| | Good Tuesday morning. In today’s Daily Kickoff , we report from a Republican Jewish Coalition event in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., with former Rep. Mike Rogers and Sen. Lindsey Graham, and cover Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s closing pitch to Jewish voters in Pittsburgh. We have the scoop on a call from members of Congress to France against a proposed arms embargo on Israel, report on Sen. J.D. Vance’s comments on what he sees as conflicting Israeli and U.S. interests and cover last night’s Knesset vote banning UNRWA operations in Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff : Marc Rowan, Jeff Bezos and Liev Schreiber. Spread the word! Invite your friends to sign up.👇 Share with a friend | - Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver a closing argument for her candidacy tonight on the Ellipse, just off the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The speech will take place around 7 p.m. ET.
- Former President Donald Trump will be attending a roundtable event hosted by the conservative group Building America’s Future in Delaware County, Pa. in the afternoon. He then will travel to Allentown, Pa., where he will be headlining an evening rally. Trump is also holding a press conference at Mar-a-Lago this morning at 10 a.m. ET.
- The three-day annual Future Investment Initiative, widely dubbed “Davos in the Desert,” kicked off in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, earlier today. Featured speakers today include Citadel’s Ken Griffin, Alphabet’s Ruth Porat, Eric Schmidt, Starwood Capital’s Barry Sternlicht, Blackstone‘s Stephen Schwarzman, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Carlyle’s David Rubenstein and Harvey Schwartz, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Manna Tree co-founder Gabrielle Rubenstein, Apollo’s Marc Rowan, Goldman’s David Solomon, BDT-MSD partner Dina Powell McCormick, Sir Martin Sorrell, Oak Hill Advisors’ Glenn August, Canyon Partners’ Joshua Friedman, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Ken Moelis from Moelis & Co., Treasury co-founder Eli Broverman, Brevan Howard CEO Aron Landy, Third Point’s Dan Loeb and CloudKitchens’ Travis Kalanick.
| With a week until Election Day, it’s worth offering an in-depth breakdown of the political state of play, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
The presidential race is very close, but former President Donald Trump has been gaining ground throughout October, and holds a narrow advantage over Vice President Kamala Harris. That said, the race is competitive enough that even a last-minute momentum shift could make the difference.
There are signs for the Trump campaign to be concerned about: 1) overconfidence verging on hubris leading the candidate to hold an ill-advised MAGA rally on Sunday in New York City and spending time in blue states that won’t decide the election; 2) polling suggesting voters who are undecided or could change their minds favor Harris; 3) the Trump campaign’s overreliance on low-propensity or first-time voters, in contrast to the Harris advantage with the most dependable voters.
But the big-picture indicators are challenging for Harris. Most high-quality public polls show Trump either narrowly ahead or statistically tied and in a more favorable position than a month ago. Operatives from both parties in the three “blue wall” states we’ve talked to suggest that the battlegrounds are all very close, but Trump has been gaining ground. The more Harris has been exposed to sustained interviews in the mainstream media, her favorability rating has declined.
Her most likely path to 270 electoral votes is looking similar to the one President Joe Biden faced before his disastrous debate: sweeping the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. With the high concentration of white working-class voters in all three states, she faces more resilient headwinds from skeptics than even the embattled former president.
Operatives we’ve talked to in both parties agree Arizona and North Carolina are looking tougher for Harris to win, but Democrats are hopeful that if the vice president can rebound with Black men and drive high turnout in Atlanta and its suburbs, she still has a pathway to prevail in Georgia.
The battle for the Senate is looking like Republicans will win between 51-55 seats, with the lower end counting as a moral victory for Democrats. Republicans are confident they’ve got West Virginia and Montana locked down, and are growing increasingly optimistic about winning GOP-leaning Ohio. If Trump carries the Midwestern battlegrounds, all of which feature close Senate contests, there’s a very real chance for a GOP sweep, which would get the party to a healthy 54-seat majority.
The Nevada Senate race between Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Republican Sam Brown is tightening in the final days, with the top GOP Senate super PAC belatedly investing millions in a race the party thought was lost. This is another state where a decisive Trump victory could offer coattails to an underdog Republican challenger — even if the odds still favor Rosen.
Democrats still hold out hope of ousting Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rick Scott (R-FL) or Deb Fischer (R-NE), but the GOP fundamentals of those states should still pull them over the finish line even if they’re close. Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) will probably need a stronger-than-expected Harris performance to pull off the upset.
