Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview key congressional primary races taking place today in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, and report on a proposal by Israel’s Transportation Ministry for Emirates to begin nonstop flights between Israel and New York City. We report on a recent podcast appearance by Michigan Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow in which the Democrat attempted to position herself as an objective observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and cover Washington mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George’s recent campaigning with a councilmember who accused Jews of controlling the weather. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rahm Emanuel, Mung Chiang and Amnon Shashua.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
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- It’s primary day in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. More below on the races we’re watching.
- The Senate is slated to vote today on a war powers resolution, the eighth attempt by Senate Democrats to move forward on efforts to constrain the Trump administration’s military activities targeting Iran.
- The effort comes a day after President Donald Trump called off what he said was a strike on Iran planned for today. The president said the decision came at the request of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which encouraged the administration to allow peace talks to continue. Read more here.
- The Senate Appropriations Committee is holding a series of budget hearings today, including one this morning for the Justice Department’s budget for 2027.
- CENTCOM head Adm. Brad Cooper is set to testify this morning before the House Armed Services Committee about security challenges in the Middle East.
- Elsewhere on the Hill, the Jewish Federations of North America will hold a press conference this afternoon to call for increased security funding, days after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called for $1 billion to be allocated for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program — $700 million more than Congress allocated in last month’s Homeland Security funding bill.
- The Center for American Progress is hosting its annual IDEAS Conference in Washington. Speakers include Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Jeffries; Democratic Govs. Wes Moore, Gavin Newsom, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherril; and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield in addition to a number of Democratic legislators.
- The Middle East Forum’s three-day policy conference kicks off today in Washington. Keynote speakers include senior White House official Seb Gorka, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and Morgan Ortagus, a former deputy U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.
- The Nationals will host Jewish Community Day as the baseball team takes on the New York Mets at Nats Park.
- In New York, the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue is holding its spring benefit, where the congregation will honor Proskauer Rose’s Ira Bogner and former State Department antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt.
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Evening intelligence, exclusively for subscribers — what we're tracking and what's coming next.
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A QUICK WORD WITH JI'S JOSH KRAUSHAAR |
Tomorrow’s primaries in Kentucky and Pennsylvania may well serve as an early test over which party is more effectively dealing with its own antisemitism problems.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), one of the few remaining anti-Israel Republicans in Congress, has been spewing antisemitic tropes in the closing days of the campaign, portraying Congress as Israel-occupied territory and caricaturing wealthy Jewish donors as the fuel behind his opponent’s support, as he tries to fend off a serious challenge from Ed Gallrein, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, state Rep. Chris Rabb — who shared a post on his Instagram account promoting a conspiracy theory that the Bondi Beach terror attack in Sydney in which 14 Jews were killed was a false-flag operation perpetuating Israeli interests — holds the late momentum in an open Democratic congressional primary to succeed retiring Rep. Dwight Evans (D-PA). (Rabb’s campaign blamed a former campaign staffer for the offending post.)
A parade of progressive stars, from Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to Jamie Raskin (D-MD), have traveled to Philadelphia to campaign with the Democratic Socialists of America-backed Rabb. Antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker likewise rallied with Rabb and held a fundraiser with him where attendees chanted: “Free Palestine!”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), representing the more mainstream wing of the Democratic Party, held a rally on Monday to boost one of Rabb’s leading challengers, state Sen. Sharif Street.
Gallrein and Rabb both appear to hold late momentum in their respective races. If the two end up winning, the conventional wisdom — and corresponding coverage — will rightly conclude that a Massie defeat came as a result of Trump’s outspoken opposition to the congressman and that a Rabb victory will be the result of progressives’ ascendance within the Democratic Party.
But that will only tell part of the story. If Republicans end up ousting a lawmaker trafficking in some of the ugliest bigotry, while Democrats anoint a future lawmaker pushing extremist antisemitic conspiracy theories, it’s a sign of the direction both parties are headed.
Read the rest of 'What You Should Know' here.
