Daily Kickoff
TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2026
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview today’s primaries in Florida and a special election runoff in California, report on comments by Brooklyn Democratic official Carmella Charrington accusing “Zionists” of being behind a personal property dispute and cover yesterday’s meeting between Jared Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Justin Ishbia, Ariel Levy and Stefan Zweig.
Curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod.
Today's Agenda
It’s primary day in Florida. We’ll be watching a number of races around the Sunshine State, including the Democratic primaries in South Florida, where Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jared Moskowitz and Lois Frankel are facing challenges from their left.
We’ll also be awaiting the results of the state’s GOP primaries, where fringe elements of the party, including gubernatorial candidate James Fishback and congressional candidate Dan Bilzerian, are mounting bids that are unlikely to succeed but will be instructive as to the extent of the far-right’s reach in the state. More below.
In California, voters in the state’s 14th Congressional District will cast their ballots in the special election runoff between state Sen. Aisha Wahab and former Dublin, Calif., Mayor Melissa Hernandez to succeed former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) — a race in which the United Democracy Project has invested heavily. More below.
King Abdullah II of Jordan is kicking off a weeklong visit to China today, where he’s slated to meet with President Xi Jinping in Beijing and travel to Shanghai and Shenzhen.
In New York, the two-day Sephardic Rabbinic Conference wraps up this afternoon. Ofir Akunis, Israel’s consul general in New York, is slated to address the gathering today.
One Thing to Know
AIPAC closes a rocky primary season with a California gamble
As primary election season comes to an end, AIPAC is closing out its involvement in a dramatic cycle with an unexpected foray into a low-profile California House race on Tuesday where Israel has not been among the top issues.
In the last two weeks, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has spent nearly $2.5 million in an effort to defeat Aisha Wahab, a progressive state senator competing in a special election runoff against Melissa Hernandez, a moderate Democrat who is the president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit board and the former mayor of the East Bay city of Dublin.
The aggressive maneuver, which appears to be AIPAC’s last investment before the general election, has raised eyebrows among some Jewish leaders and Democratic strategists in the state, who see Wahab as favored to replace disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) in California’s 14th District, despite the flood of recent attacks against her from UDP and other allied groups.
The Big Reads
READING THE RIGHT
Florida primaries pose a test for far-right candidates
Today’s Republican primaries in Florida will be a critical test for far-right candidates who have built their campaigns on open antisemitism, providing hard data on how popular those views have become in the GOP, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Neither gubernatorial candidate James Fishback nor Dan Bilzerian, who is challenging Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) in Florida’s 6th Congressional District, is expected to win. But the extent of the support they’re able to pick up will be instructive.
blame game
Brooklyn Democratic leader who promoted infamous antisemitic tract rips ‘Zionists’ in new video
Brooklyn Democratic politician and housing activist Carmella Charrington, who has a history of pushing century-old antisemitic conspiracy theories, blamed the property dispute that launched her to prominence on “Zionists” in a recent interview with an Egyptian podcaster, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports. In the interview, Charrington raged against the Jewish investors who had acquired the building at the heart of the dispute. “They’re Zionists that basically did this,” Charrington said. “Same thing that they’re doing in the West Bank, it’s the same thing.”
PEACE PROSPECTS
Israel, Board of Peace establish working groups on Gaza disarmament and public health
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced on Monday, following his meeting with Jared Kushner, that Israel and the U.S.-led Board of Peace will launch two working groups to address key issues in the board’s plan for disarming Hamas and reconstructing the enclave, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports. One group will focus on disarmament and demilitarization in Gaza, the PMO said, while the second will focus on “sanitation, clean water and other public health issues for the people of Gaza and which also impact the people of Israel.”
The Rundown
The rest of today’s original stories from Jewish Insider — full stories, all published on the site.
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 threatened to “bomb the s--- out of” Oman if the Gulf state’s talks with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz interfere with U.S. efforts to reach a deal with Tehran…
The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations agency said that a vessel transiting through the Strait of Hormuz earlier Tuesday was struck by a projectile; one casualty was reported in the attack, which caused damage to the ship’s engine room…
Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) said that she told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, when the Israeli leader was in Washington for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) funeral, that, like her brother, “I will stand with Israel as well”...
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) criticized the “ongoing siege of Palestinian homes in the West Bank by violent, lawbreaking settlers” and called on the Trump administration to “compel the Israeli government to protect the lives, property and livelihood” of residents.
