Daily Kickoff
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2026
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we interview Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders about Vice President JD Vance's recent comments on the midterms, talk to members of Philadelphia’s Jewish community about Rep.-elect Chris Rabb’s silence regarding Sunday’s antisemitic bicycle protest in the city and cover Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments at the G7 in Paris that the U.S. could inflict “tremendous damage” on the International Criminal Court unless it changes course. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Karl Rove, Debora Cahn and Michael Bloomberg.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with assists from Tamara Zieve and Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
Today's Agenda
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will hold a press briefing today at the Pentagon, his first in several months, to address the congressional efforts to impeach him on allegations that he conducted military operations against Iran without authorization. Outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Monday reintroduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth, setting up a House vote that could come as soon as Wednesday.
Congressional Republicans are slated to hold leadership elections today. In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has faced pushback from members of the conference, including Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ron Johnson (R-WI), who have called for additional time before the votes are held, with Lee and Johnson noting that two consequential Senate races — Alaska and Mississippi — have yet to be called.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding nomination hearings today for a number of ambassador-rank diplomatic postings, including Nick Oberheiden to be ambassador to Egypt, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Dino LaVerghetta to be ambassador to Kuwait and Jane Lynch to be ambassador at large for international religious freedom.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a committee meeting this morning on the Right to Worship Act.
In Israel, the new Knesset is being sworn in this afternoon. Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot, who earlier this week was given the mandate to form a government, announced this morning the nomination of Matan Kahana to serve as Knesset speaker, as Eisenkot’s “change” bloc moves to replace Amir Ohana, the current speaker.
The United Arab Emirates is hosting U.S.-mediated Russia-Ukraine talks today in Abu Dhabi. White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are representing the U.S. in the talks.
The Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly wraps up today in Washington. David Axelrod, who served as a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama, is slated to speak at this morning’s closing plenary alongside Washington Free Beacon Editor-in-Chief Eliana Johnson.
In New York, Yeshiva University is hosting the next event in its “Great Conversations” series, hosting former Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in conversation with YU President Rabbi Ari Berman.
One Thing to Know
By Emily Jacobs
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a rising star in the GOP, says she believes President Donald Trump was right to launch the U.S. war against Iran, rejecting the argument made by Vice President JD Vance that the GOP’s midterm losses were a sign of voters’ desire for the party to end the war and rethink its relationship with Israel.
Sanders, whose name is being floated as a possible 2028 Republican presidential contender, made the comments in an interview with Jewish Insider ahead of the Tuesday release of her book, Unapologetic: Clarity and Conviction in a World Gone Crazy, after being asked about voters’ economic concerns outweighing their support for the president’s war on the Iranian regime.
“I think the president was right and made a really courageous move to protect American interests,” Sanders told JI. “I don't think you can separate America First from America's existence, and when a stated, sworn enemy says that their main objective is to wipe you off of the planet, and they're pursuing nuclear weapons, then you have to stop that and prevent that.”
The Big Reads
WORDS OF WARNING
Karl Rove says JD Vance ‘should not be president’ over Israel, Middle East stance
Karl Rove, the longtime Republican strategist who served as a senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, slammed Vice President JD Vance on Monday as a “neo-isolationist” whose approach to Israel and the Middle East would damage the American economy and make the world more dangerous, warning he should not become the GOP nominee for president, Jewish Insider’s AJ Rodriguez reports.
Speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America’s annual General Assembly in Washington, Rove sharply criticized Vance’s postelection assessment that the war in Iran was the central factor in Republicans’ sweeping midterm losses and that voters wanted changes to the U.S.-Israel relationship.
ROCKY START
Rep.-elect Chris Rabb’s silence on antisemitic protest frustrates Philly’s Jewish community
Rep.-elect Chris Rabb (D-PA), the state lawmaker who will represent the Philadelphia district where a bicycle protest targeted several local Jewish- and Israeli-owned businesses on Sunday, has not publicly addressed the protests, prompting concern from members of the city’s Jewish community, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
“He’s going to be my congressman,” Allan Domb, the owner of Schlesinger’s Deli, one of the restaurants targeted by the protesters, said. “When an owner of a business in his district, who happens to be Jewish, is threatened by a group of people who say they want to shut me down, it seems to me that my congressman should speak up about that.” Shanin Specter, the son of the late Sen. Arlen Specter, used sharper language. Rabb, Specter told JI, is “a sack of s***, and that’s for the record, and I hope you’ll print it.”