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Massie’s closing message leans into conspiratorial attacks on Israel, Jewish groups |
In the closing days of his House reelection campaign against Trump-endorsed Navy veteran Ed Gallrein, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has focused his ire on pro-Israel and Jewish advocacy groups, claiming that his opponent is a “puppet” of such interests. The race is set to conclude with Tuesday’s primary, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What he’s saying: At a rally on Saturday, the anti-Israel congressman joked that Gallrein’s phone number had a Tel Aviv area code, part of a narrative by Massie that Gallrein is working on behalf of Israeli interests. The congressman also asserted that Gallrein is a “puppet” of the Republican Jewish Coalition and that “they are running his race.” Massie also reportedly hosted at least two antisemitic social media figures at his home for an event over the weekend. On Friday, Massie called his primary, which has become the most expensive intraparty congressional contest in U.S. history, “a referendum on whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.”
Read the full story here.
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Nevada GOP candidate Marty O’Donnell hosted neo-Nazi influencer on podcast |
Marty O’Donnell, a Republican candidate in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District recently endorsed by President Donald Trump, hosted a well-known Nazi supporter on his podcast last year, months after filing to run for Congress, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Background: In August 2025, O’Donnell hosted Charles Cornish-Dale, a popular far-right influencer better known by his online pseudonym “Raw Egg Nationalist,” on his podcast for a friendly discussion. Repeatedly, over the course of multiple years, Cornish-Dale has shared antisemitic and pro-Nazi content on his Raw Egg Nationalist X account. Though, in the introduction to the interview, O’Donnell acknowledged that Cornish-Dale had been accused of a variety of offensive views, a spokesperson for O’Donnell’s campaign said that Cornish-Dale was booked on the show by O’Donnell’s production team and he was unaware of his history.
Read the full story here.
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McMorrow walks the line on Israel, floats Iron Dome for Palestinians |
In the tight Michigan Senate race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow has tried to present herself as a middle-of-the-road Democrat, ideologically situated between Abdul El-Sayed, an anti-Israel progressive, and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who has been endorsed by AIPAC. In a recent interview with leftist podcasters Matt Bernstein and Emma Vigeland, McMorrow continued to position herself as an objective observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Eye on Iron Dome: Bernstein, the host of the queer political podcast “A Bit Fruity,” questioned McMorrow about why she supports Israel’s access to the life-saving Iron Dome missile-defense system, arguing that it empowers Israel to attack Palestinians without risk of harm to its own population. “I don't think anybody should live in fear of being bombed or killed. I would look at: How do we support defensive systems for Palestinians? How would we support defensive systems for Lebanese?” McMorrow said. When Vigeland sarcastically asked if the Palestinians should get their own Iron Dome, McMorrow said maybe.
Read the full story here.
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Rahm Emanuel to discuss future of U.S-Israel relations at Tel Aviv University |
Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and prospective presidential candidate, is slated to discuss the future of U.S.-Israel relations at Tel Aviv University on July 8, according to an announcement on Monday from the school, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. Emanuel, who has long held a close connection to the Jewish state, has recently drawn headlines over his calls to immediately end U.S. military aid to Israel.
Candid conversation: “I’ve been having frank and honest conversations about Israel’s future throughout my public life,” Emanuel, who most recently served as U.S. ambassador to Japan in the Biden administration, said in a statement about the discussion, billed as “An Honest Conversation: The U.S.-Israel Relationship — Where It Stands Today and The Road Ahead.”
Read the full story here.
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D.C. mayoral contender Janeese Lewis George campaigns with embattled councilman with antisemitic history |
Trayon White, a member of the Washington, D.C., Council with a history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, was expelled from the body last year as he faced federal bribery charges before being voted back in months later. Now, weeks before a heavily contested mayoral election in Washington, White is hitting the campaign trail with Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, a leading Democratic mayoral candidate who voted with the rest of her colleagues on the Council to expel White, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Words by White: “We don’t agree on everything, but we agree on most things,” White said at a weekend event with Lewis George, video of which was shared on social media. He encouraged his supporters to vote for her in the Democratic primary on June 16, which will all but decide the election in the heavily blue city.
Read the full story here.
On the trail: The three leading Democratic candidates in the race for executive of Montgomery County, Md., pledged to address the rise of antisemitism within the local school system, while some noted their disappointment that the school board has yet to adopt a Jewish group’s recommendations for doing so, JI’s Haley Cohen reports.
