Daily Kickoff
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2026
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we have the scoop on a recent meeting between Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and rabbis from Michigan’s Temple Israel, which earlier this year was attacked by a pro-Hezbollah terrorist, and cover yesterday’s Capitol Hill rally supporting the passage of the Right to Worship Act. We report on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s remarks that he will not participate in protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during next week’s U.N. General Assembly, and profile MS NOW anchor Erielle Reshef, who got her start on Israeli television. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Michael Dell, Lacey Schwartz Delgado and Jonathan Powell.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with an assist from Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
Today's Agenda
Vice President JD Vance is sitting down for an interview with Sid Rosenberg today, during which the conservative radio host said he intends to press Vance on his relationship with Tucker Carlson and his stance on the U.S.-Israel relationship.
The Hudson Institute is holding a fireside chat this morning focused on Iran-China relations and the U.S.’ Operation Economic Outcast effort to financially isolate Tehran that had initially featured Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA). Nunn, who is locked in a tight reelection bid and earlier this week voted in favor of a war powers resolution to force an end to the Iran war, no longer appears on Hudson’s promotional page for the event, which now features Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA).
Axios is releasing portions of its recent interview with far-left commentator Hasan Piker over the course of the day, ahead of the release of the full interview tomorrow. In the first released clip, Piker told the outlet’s Alex Thompson that he believed that the U.S. had committed more acts of terror than al-Qaida, saying, “Pound for pound as far as the number of deaths, yes,” adding, “We have caused tremendous terror all around the world.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is holding a briefing today alongside NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch about security around the U.N. General Assembly, which begins next week. More below.
The Atlantic Festival kicks off today in New York. The three-day convening begins this morning with a sit-down with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who was in New York’s Hudson Valley yesterday campaigning with NY-17 Democratic candidate Cait Conley). This afternoon, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who is mulling a 2028 bid, will take the stage for a fireside chat about the future of the Democratic Party.
We’re continuing to follow the fallout from Macklemore’s performance earlier this month at two Ed Sheeran concerts over the rapper’s anti-Israel remarks at previous concerts and past antisemitic incidents. Robert Kraft, who along with several other stadium owners banned the rapper from performing at their venues over his past antisemitic rhetoric and imagery — prompting several other opening acts to drop out of the shows in solidarity — pledged $2 million for aid to the Middle East on Wednesday, matching a donation of the same amount by Sheeran. Read more about the donation here.
One Thing to Know
In the most significant sign of his efforts to make inroads with skeptical Jewish voters in Michigan’s Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee, recently met with rabbis at Temple Israel for a closely guarded conversation, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
Two rabbis who were said to have participated in the conversation, details of which were unclear, declined to comment when reached on Wednesday. El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The covert nature of the meeting, which neither party has publicized, underscores the sensitivities felt among some Jewish leaders who have remained wary of publicly associating with El-Sayed because of their continued discomfort with his positions on Israel and remarks about antisemitism.
The Big Reads
show of support
Suozzi, Knott, Jewish groups rally for Right to Worship Act
Reps. Brad Knott (R-NC) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) rallied outside the Capitol on Wednesday alongside more than two dozen representatives of religious community organizations in support of the Right to Worship Act, their federal bill establishing buffer zones outside of religious institutions to protect them from disruptions. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has been involved in supporting the bill behind the scenes, also expressed his support for it in a statement to Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod. “Religious liberty is regarded as our ‘First Freedom.’ Our Founders listed it first in the Bill of Rights because they understood how essential it was to the foundation of our Republic. But that right rings hollow if worshippers must brave harassment or worry for their safety as they exercise their religion,” Johnson said.
First in JI: Over a year after the deadly firebombing attack targeting an Israeli hostage awareness march in Boulder, Colo., Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO), who represents the city, and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) introduced legislation to modify Nonprofit Security Grant Program conditions to allow grantees to use funding for staffing costs.
protest politics
Mamdani says he won’t protest Netanyahu — and doesn’t urge New Yorkers to, either
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told reporters on Wednesday that he does not intend to participate in any demonstrations against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance at the U.N. General Assembly next week — and maintained he did not endorse public agitation against the Jewish state’s premier, an apparent ratcheting-down of his remarks from earlier this summer, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports. Following an unrelated press conference, Mamdani confirmed information leaked to Politico that he would not take part in anticipated protests against Netanyahu’s scheduled arrival in New York on Sept. 23 or speech at the international summit the next day. He also stressed that he did not call for his anti-Israel allies on the left to take to the streets either. “I do not have any plans to attend any protest at the U.N. General Assembly,” Mamdani said. “To New Yorkers, I have never encouraged them to protest.”
