Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) will travel to Israel on Sunday for his second visit to the Jewish state, the Pennsylvania Democrat told Jewish Insider on Friday.

Fetterman told JI of his plans in the Capitol early Friday evening while waiting to finish votes on funding legislation to prevent a government shutdown. The trip will mark Fetterman’s third international trip since being elected to the Senate in 2022. He did not elaborate on his schedule while in Israel. 

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the Trump administration’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, is set for a confirmation hearing during the week of March 24, the chairman of the committee overseeing his confirmation told Jewish Insider.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told JI on Friday that Huckabee’s confirmation process is proceeding normally, and said that the hearing will be held when Congress returns from its upcoming weeklong recess.

Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) are circulating a letter to administration officials defending detained Columbia University anti-Israel leader Mahmoud Khalil and questioning the authorities supporting his detention and revocation of his green card.

The letter had gathered over 100 signatures by Thursday evening, a source familiar with the situation said. It does not mention or acknowledge the specific nature of Khalil’s activities on Columbia’s campus, including his involvement with the anti-Israel encampment and the alleged distribution of pro-Hamas pamphlets at a protest he helped organize.

Pro-Israel Democrats are pressing Republicans to disavow the Heritage Foundation’s report calling for the U.S. to phase out U.S. military aid to Israel over the next 20 years, arguing that a failure to do so would undermine their claims of supporting Israel.

“I’ll always oppose anti-Israel proposals, whether they come from the left or the right,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) said on X. “I hope my Republican colleagues will join me in denouncing this plan from their side of the aisle to fully cut off U.S. support for Israel, one of our closest allies.”

A 30-day funding freeze enacted by the Trump administration at FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has caused an immediate pause to the millions of dollars distributed to help vulnerable nonprofits, including many Jewish institutions, meet their security needs. 

Synagogues, Jewish day schools and other organizations that rely on the FEMA funding dispersed through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program have not received reimbursements allocated to them, according to representatives from the Secure Community Network, an organization that provides security services to Jewish nonprofits. NSGP funding has allowed Jewish institutions to purchase security enhancements like impact-resistance windows, security cameras and bollards. 

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) again blasted a series of controversial staffing choices in the Trump administration, a day after the administration rescinded a job offer to an anti-Israel commentator for a deputy director of national intelligence role.

“Personnel is policy, and giving a senior job at ODNI to someone who’s been openly hostile to America’s closest ally in the Middle East is hardly the way to restore peace through strength,” McConnell told Jewish Insider. “For that matter, neither is hiring a Pentagon spokesperson who’s peddled anti-Semitic conspiracies and Russian propaganda, or senior policy advisors who think America doesn’t have significant interests in the Middle East or in deterring Chinese aggression, or a head of public diplomacy who mocks senators on social media. Who is signing off on these people?”

The recent controversy over a Heritage Foundation paper calling for the gradual elimination of U.S. aid to Israel was preceded by a 10-day visit to Washington by Likud lawmaker Amit Halevi, who promoted a similar proposal on Capitol Hill and beyond last month.

Halevi, an MK from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, spoke with Republican members of Congress, addressed the Hudson Institute, attended the Conservative Political Action Committee conference and met with Heritage Foundation leadership, accompanied by another advocate for reducing U.S. aid, Gideon Israel, president of the Jerusalem-Washington Center, which advises right-leaning figures on U.S.-Israel relations.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are privately frustrated by Adam Boehler, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for hostage affairs, over his behavior during a media blitz last weekend about his direct negotiations with Hamas and subsequent handling of the fallout. 

GOP sources told Jewish Insider the administration has pulled him off of the Hamas hostage file and said that he needs to be further sidelined.