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Israel offers Emirates airline to fly direct flights between Tel Aviv and New York |
The Israeli Transportation Ministry has put forward a proposal for the Emirates airline to operate direct flights from Tel Aviv to New York and Bangkok, according to Israel’s Channel 12. A delegation of senior ministry officials met last week with Emirati counterparts and representatives of the airline in an effort to advance the idea, Jewish Insider’s Tamara Zieve reports.
Promoting the plan: In a since-deleted post on X, Israeli Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Yossi Shelley welcomed the delegation to Abu Dhabi. Shelley’s post said the group was visiting to “further promote and expand the cooperation between our two nations in the field of transportation.” The proposal includes granting the Dubai-based airline seventh freedom rights, which would allow it to fly between two countries without making a stop in the UAE.
Read the full story here.
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Buffer Zone Bitterness: In The Washington Post, Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, the principal of Bronx Jewish day school SAR, criticized the decision by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to veto legislation that would have established buffer zones around schools. “As the head of a Jewish school in the Bronx, I’ve had to make difficult decisions to create a more secure environment in and around my school as the menace of antisemitism has surged in New York and across the country in recent years. We have been forced to divert educational resources and increase our security budget to safeguard students and staff as a precaution when the threat of violence against Jews has become common in the city.” [WashPost]
Good Taste Comes to Tech: The Wall Street Journal spotlights Sam Lessin’s VC firm Slow Ventures and its “etiquette classes” — hours-long gatherings teaching the “finer points of hosting, fundraising, wine pairing” to tech founders. “Sam Lessin, a dry-humored founding partner at Slow Ventures and a former vice president of product at Facebook, noted that AI has made coding ‘super commoditized.’ In the vast majority of cases, he said, instilling trust in customers is now more important than being able to show off technical genius. He added that, in the AI era, if you’re entering a meeting saying ‘Hey, I need access to your critical data,’ you need to win people over with a respectful demeanor and a low heart-rate.” [WSJ]
Con Job: In Tablet, Highline Capital founder Jacob Doft does a deep dive into an elaborate scheme he found himself a part of after being drawn into what he believed to be a cutting-edge Israeli startup. "And that, more or less, is how I entered a two-year relationship with a fraudulent AI company, a fake fighter pilot, a brilliant professor who was being conned by her own CEO, and a chatbot that was doing most of the work. It is, on balance, the strangest thing that has happened to me. And I spent 30 years on Wall Street, where strange things happen before lunch." [Tablet]
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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who is retiring at the end of the year, endorsed San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan as her successor in the Bay Area congressional district…
Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) led a bipartisan group of lawmakers in urging the U.K. to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group…
Axios reports on the “explosion” of “direct, explicit and shockingly casual” antisemitism that “has become a part of day-to-day life for Jewish politicians in the run-up to the midterms…
Two of New York City’s leading mainstream Jewish organizations skipped a pre-Shavuot gathering at Gracie Mansion on Monday evening — with one directly pointing to a controversial video Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted to his official social media channels on Friday as the reason for refusing to participate, JI’s Will Bredderman reports…
Northwestern University’s Jewish community is celebrating the appointment of Mung Chiang as the school’s new president, optimistic that the supportive environment he fostered for Jewish students during his tenure as president of Purdue University will help combat the antisemitism seen at Northwestern in recent years, JI’s Haley Cohen reports…
Harvard is petitioning a federal judge to drop the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the school, arguing that the details of the complaint are out of date and don’t take into consideration steps the school has made in addressing antisemitism on campus…
The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is leading an effort to establish and promote Scholarship Granting Organizations in the capital region in an effort to maximize the benefits of a new federal tax-credit initiative, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher reports…
Puck reports that CBS executives are reportedly discussing the possibility of shifting Bari Weiss’ management of the network’s major programs as the company mulls a takeover of CNN that “would give her less control over the linear product,” adjusting “her focus to the news division’s digital growth while maintaining broad editorial influence across all the company’s platforms”...