anchor point
Erielle Reshef's journey from Israeli TV to MS NOW
MS NOW anchor Erielle Reshef never planned to become a television journalist. After completing a master’s degree in diplomacy and conflict studies in Israel in 2010, she happened to be watching an English-language news program whose anchors were about to go on maternity leave. Her husband wrote down the email address on the screen and pushed her to apply. That opportunity launched a career that has taken Reshef from her hometown of Oklahoma City to local television, international news and eventually ABC News, where she spent eight and a half years, including as a national correspondent. In June 2025, Reshef left the relative comfort of a network news reporting job to join MSNBC, which was rebranded later in the year as MS NOW, where she is now a fill-in anchor for daytime cable news shows for the first time. In an interview with Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen, Reshef said her Jewish values — particularly curiosity, rigorous debate and a commitment to understanding people on the margins — are the “scaffolding” of her journalism.
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 our app (on Apple and Android) and website.
President Donald Trump is planning to meet with Gulf leaders next week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York to discuss a postwar strategy for Iran; the president held a similar meeting on the sidelines of last year’s UNGA to discuss Gaza, a week before publicly releasing his postwar plan for the enclave…
The State Department extended its visa ban on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior Palestinian officials, preventing members of the delegation from attending UNGA next week for the second year in a row; State Department officials attributed the ban to Palestinian leaders’ efforts to “internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”...
New photos obtained by CBS News indicate widespread damage at U.S. facilities around the Gulf resulting from Iranian attacks, including destroyed planes, buildings and vehicles in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
CNN reports that more than a dozen Russian spy satellites had operated over a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia two days before the facility was struck in an Iranian drone and missile attack in which 15 U.S. troops were injured…
The House passed, in a 262-159 vote, a major Russia and Iran sanctions package named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), which targets Russia’s energy sector as well as Iran’s weapons and energy industries…
Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) filed a war powers resolution to block military action against Oman, in response to Trump's threats to bomb the U.S. ally if it does not cooperate with U.S. efforts to counter Iran in the Strait of Hormuz…
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is slated to campaign with Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed next week in the Wolverine State.
Meanwhile, the Detroit News endorsed El-Sayed’s opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), citing in part El-Sayed’s history of deleting past social media content and noting that a “candidate who feels the need to hide his past from voters is not someone who can be trusted to be the same person after Election Day as he was on the campaign trail”...
A New York man who pleaded guilty to assaulting a Jewish man days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks was sentenced to 90 days in jail; during sentencing, Yehia Amin was photographed smiling and flashing the peace sign with his hands, telling the judge through an interpreter that he wanted to look good in photographs from the courtroom…
Michael Dell listed his Boston penthouse in the city’s Millennium Tower for less than he purchased it a decade ago for $10.9 million…
The Hollywood Reporter reviews documentarian Lacey Schwartz Delgado’s “Re/Pair,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and pairs Black and Jewish figures, including David Schwimmer, Van Jones, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and Rabbi Sharon Brous, for conversations about Black-Jewish relations…
The Spectator reports that both U.K. National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell and London’s ambassador in Israel, Simon Walters, advised Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband against banning imports from Israeli settlements, warning that such a move would bolster support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government ahead of next month’s elections…
Air Canada removed an in-flight service director following a report that the employee had shared antisemitic content on social media; the Canadian carrier will also resume direct flights between Toronto and Israel at the end of November, earlier than its planned January resumption of flights…
A Kurdish-Jewish man with Canadian and Israeli citizenship who had traveled to the region to fight ISIS more than a decade ago was freed from an Iraqi Kurdish prison after he was convicted of killing a taxi driver in 2015; Aish announced that Ben Chasin will arrive at the organization’s yeshiva this week, where he will study…
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar met with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita in New York in a meeting convened by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, during which Jerusalem and Rabat agreed to a series of measures to boost bilateral ties, including appointing full ambassadors to each other’s countries, turning their diplomatic missions into embassies, increasing direct flights and holding high-level visits in the near future.
The night prior, Waltz hosted Sa'ar, Bourita, United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba and diplomats from Bahrain and Kazakhstan for a diplomatic reception marking the sixth anniversary of the Abraham Accords.