Democrats have a solid shot to win back the House, especially if Harris prevails or the presidential race is very close. Many of the biggest battlegrounds are in the Democratic strongholds of New York and California, in districts that Biden carried in 2020. Republican lawmakers in affluent suburban districts — like Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), Ken Calvert (R-CA) and Dave Schweikert (R-AZ) — will find it hard to outperform a weak Trump showing.
But if Trump wins the presidency by more than a whisker, it’s hard to see Republicans losing their narrow House majority. They’ll have opportunities to flip a handful of Democratic-held Trump seats in Alaska, Maine and Washington state, and are benefiting from the partisan redistricting in North Carolina.
Either way, it’s hard to see whichever party wins the majority holding a significant edge. And with slow vote counting expected in California and New York, it may take up to a week to conclude which party will hold the gavel in the lower chamber. | michigan matters Rogers looks to assure Jewish voters that Arab, Muslim outreach won't compromise support for Israel  marc rod Speaking to Jewish voters in Michigan on Monday evening, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, made his closing pitch to the potentially decisive voting bloc, and sought to assure attendees that his outreach to Michigan’s sizable Muslim and Arab population doesn’t mean he’s compromising his support for Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports from Bloomfield Hills.
Outreach efforts: “We’re trying to do outreach in the Muslim community, but I also tell them where I’m at,” Rogers said during a Republican Jewish Coalition event on Monday evening in the Detroit suburbs. “I never walk away from where I’m at on Israel, and let me tell you, the first 30 minutes are always a little bumpy.” But Rogers said that Muslim voters respect and support him for other policies even if there are intractable differences on Israel. And he said he thinks his frankness about Israel policy differences is winning him respect and support.
Read the full story here. PITTSBURGH PITCH Emhoff seeks to assure Jewish voters: Harris is a dependable ally  SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES Speaking to Jewish voters in Pittsburgh on Monday night, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff did not explicitly acknowledge fears that some longtime Jewish voters might opt to support former President Donald Trump over Emhoff’s wife, Vice President Kamala Harris. But that concern was the unstated backdrop of his address, which seemed designed to assuage Jewish Americans by offering a straightforward closing argument: Don’t worry, Emhoff argued. Harris gets it. She’s on our side, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
In her kishkes: “Let me be direct and answer the question that Jews have asked for generations. Yes, she feels it in her gut. Kamala feels it, as we say, in her kishkes,” said Emhoff, whose speech was timed to coincide with the six-year anniversary of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, which was Sunday.
Read the full story here. Vance's views Vance: Pro-Israel Americans responded in a 'more militaristic way' to Oct. 7 than Israelis  Brandon Bell/Getty Images Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the Republican vice-presidential nominee, claimed in a new interview that pro-Israel Americans responded in a “much more militaristic” way to Oct. 7 than Israelis and argued that Israel’s interests sometimes conflict with those of the United States. Vance made the comments during his appearance on “The Tim Dillon Show” after being asked by the podcast host how a Trump-Vance administration would handle the unfolding conflict in the Middle East, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
What he said: “Obviously, Israel has the right to defend itself, but America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct, like sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests,” Vance told Dillon. “Our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran, right? It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”
Read the full story here. antisemitism watch Chicago Jewish leaders 'disappointed' law enforcement downplaying antisemitism as motive in shooting  Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images Jewish leaders in Chicago are urging the local prosecutor to upgrade the charge against a Muslim man who allegedly shot a Jewish man walking to synagogue on Saturday in West Rogers Park, home to one of the city’s largest Orthodox Jewish populations, to a hate crime. The 22-year-old suspect reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he exchanged fire with police officers responding to the initial shooting, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Community reaction: “We’re very disappointed,” Shlomo Soroka, Agudath Israel of Illinois’ director of government affairs, told JI. “I hope they add hate crime charges on later but regardless, even if there are technical reasons that they didn’t file hate crime charges, they have to understand what this really was — not even this specific incident — but what we have been saying for a long time, that the visibly Jewish community, which is the Orthodox community, is at grave risk. And it’s not just here in Chicago.”
Read the full story here. scoop Lawmakers urge France’s Macron to 'reconsider' potential arms embargo on Israel  CHESNOT/GETTY IMAGES A bipartisan group of 18 House lawmakers wrote to French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday to express “deep concern” over his call for an embargo on arms deliveries to Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What they wrote: “Your comments to halt arms and weapons deliveries to Israel will further embolden Iran and its proxies to escalate their attacks against Israel, undermining the State’s right to defend herself and her citizens,” the lawmakers said, noting that Hamas killed 48 French citizens on Oct. 7 and still holds two French-Israeli dual citizens hostage.
