit-down with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office this morning as “one of the best conversations I’ve ever had with a president of the United States,” saying in a video statement that the two leaders were completely aligned “on the shared goal that Iran will not have nuclear weapons.”
Caroline Glick, Netanyahu’s international affairs advisor, also described the meeting, which was closed to the press, as “extremely positive” and pushed back against reports of a rift between Jerusalem and Washington. Netanyahu and Trump “have arguments from time to time … but they are on the same page 100% with everything relating to the goal of all operations regarding Iran,” Glick told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea…
That rift was on display just hours before the meeting, when Trump expressed frustration with Netanyahu over reports that he planned to share with him Israeli intelligence regarding Iranian nuclear activity at Pickaxe Mountain.
“I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved [in Iran],” Trump alleged in an interview on Fox News. “I know exactly what’s happening at Pickaxe, it’s not a big problem,” he said…
And in another indication of daylight emerging between the two countries, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told Israel’s Channel 14 today that Jerusalem “very much want[s] to strike Iran’s energy targets,” but Washington “is not approving it at the moment because of the concern that Iran would attack neighboring countries, causing a global oil crisis”…
The funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at the Washington National Cathedral this afternoon drew his friends and supporters from all walks of life. Among those spotted in the sanctuary were Netanyahu; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine; Miriam Adelson; former Vice President Mike Pence; Ron Dermer, Israel’s former minister of strategic affairs; the parents of slain American Israeli hostage Omer Neutra; Reza Pahlavi, the exiled former crown prince of Iran; and a host of administration officials and members of Congress…
Despite both being in Washington today for the same reasons — White House meetings with Trump and Graham’s funeral — Netanyahu and Zelensky will not hold an official meeting, The Times of Israel reports, though the two leaders were spotted speaking in person for the first time in several years at the National Cathedral ahead of the funeral proceedings.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also spoke by phone today, where Sa’ar invited Sybiha to visit Israel…
The Senate added a provision extending long-standing sanctions on Iran, currently set to expire at the end of the year, into a major Russia sanctions package negotiated and championed by Graham before his death, JI’s Marc Rod reports. The bill is expected to receive its first procedural vote later today, after its sponsors meet with Zelensky…
Lebanese businessman Antoun Sehnaoui and former U.S. Middle East envoy Morgan Ortagus hosted a dinner in honor of Graham last night at the Four Seasons hotel in Washington, Axios reports. Netanyahu, who attended the event with his wife, Sara, told those gathered, “America has lost a great patriot, Israel has lost one of its greatest friends and supporters, and I have lost a dear friend”…
A man armed with a hammer today entered the premises of the Lev Leviev School in Queens, N.Y., where a Jewish day camp was operating and shoved a child into a fence before being subdued by camp personnel.
Queens Shmira, a local public safety organization, told JI that the incident was not a hate crime but was rather perpetrated by an “emotionally disturbed individual.” The NYPD took a person of interest into custody and the child was treated for a laceration on site before being transported to a hospital…
A new poll shows Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) leading former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers by two points if she wins next week’s closely watched Senate Democratic primary — with her opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, trailing Rogers by seven points, JI’s Gabby Deutch reports.
United Democracy Project, the AIPAC-affiliated super PAC, is meanwhile running a new ad hitting El-Sayed over his past support of the “uncommitted” movement and his criticisms of popular Democratic leaders…
CENTCOM announced today that it has signed an agreement with the UAE to establish the first bilateral task force focused on developing military artificial intelligence. The group, named Task Force Talon Synapse, will formally launch in the coming weeks and will be based in Abu Dhabi, with around 20 American and Emirati personnel with expertise in AI, data and cybersecurity…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at Jewish organizing efforts in Michigan ahead of the state’s Senate Democratic primary election next week.
Graham’s funeral will continue tomorrow in South Carolina, where he will receive a public procession at the Statehouse in Columbia and a private burial.
Stories You May Have Missed
MICHIGAN MATTERS
Haley Stevens touted her support for a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, while Abdul El-Sayed lambasted U.S. aid to the Jewish state
COALITION CALCULUS
In an address in Washington, the opposition leader sketched a coalition with Bennett and Eisenkot that would mend U.S. and European ties, harden Israel’s line on Iran and shift tone on Gaza
Plus, El-Sayed defends leaked 'ogre' remarks
Emir of Qatar
Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met with Rabbi Mendy Chitrik on July 27, 2026.