ON NOTICE
At G7 summit, Rubio puts International Criminal Court in crosshairs
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Monday that the United States could inflict “tremendous damage” on the International Criminal Court unless it changes course, while reaffirming President Donald Trump’s push to transition U.S. military assistance to Israel from military financing toward conventional weapons sales, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris, Rubio also revealed that Washington views two or three candidates favorably in the race to become the next United Nations secretary-general, though he declined to identify them publicly.
The Rundown
The rest of today’s original stories from Jewish Insider — full stories, all published on the site.
POLICY PLATFORM
J Street memo calls for pause on weapons sales to Israel, conditions on cooperative programs
POWER OF THE PURSE
Senate Democrats tee up December funding fight over Iran war
EXCLUSIVE
Republican AGs highlight case of antisemitic university professor in Supreme Court brief
THREAT THWARTED
Armed man arrested after trying to enter D.C. synagogue before Shabbat services
DOHA DIPLOMACY
Trump touts ‘positive momentum’ toward ending Iran war after meeting Qatari PM
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 our app (on Apple and Android) and website.
President Donald Trump said following his meeting with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Monday — a meeting he praised as “excellent” — that renewed military action against Iran “seems to be quite unlikely” as “Israel, and the entire Middle East, are protected from Iranian danger and threats. We are seeing positive momentum toward an end to this conflict”...
The group of eight House and Senate party and intelligence leaders known as the Gang of Eight received a briefing from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton that focused on Iran…
The U.S. evacuated its aircraft from the U.K.’s RAF Mildenhall base in response to a threat from Iran, a month after moving B-1 bombers back to the U.S. from RAF Fairford following the arrests of several individuals near the base…
May Mailman, the architect of Trump’s higher education policies during the first seven months of the administration, is returning in a temporary capacity to assist White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in staffing up the West Wing following a post-midterms shuffle that saw the departure of Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) called Miller’s “documented support for white nationalism” and anti-immigrant sentiments “disqualifying for a government employee” and called on Trump to “fire him today”...
The U.S.-led Board of Peace called on the Israeli government to immediately authorize the entry of essential shelter and winterization supplies into Gaza after severe flooding damaged tents and makeshift shelters across the enclave, calling Israel’s response thus far “insufficient”; the IDF posted on X that it is “advancing a winter preparedness plan” for Gaza, including facilitating the entry of 91,000 tents and 8,200 trucks carrying cold-weather and shelter supplies...
Former Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked posted photos from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, where a Torah was dedicated in memory of Sheldon Adelson; Adelson’s widow, Dr. Miriam Adelson, was in attendance at the event…
New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called on Monday for all of society to condemn and respond to antisemitism before it turns violent, not only leaving it to law enforcement to address once it does, eJewishPhilanthropy's Nira Dayanim reports...
France’s foreign minister threatened to pursue EU sanctions against Iran for last month’s cyberattack on supermarket refrigerators across the country, which Paris has attributed to Tehran…
Findings presented at the climate-focused COP31 conference in Antalya, Turkey, this morning indicated that carbon emissions from fossil fuels are projected to fall slightly, in part as a result of the Iran war, during which high oil and gas prices prompted a redirection toward alternative energy sources…
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg married his longtime partner, Diana Taylor, in a private ceremony on Monday in their Manhattan home…
Singer Pink announced a nine-show residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere next year, which will make her the first female solo headliner at the venue since its opening in 2023…
Producer Debora Cahn, the creator of Netflix’s “The Diplomat,” confirmed that an anecdote told in a recent episode about a WWII soldier named Hershel Polin from Richmond, Va., was a tribute to slain Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was killed in Gaza in 2024; Cahn told Israeli journalist Dudi Caspi, “His mom, Rachel [Goldberg-Polin], called it a wink, and I liked that. Just a little note of what they went through”...