Jeffries’ comments came as the Ohio-based Palestinian American owner of a West Bank property that has been targeted by settlers returned to the home on Monday night…
U.S. defense technology firm Ondas is acquiring Israeli company Aran Defense in its first acquisition of operations from a company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange…
The Federal Railroad Administration approved more than $600 million in federal grants for Amtrak to relocate from its facility in Chicago’s South Loop to a new location in nearby Bridgeport; the 47-acre South Loop site is being considered by Chicago White Sox owner-in-waiting Justin Ishbia as the location for a possible new stadium…
The New York Post spotlights incoming Duquesne University freshman Chaim Galbut, who this fall will become the first observant Jewish player in Division I men's basketball in 25 years…
The New York Times looks at a dispute between the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, the granddaughter of the woman who betrayed the survivor’s family and an author seeking to write about the women’s connection…
The Salzburg, Austria, home that belonged to Stefan Zweig before the writer fled the country in 1934 for England and then Brazil, where he died, was put on the market for $14.5 million…
The Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh, Scotland, acknowledged that it had discriminated against a Jewish performer whose stand-up show at the venue during last year’s Fringe festival was canceled over his social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war; comic Philip Simon said the venue had canceled his show “just for being Jewish”…
The IDF said that a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad who participated in the abduction of an Israeli civilian from Kibbutz Be’eri during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks was killed in a strike in southern Gaza…
Israel has located the remains of Yehuda Katz, who was declared missing after the Battle of Sultan Yacoub during the First Lebanon War in 1982; the remains of two other soldiers who were declared missing following the battle were returned to Israel in 2019 and 2025…
Six Thai migrant workers were injured, two seriously, after an old unexploded ordnance detonated near the northern Israeli town of Metula…
The New Yorker’s Ariel Levy is joining CBS’ “60 Minutes” as a contributor…
Sarah Golabek-Goldman, who served as chief of staff to the Justice Department’s Leo Terrell, is joining the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law as director of legal initiatives…
JI Live Briefing · Free preview
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The Live Briefing is JI’s real-time feed — breaking news, notable content from across the web, video clips, images and more, all day. The items above are just a taste.
Community Comms
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Weaponizing the Waterways: In The Washington Post, Elise Labott looks at how the Iran-backed Houthis are using their control over strategic maritime choke points in the Red Sea to disrupt global shipping lanes. “Washington long assumed that if these vulnerabilities were weaponized, it would be by China or Russia. Instead, the Houthis got there first. Washington is still treating them as a military threat and missing their strategic evolution — under the mistaken assumption that insurgent groups don’t develop interests of their own, or the patience to act on them.” [WashPost]
Two Trump Cards: In The Wall Street Journal, former State Department official Ludovic Hood, now at the Hudson Institute, considers how President Donald Trump can address the stalemate with Iran without delivering a win to the Islamic Republic. “Mr. Trump is caught between political constraints that prevent using adequate military force to change Tehran’s behavior and a defiant regime willing to risk severe economic pain to rebuff Washington’s demands. ... Slicing through this Gordian Knot and arriving at a satisfactory outcome, namely a subdued or new government in Tehran, depends on two lines of effort: waging economic warfare against the regime’s revenue sources and rallying partners to undermine Iran and its proxy network in the region.” [WSJ]
Song of the Day
British-Israeli pianist Mendy Portnoy, who is one half of the Portnoy Brothers, released his new solo piano album “Elul” — a piano cover of Hanan Ben Ari’s “Hashiveinu” — six years after the release of Portnoy's album “Introspection.”
Birthdays
Jessi Ruth Klein, writer, actor and stand-up comedian from NYC, turns 51
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP
Sonia Wolff Levitin, Holocaust survivor, novelist, artist and producer, turns 92
Barbara Bluhm-Kaul, art collector, museum trustee in Chicago, Aspen, Colo., and Orange County, Calif., and former member of Cultural Property Advisory Committee to the State Department, turns 86
Jerome Seaman, Baltimore resident
Rabbi Noam Gordon, Ph.D, retired teacher of Talmud at Jerusalem's Yeshiva Torat Shraga
Susan G. Golding, former two-term mayor of San Diego, the first Jewish mayor of the city, turns 81
John D. Goldman, businessman and former chair of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, turns 77
Cindy Chazan, partner in Chazan-Leipzig Consulting
Gary Silow, retired judge of the Montgomery County (Pa.) Court of Common Pleas, turns 75
Winnie Holzman, dramatist, screenwriter and poet, turns 72
Raphael Schwartz, president at Wyckoff, N.J.-based Benefit Connections
Alan H. Kadish, M.D., president of Touro University, turns 70
Stuart Tochner, employment law attorney in the Los Angeles office of Ogletree Deakins
Timothy Geithner, treasury secretary in the Obama administration, now chairman of Warburg Pincus, turns 65
Jules Polonetsky, CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, a D.C.-based think tank and advocacy group focused on issues of data privacy, turns 61
Kenneth Goldin, auctioneer, television personality and sports card collector, he is featured on the Netflix TV series “King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch,” turns 61
David Brog, executive director of the Maccabee Task Force established by Haim Saban and the late Sheldon Adelson, turns 60
Dayvid Figler, criminal defense attorney and media personality in Las Vegas, turns 59
Brian Michael Bendis, award-winning comic book writer and artist for both Marvel and then DC Comics, turns 59
Jason Furman, professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, he served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, turns 56
Andrew Wilkow, conservative political talk radio host on the Sirius XM Patriot channel, turns 54
Gabriel Naddaf, Greek Orthodox priest, he serves as a judge in Israel's religious court system and encourages Christians to enlist in the IDF, turns 53
Nicole Krauss, best-selling author, her novels have been translated into 35 languages, turns 52
Roger Zakheim, director of the Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, he was previously a partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling and general counsel of the House Armed Services Committee
David A.J. "Andy" Samberg, actor, comedian, writer, producer and musician, turns 48
Zachary Iscol, former commissioner of New York City Emergency Management, turns 48
Noah Slepkov, fellow at The Jewish People Policy Institute and managing partner of theMadad website
Sarah Breger, editor of Moment Magazine
Sadie Gurman, reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering the Justice Department and federal law enforcement
Laurie Segall, founder and CEO of Mostly Human, a New York-based entertainment media company, turns 41
Olga Rubin, mixed martial artist, she competes in the bantamweight and featherweight divisions, turns 37
Or “Ori” Sasson, Israeli judoka who won Olympic bronze medals at the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics, turns 36
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