While in New York, Sa’ar also met with senior leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations for a wide-ranging discussion on Israel’s security, regional developments and U.S.-Israel relations…
Dalia Ziada is joining the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy as the director of the organization’s Washington office…
Artist and graphic designer Peter Max died on Monday at 88…
JI Live Briefing · Free preview
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Meta-morphosis: Bloomberg’s Riley Griffin and Alexandra Levine look at the role that Dina Powell McCormick plays at Meta, where she now serves as president, vice chairman and co-leader of Meta Compute after eight months on the company’s board. “While [Mark] Zuckerberg, 42, is the cerebral engineering leader obsessed with improving Meta’s products for the AI race, Powell McCormick, 53, has her pulse on the world outside of Silicon Valley, and can be Meta’s bridge to opportunities and fixer of challenges. ‘She is a close, trusted advisor of the whole senior leadership team, but especially of Mark,’ said CJ Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer. ‘She’s generally the last person who’s consulted on really important decisions.’” [Bloomberg]
Riyadh Ruminations: In War on the Rocks, Richard Nephew posits that the burgeoning nuclear agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is better than had initially been expected. “If it performs as promised, its provisions of exclusivity will provide benefits to the U.S. nuclear industry and lock Russia and China out of a potentially lucrative market that could have attendant political and security implications long term, especially in a Middle East where nuclear proliferation remains a serious threat. The U.S.-Saudi agreement is also innovative and imaginative, a credit to creative negotiations to unlock an issue that has been difficult for multiple administrations.” [WarontheRocks]
AI and the Archives: In The Washington Post, Daniella Greenbaum Davis explains how she used Anthropic’s Claude to recover and translate a 1946 Yiddish-language article that had been authored by her grandmother and detailed the day she was liberated from Bergen-Belsen. “Much of the debate concerning AI today is about scale and mortal threat, about destroying jobs and flooding social media with slop. It’s easy to forget that large language models, like all tools, are a thing human ingenuity has built to finish what human hands cannot. … I had spent years blindly feeling my way through archives; in a matter of days, AI had stitched together pieces of information that I couldn’t see, let alone put together.” [WashPost]
Picture of the Day
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) held a fireside chat on Wednesday night with Jewish students at The George Washington University about the rise in antisemitism. The event was organized by Jewish on Campus GW, a student-led chapter of the national Gen-Z advocacy organization.
Birthdays
Stan M. Herman, fashion designer known worldwide for his leading-edge corporate uniforms, turns 98
RANDY BROOKE/GETTY IMAGES
Chuck Grassley, U.S. senator (R-IA) since 1981 and president pro tempore of the Senate, turns 93
Peter J. Solomon, investment banker who once served as a NYC deputy mayor, turns 88
Gail Carson Levine, Newbery Honor-winning author of many young adult books, some with Jewish themes, turns 79
Joshua Muravchik, author of 11 books and hundreds of articles on foreign policy and the Middle East, turns 79
T. Alan Hurwitz, former president of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and then president of Gallaudet University, turns 79
Frank Hagelberg, Rochester, N.Y., attorney, he has held positions at the UJA-Federation of New York and the Rochester Jewish Federation
Jeremy Don Fogel, retired judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, turns 77
Harold Solomon, former professional tennis player who achieved a world ranking of No. 5 in 1980, turns 74
Rita Rudner, comedian, writer and actor, she was a frequent guest of Johnny Carson on the “Tonight Show,” turns 73
Daniel Fingeroth, author, comic book writer and editor, best known as group editor of the Spider-Man books at Marvel Comics, turns 73
Mody Kidon, Israeli businessman with real estate holdings in Israel and NYC, turns 72
Ellen Kahan Zager, author and graphic designer
Rina Frenkel, former member of the Knesset for the Yesh Atid party, turns 70
Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, rabbi emeritus of the New North London Synagogue and senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism UK, turns 69
Elliott S. Feigenbaum, former consultant at Quick Hits News
Richard Wolffe, journalist, best-selling author including two books on the Obama presidency and Emmy Award-winning executive producer, turns 58
Mandy Krauthamer Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the last 18 months of the Biden administration, turns 48
Adam Abrams, former regional communications director and spokesperson for former President Barack Obama, now a partner at Seven Letter
Nick Melvoin, member of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education, turns 41
David Litt, former Obama White House speechwriter who has since written a best-selling comedic memoir, turns 40
Adina Shatz, principal product manager for CathWorks
Rachel Roubein, national healthcare reporter The Washington Post covering the FDA
Natalie Edelstein Jarvis, editorial producer at Google
Max August, founder of the Israel Summit at Harvard, now a member of the partnerships team at OpenAI
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