Israel’s Tax Authority is recommending an additional tax, paid for by passengers, on flights departing from the country in an effort to address costs resulting from, among other issues, global warming and sound and air pollution…
Yehuda Niv’s Spines, which uses AI to assist authors in publishing books, raised $64 million, including a $29 million round led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from Aleph, NordStar, M-Fund, LionTree and Dan Senor…
Security-compliance platform Vanta will acquire Israeli AI-security startup Pillar Security in a deal worth roughly $150 million in cash and stock; Pillar will become Vanta’s R&D hub in Israel, and all of its employees will join the new center…
The fourth marquess of Reading, Simon Isaacs, a devout Christian descended from Jewish lawyer Rufus Isaacs and a supporter of Zionist causes, died at 84…
JI Live Briefing · Free preview
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Community Comms
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Cutting Through the Noise: The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn posits that President Donald Trump needs to more effectively communicate to Americans his reasons for engaging militarily with Iran. “The American people at war need to be able to make sense of what they are seeing. They need a way to cut through the fog and noise, which have only been compounded by the past several months of presidential zigzag between the if-Iran-doesn’t-agree-to-a-comprehensive-peace-we’ll-unleash-Armageddon side and the we’re-no-longer-talking-about-fighting-because-peace-is-at-hand side.” [WSJ]
Rising in the Ranks: In the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Joel Rubin, who served as Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Jewish outreach director, reflects on how House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has managed Jewish communal concerns over the course of his political career. “As an American Jew who has worked intimately with Congress over the course of my career, on Jewish community concerns and in foreign policy, I’m incredibly bullish about the upcoming tenure of Jeffries as speaker, especially on the thorny issue of America’s relationship with Israel and how to confront antisemitism.” [JTA]
Hanging Up the Horseshoe: eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross covers former U.S. antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt’s comments, made at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University on Monday, about rethinking the “horseshoe theory” of antisemitism she once espoused. “‘So now I talk about a Venn diagram, where [there] is overlap in the middle for leftist antisemitism, right-wing nationalist antisemitism, and of course Islamist antisemitism,’ [Lipstadt] said. ‘The place where they overlap — antisemitism — is the ideological glue. There’s also a structural element or a functional element in that overlap, and that’s regime change. All three of these sources want to overthrow existing regimes, particularly existing democratic regimes.’” [eJP]
Picture of the Day
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (left) and Munich Mayor Dominik Krause flanked Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Jewish community of Munich, at an event on Monday at the city’s Ohel Jakob synagogue.
Speaking at the event, which coincided with the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Merz warned that antisemitism had become “omnipresent” across Europe. “We see and hear it on our streets, in our towns and cities, in the towns and cities of our European neighbors and around the world, in parliaments, in clubs and in schools,” he said.
Michael Bihlmayer - Pool/Getty Images
Birthdays
Josh Peck, YouTube personality, he came to fame as a child actor on Nickelodeon, turns 40
MICHAEL TULLBERG/GETTY IMAGES
Murray Kurtzberg, manager of the Decatur, Ga.-based Connect Hearing
Rabbi Yerucham Olshin, one of the four deans of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J., one of the largest yeshivas in the world, turns 83
Oliver B. Pollak, professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he is a co-founder of Nebraska Jewish Historical Society, turns 83
Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, turns 77
Elli Wohlgelernter, Israeli journalist, turns 73
Linda Cohn, former longtime SportsCenter anchor on ESPN, turns 67
Rabbi Michael C. Simon, rabbi at Temple Beth Kodesh in Boynton Beach, Fla.
Adam Ferziger, professor at Bar-Ilan University, he is a social historian, turns 62
Rabbi Ken Chasen, senior rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, turns 61
Shawn Green, former MLB right fielder, he co-founded Greenfly, a software firm for sports and entertainment organizations, turns 54
Benjamin Pauker, national security editor at The Washington Post
Brian Paul Romick, president of Democratic Majority for Israel, turns 50
Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder in 2004 of Yelp, where he remains the CEO, turns 49
Shira Ruderman, executive director of the Ruderman Family Foundation, turns 48
Josh Margolin, chief investigative reporter at ABC News, turns 47
Jean Weinberg, senior advisor on the public health team at Bloomberg Philanthropies
Zoey Deutch, actor and producer, turns 32
Howard Marks, former Reagan administration international agriculture official
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