Read the full story here. ousting unrwa Knesset passes law banning UNRWA operations in Israel  DIRK WAEM/BELGA MAG/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES The Knesset voted overwhelmingly on Monday to outlaw the United Nations Relief and Works Agency aiding Palestinian refugees and their descendants, after some of its employees took an active part in the Oct. 7 attacks and holding Israelis hostage in Gaza, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
Two bills: The first of two bills to shut down UNRWA bans the agency from operating on Israeli sovereign territory, such as in Jerusalem, where it has an office; it passed with 92 in favor and 10 opposed, with support spanning over three-quarters of the 120-seat Knesset. The second bill prohibits Israeli government officials from having any contact with UNRWA, and passed 87-9.
U.S. reaction: State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a briefing on Monday that "the passage of this legislation could have implications under U.S. law and U.S. policy. We urge the Government of Israel to pause the implementation of this legislation ... We will consider next steps based on what happens in the days ahead."
Read the full story here. | Bezos and Bias: Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos pens an op-ed explaining the decision to end the paper’s tradition of endorsing presidential candidates. “We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility. Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.” [WashPost]
A Shaken Iran: In the Financial Times, Emile Hokayem, the director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, looks at Iran’s challenges after Israeli strikes over the weekend. “Iran’s problems go deeper. Two out of the three pillars of its security strategy are shaken. Its battered militia partners in Lebanon, Palestine and Syria are no longer able to deter and punish Israel. Rebuilding them will take decades and may not even be possible. Its arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones has not had the expected military impact. This will now need to be restocked and better technology developed. The last pillar of the strategy, its nuclear programme, is more vulnerable than ever, and rushing towards the production of a bomb may precipitate the very war that Iran has been trying to avoid. Iran’s retaliatory options are narrowing. Consequently, it may look for less well-defended targets, such as US facilities and interests in the Gulf states. Growing anxiety in that part of the region is why Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others were quick to condemn the Israeli attacks and propose diplomatic off-ramps.” [FT]
Tehran Talk: The Wall Street Journal’s Walter Russell Mead considers the looming threat still posed by Iran. “After a tough year, Team Biden can breathe a sigh of relief. The American elections won’t take place against the backdrop of a global energy crisis or U.S. engagement in a Middle East war. The strikes underlined a key point about the Middle East power balance that has been true since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Military forces that have access to American military technology and intelligence-gathering capabilities can wipe the floor with militaries that rely on Moscow. Russian military equipment has its uses, but American technology remains the gold standard in the world of defense—even more so for a country such as Israel that has significant intelligence and technological capabilities. This fact has been the foundation for whatever peace and stability the Middle East has known since Henry Kissinger served as secretary of state. But military power can do only so much. Unless it is deployed in the service of an achievable political program, as Napoleon learned to his cost, even a series of victorious wars won’t win you peace.” [WSJ] | Be featured: Email us to inform the JI readership of your upcoming event, job opening, or other communication. | Reuters spotlights how pressure from the Biden administration impacted Israeli strategic calculations regarding its weekend strikes on Iranian military and aerial-defense systems...
The Wall Street Journal reports on the surging demand for some types of air-defense missiles, amid concerns that the U.S. stockpile is running law after a year of using the weapons to defend against interests across the Middle East…
The New York Times looks at how the Trump campaign is working to contain the fallout from racist and offensive remarks made by speakers at a Sunday rally in Madison Square Garden as the Harris campaign, seeing a shift in the vice president’s favor, leans into rhetoric attacking the former president as a “fascist”...
Former President Donald Trump rejected the accusation, telling a crowd on Monday that he is “the opposite of a Nazi”...
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently made a $50 million donation to Future Forward USA Action, linked to the Harris-backing Future Forward PAC…
The Associated Press reports on relations between former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and the Trump campaign, noting that Haley’s representatives provided dates she would be available to campaign with the former president but that no appearances had been scheduled…
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the chair of the House Republican Conference, is reportedly interested in serving as U.N. ambassador in a potential Trump administration…
The Satmar community in Kiryas Joel, N.Y., endorsed Trump, while also endorsing Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) over Republican Alison Esposito…
A planned Capitol Hill staff briefing with United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has been postponed, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod has learned…
More than 200,000 Washington Post readers reportedly canceled their subscriptions to the newspaper after owner Jeff Bezos blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Harris…
Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron told the Boston Globe that Bezos’ actions were “a betrayal of core principles at the Post”...