Good Monday afternoon.
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump decided to pause military strikes on Iran because the U.S. and Tehran are “in very deep talks,” he told Axios today, but if the discussions “don’t work out, we will go back to very strong military action.”
Negotiations are thus far indirect, reportedly taking place primarily between Iran and Oman, though Trump told reporters today that Iran had requested a meeting directly with the U.S…
Asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to the U.S.’ planned sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, Trump said, “Turkey’s been a great ally — for me. … Nobody tells me what we should be selling,” a clip that the White House’s rapid response social media account posted to X…
Saudi Arabia intercepted drones launched by Iran-backed militias in Iraq today which were targeting oil facilities in the country’s Eastern Province and in Riyadh, according to the Saudi Defense Ministry…
The U.S. Embassy in Israel temporarily restricted travel by U.S. government employees and their families into the West Bank due to “heightened security concerns and increased volatility” in the area…
Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani publicized a meeting in Doha today with a delegation of rabbis — led by Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, chair of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States — who came to offer their condolences on the death of the emir’s father and predecessor, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…
Days after an alleged hate crime against a Jewish person in Manhattan, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to engage with suggestions from various corners that he tone down his rhetoric around Israel — or to address why he continued publicly toying with arresting Netanyahu well after city attorneys told him he couldn’t, JI’s Will Bredderman reports…
The New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is planning to lobby state lawmakers to pass the “Not on Our Dime” bill, which would revoke the tax-exempt status of New York nonprofits that support Israeli settlement activity, as well as a bill that would impose penalties on airlines that move arms shipments to Israel from JFK Airport, The New York Times reports…
Conservative writer Rod Dreher said Vice President JD Vance, with whom he used to be friends, “cut me off” after a meeting in which Dreher asked him to push back against rising antisemitism among young people on the right.
Dreher recalled on an episode of “The Jeremy Boreing Show”: “I pointed out to [Vance] these people — [neo-Nazi Nick] Fuentes, the groypers, all of them — are going to destroy conservatism and the Republican Party, and I said to him, ‘Because of your background, because of your age, you are uniquely positioned to draw a red line there’ … but he hasn’t chosen to do it”…
Far-left Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed came under fire for leaked audio in which he said about his potential primary win, “You put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message,” comments which some understood to refer to his opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI).
El-Sayed disputed the interpretation, telling The 19th that he was “clearly referring to supporting a primary against [Sen.] John Fetterman (D-PA), who I’ve called an ogre many, many times”…
Troy Jackson, the newly minted U.S. Senate candidate in Maine, announced he’s raised $2 million since he replaced Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee over the weekend…
The Office of the Attending Physician in Congress said in a statement today that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has been hospitalized since he fell in June, is still not medically cleared to leave the rehabilitation facility and return to office…
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore appeared separately at The Hampton Synagogue on Long Island over the weekend, where they both “affirmed their commitment to Israel and to combating antisemitism,” founding Rabbi Marc Schneier said…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for an interview with George Moraitis, a former Florida state representative who is running in the Republican primary for the 23rd Congressional District, hoping to unseat Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL).
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet at the White House tomorrow with President Donald Trump for the eighth time in Trump’s second term, the most of any international leader. Before departing for Washington earlier today, Netanyahu said he and Trump would “discuss all the issues on the agenda — first and foremost, Iran.”
The two leaders will also attend the funeral of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), which will begin at the U.S. Capitol and then move to a service at the National Cathedral, where Trump is slated to give remarks. Other world leaders are also expected to be in attendance, including Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who landed in the U.S. this morning, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Central Synagogue in Manhattan will hold a memorial service for Wesley LePatner, one year after the Blackstone executive and Jewish philanthropist was killed in a shooting at the firm’s Midtown headquarters.
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The NYC mayor wouldn’t respond to criticism from fellow Democrats or Netanyahu, or explain why he continued toying with the notion of arresting the Israeli prime minister
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a food distribution center on July 27, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
Days after an alleged hate crime against a Jewish person in Manhattan, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to engage with suggestions from various corners that he de-escalate his rhetoric around Israel — or speak to why he continued publicly toying with arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu well after city attorneys told him he couldn’t.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Raul Morales with multiple hate crimes for stabbing first an Asian American and then a Jewish man on the Upper West Side last Thursday — the latter attack allegedly preceded by Morales shouting “Allahu Akbar” and “justice for Islam” outside an Orthodox synagogue displaying American and Israeli flags.