A California man is facing federal hate crime charges for allegedly assaulting a Jewish man outside a real estate event in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Pico-Robertson in 2024; the alleged assailant, who later boasted in a text message to a friend that he “whooped 2 zios,” faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison…
Police in London are investigating as a hate crime an attack on a Jewish man overnight in the heavily Jewish suburb of Golders Green…
The Guardian does a deep dive into Iranian efforts to recruit proxies, some of whom have no loyalties or ties to the Islamic Republic, to attack Jewish and Israeli targets around the world, following the arrest last week of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia leader tied to more than a dozen plots around the world…
Australia’s public broadcasters said they won’t use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in their coverage, and will instead use their own internal guidance to maintain editorial independence…
Pakistan has deployed some 8,000 troops, as well as fighter jets, drones and an air-defense system, to Saudi Arabia, seven months after signing a mutual defense agreement with Riyadh…
Israeli forces boarded boats participating in the latest Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza that were traveling in international waters off the coast of Cyprus; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the troops were “effectively neutralizing a malicious plan designed to break the isolation we have imposed on Hamas terrorists in Gaza”.…
San Francisco-based software startup Decart, which was founded by Israelis Dean Leitersdorf, Orian Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev and produces software that helps AI companies switch more easily between chips, is raising $300 million in a funding round led by Radical Ventures, with additional backing from Nvidia and Disney CEO Michael Eisner…
Amnon Shashua’s AI21 laid off approximately 60% of its employees as it refocuses the company on AI agent optimization technology associated with its Maestro platform; the move comes after the collapse of acquisition talks with AI cloud platform Nebius…
Hamas named Mohammed Ouda, who served as the group’s head of military intelligence during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, as the new head of its military division, days after Israel killed Izz ad-Din al-Haddad in a targeted strike in Gaza on Friday…
Stacey Bosworth is joining the Forward as vice president of development…
Yael Shamouilian is joining the Anti-Defamation League as director of media relations…
Ofer Bronchtein, who served as a senior advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron on Israeli-Palestinian issues, died at 69…
Director Joe Sedelmaier, the brains behind Wendy’s famous “Where’s the beef?” ad, died at 92…
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Israeli President Isaac Herzog (right) received the credentials of Somaliland Ambassador to Israel Mohamed Hagi on Monday at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, five months after Israel first recognized the East African nation’s sovereignty.
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JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY IMAGES FOR PEN AMERICA
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Author of 28 novels, four of which have been adapted into Lifetime Original Movies, Jodi Picoult turns 60...
Retired senior counsel in the D.C. office of Blank Rome, Harvey Sherzer turns 82... Retired chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, now of counsel in the NYC office of Latham & Watkins, Jonathan Lippman turns 81... Clinical psychologist, author, teacher, public speaker and ordained rabbi, Dennis G. Shulman turns 76... Former member of the California state Senate, she was also a member of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, Hannah-Beth Jackson turns 76... Israeli novelist and former journalist, Edna Shemesh turns 73... Nurse and former member of the Wisconsin State Assembly (2009-2015), Sandra “Sandy” Pasch turns 72... Retired chief of the general staff of the IDF, now leader of the Yashar party, Gadi Eizenkot turns 66... Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, born in Milan, now chief rabbi of Russia, Rabbi Berel Lazar turns 62... Journalist, teacher and playwright, now editor-in-chief of Streetsblog NYC, Gersh Kuntzman turns 61... Born in Moscow, he is a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alex Eskin turns 61... Business manager and spokesperson for NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan, Estee Portnoy turns 59... Former CEO of Bend the Arc, a Jewish partnership for justice, Stosh Cotler turns 58... Israeli-born chef, owner of multiple NYC restaurants, she is a cookbook author and comedian, Einat Admony turns 55... Israeli actor and fashion designer, Dorit Bar Or turns 51... Canadian food writer and cookbook author, she is a judge on Bravo's "Top Chef," Gail Simmons turns 50... Member of the Knesset for the Likud party since 2019, Ofir Katz turns 46... Nonprofit manager and consultant, Alex Shapero... Pitcher for Team Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic and is now pitching coach for the UC Davis Aggies, Zachary "Zack" James Thornton turns 38... Activist, advocacy educator, engagement strategist and TED speaker, Natalie Warne... Ice hockey free agent, Brendan Leipsic turns 32...
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