The Free Press looks into the decision to transfer senior Pentagon official Ariane Tabatabai into a department with less access to classified information than she previously had; the transfer comes amid heightened scrutiny of the Defense Department following the leak earlier this month of intelligence surrounding Israel’s planned attack against Iran…
CNN commentator Ryan Girdusky will no longer appear on the network after an exchange with Mehdi Hasan in which Girdusky suggested that he hoped Hasan’s “pager doesn’t go off” — alluding to a recent Israeli operation in which thousands of pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah detonated simultaneously...
CNN anchor Abby Phillip, on whose show the comments were made, apologized to Hasan for the exchange and shared an official statement from the network; Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called Girdusky’s comment “[a]bsolutely grotesque,” adding that “I disagree with Mehdi vehemently on issues related to Israel and how he portrays the issues, but it’s not a joke to suggest someone is a terrorist”...
Stéphane de La Faverie was selected to be the next CEO of Estée Lauder, ending a monthslong succession battle following the announcement earlier this year that Fabrizio Freda planned to retire after 15 years helming the company…
Actor Liev Schreiber was spotted dressed like an observant Jewish man while filming in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood…
Rabbi David Saperstein and Tevi Troy, former deputy secretary of health and human services, debated and discussed Jewish communal issues, the Israel-Hamas war and the upcoming presidential election at an event at Washington Hebrew Congregation as part of a national tour to emphasize civil dialogue…
Paramount Pictures released the trailer for “September 5,” a film about the media coverage surrounding the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped to normalize relations with additional Arab countries once Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah conclude…
Netanyahu said he would agree to a short cease-fire in Gaza that would allow for the release of a small number of the remaining 101 hostages, but that he had not received such a proposal…
Iran executed a German-Iranian citizen who had been living in the United States, years after he was arrested and later charged with terrorism offenses that his family has denied; U.S. officials said that 69-year-old Jamshid Sharmahd was convicted of the charges in a “sham trial”…
Hezbollah elected senior official Naim Qassem to succeed Hassan Nasrallah as the head of the Iran-backed terror group, weeks after Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike on his Beirut bunker…
Physicist Leon Cooper, who won the Nobel Prize in 1972 for his work in the field of superconductivity, died at 94… | Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan addressed attendees earlier today at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. |  Julio Cortez/AP Jockey who has won more than 1,600 races with earnings of more than $65 million, David Cohen turns 40...
Haifa-born director and screenwriter of animated and live-action films including “The Lord of the Rings,” Ralph Bakshi turns 86... Dean emeritus of the Yale School of Management, he has served in the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Clinton administrations, Jeffrey E. Garten turns 78... Academy Award-winning actor, who played Yoni Netanyahu in the 1976 film “Victory at Entebbe,” Richard Dreyfuss turns 77... CEO of the Center for the National Interest, Dimitri Simes turns 77... Former director of the social justice organizing program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Mordechai E. Liebling turns 76... Pulitzer Prize-winning author and editor of The New Yorker since 1998, David Remnick turns 66... Bernard Greenberg... Rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom in Phoenix, Dana Evan Kaplan turns 64... Author, satirist and public speaker, Evan Sayet turns 64... Classical pianist, Susan Merdinger turns 62... Sports agent who has negotiated over $7 billion of player contracts, Drew Rosenhaus turns 58... Actor who appeared in 612 episodes of daytime soap opera “As the World Turns,” his mother, Rina Plotnik, served in the IDF, Grayson McCouch turns 56... Screenwriter and film director based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Andrea Dorfman turns 56... Mathematician, cryptologist and computer scientist, Daniel J. Bernstein turns 53... Emmy Award-winning television producer, writer and actor, best known for NBC's "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation," Michael Schur turns 49... Israeli collaborative artist, designer and photographer, Moshe Hacmon turns 47... VP for strategic communications and business development at Anchorage-based Northern Compass Group, Rachel Barinbaum... Marketing director for Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group, Leigh Shirvan Helfenbein... Senior product manager at Audible, Samantha Zeldin... National spokesperson for the Harris Walz campaign, Seth Schuster... Ph.D. candidate in Russian and East European history at Harvard, Leora Eisenberg... Booking producer at NBC Universal, David Siegel... | | | | | |