A number of Jewish leaders linked the attack to the mayor’s recent denunciations of Netanyahu and the Jewish state, and even a fellow Democrat signaled at a press conference on Friday morning that Mamdani should “take the temperature down.”
Netanyahu himself, whom Mamdani excoriated in a widely watched video last week as “the architect of a horrific genocide,” accused the mayor of “fomenting hate” in a Sunday appearance on Fox News.
But the mayor declined to substantively engage with any of these criticisms when pressed by reporters on Monday.
“I’m not interested in getting into a back and forth with Prime Minister Netanyahu,” the mayor said when asked about Netanyahu’s comments at an unrelated press conference, though he immediately pivoted back to attacking the Israeli leader when asked moments afterward about other New York elected officials suggesting his commentary might negatively impact Jewish New Yorkers. “When I make criticisms of Prime Minister Netanyahu, they are criticisms of Prime Minister Netanyahu. And what I shared were not even, frankly, personal assessments. They were objective facts.”
Still, the democratic socialist acknowledged that the majority of the city’s hate crimes fall upon its Jewish minority, and pledged his administration would protect them. He also praised the police for quickly arresting Morales, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
“One of my top priorities is keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe, keeping every single New Yorker safe,” he said. “My responsibility as a New Yorker and as a mayor of this city is a responsibility to take care of each and every person who calls the city their home. And that is not based upon whether or not they agree with me, how they feel about me. My job is to make sure that they are safe, that they are thriving, and they continue to call this city home.”
Asked why he continued to publicly suggest there was a possibility he might honor his campaign promise to arrest Netanyahu well after — according to The New York Times — city attorneys told him he had no power to do so, the mayor refused to explain.
“I’ve said all that I have to say on that topic,” he answered.
The Arizona senator, who is weighing a presidential bid, also urged Israelis to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming elections
Eric Lee/Getty Images
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) speaks during a pen and pad briefing with reporters at the U.S. Capitol on June 2, 2026 in Washington, DC. Sen.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that he will “always stand by Israel as a nation,” while adding that he hopes Israelis will oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the elections later this year.
“I’m not happy with the decisions that the prime minister of Israel has made over the last few years,” Kelly said in response to a question about whether he agrees with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent description of Netanyahu as a war criminal. “The way they conducted the operations in Gaza, there were a lot of mistakes made,” Kelly responded. “That being said, Israel is an ally of ours. We support the Israeli people. I’m going to always stand by Israel as a nation.”
He indicated he did not agree with Mamdani’s call for the U.S. government to arrest Netanyahu during his upcoming visit to the United States.
“The best way to resolve this issue with a prime minister — that, just like our president, is not doing the job they were hired to do — is for him to be defeated at the ballot box,” Kelly said. “So that’s coming up pretty soon here. I hope the Israeli people rally around a candidate that will take Israel in a better direction.”
Asked about the Iran war, Kelly questioned the administration’s $1.5 trillion defense budget and $67 billion supplemental funding request .
“Do we really feel that we’re that threatened, and we need to spend these sums of money for our defense? We’ve got programs that this administration is going to spend money on that aren’t going to work, and things that we don’t need,” Kelly said. “What they’re asking for is not reasonable.”
But he said he hasn’t made a final decision on the supplemental yet, while calling the administration’s handling of the war in Iran a “disaster.”
Kelly also acknowledged that he’s considering a presidential run in 2028.
“We have to see what are the issues that we’re facing after we get on the other side of November here,” Kelly said, emphasizing the need for Democrats to take back the House and Senate. “So this is a discussion I’m going to continue to have with my family, but we’ve got plenty of time.”
He also sounded supportive of the Democratic National Committee’s decision to make South Carolina the first Democratic primary state in the presidential election, praising Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the state’s Senate nominee Annie Andrews as well as Nancy Lacore, the party’s recruit in the open seat of retiring Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC).
Plus, Jewish groups sound the alarm on Mamdani
Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Donald Trump (R) meets with Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia during a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on November 18, 2025.
