Daily Kickoff
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2026
Good Friday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we break down two new polls about right-shifting Jewish voting patterns in this month’s midterms, report on Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s bid to challenge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as the party’s leader in the upper chamber and look at how Jensen Huang’s resignation as the CEO of Nvidia could impact the company’s extensive footprint in Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Mike Pence, Ron Dermer and Michelle Boorstein.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with assists from Tamara Zieve and Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
Today's Agenda
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in what will be his first public address following the midterms, is set to deliver the Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture this evening at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, which began yesterday and runs through Saturday in Washington.
Majority Democrats’ What’s Next summit continues today in Denver. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is set to take the stage this morning in conversation with Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov.
The JNF-USA Global Conference for Israel runs through Sunday in San Diego.
A second bike rally organized by activists in Philadelphia targeting Jewish-owned businesses in the city that was planned for this Sunday was canceled. More below.
Tikvah’s annual Jewish Leadership Conference is taking place in New York on Sunday, with a theme of “Jews, Christians, and the Renewal of America.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), author Dara Horn and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik are slated to speak at the convening, which will also honor U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
At Yeshiva University on Sunday evening, journalists Yonah Jeremy Bob and Elliot Kaufman will discuss their recent book, In the War Room, with JI’s Haley Cohen.
As the end of the year and holiday season approach, gala season is well underway in Washington and New York. In Washington on Sunday, Moment magazine is holding its annual gala, honoring NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, Carlyle Chairman David Rubenstein, Kathy Roth-Douquet and Amy Schwartz.
In New York City, the Zionist Organization of America is holding its annual gala, which this year will honor Huckabee and State Department antisemitism envoy Yehuda Kaploun.
One Thing to Know
Jewish voters remained broadly supportive of Democratic candidates in the 2026 midterms, according to a new comprehensive survey, but also were the only demographic group that swung rightward from 2024, suggesting a notable vulnerability as the party grows increasingly critical toward Israel and accommodating of socialist candidates.
The Mellman Group survey, conducted for the Jewish Electorate Institute from Oct. 29 to Nov. 6, found that 69% of Jewish voters supported Democrats in the midterms, while 25% voted for Republicans. While Jews remained one of the biggest Democratic voting blocs, support for the party slightly declined from the 2024 presidential election, when 72% of Jewish voters backed Democrats for Congress.
That slippage may not sound like a big deal, but it’s meaningful given that 2024 was the Republican Party’s strongest performance in a presidential election in 20 years, while 2026 is shaping up to be the biggest Democratic wave since 1974.
The Big Reads
SCOOP
El-Sayed significantly underperformed among Jewish Michigan voters, poll finds
Just half of Jewish Michiganders voted for Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI) in the midterm election, according to a new poll conducted by The Jewish Majority, far below typical voting patterns in the state for a Democratic candidate and badly lagging behind Gov.-elect Jocelyn Benson’s own performance with Jewish voters, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The poll is the clearest picture yet of the Jewish electorate in Michigan, amid conflicting estimates and analyses of how many Jewish voters in the state supported the controversial Democratic nominee. The poll found that Republican Mike Rogers won 43% of the Jewish vote, while 4% of Jewish voters left their ballots blank in the Senate race and 3% voted for a third-party candidate.
MAJORITY MUTINY
Chris Van Hollen launches bid for Senate majority leader, challenging Schumer
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), one of the Senate’s leading critics of the U.S.-Israel relationship, announced Thursday that he will challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to become Senate majority leader in the next Congress, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Van Hollen, who is also considering a 2028 presidential run and has been encouraged to run for the position for months by far-left activists and media figures attracted partly by his criticism of Israel, described his bid as a response to the midterm elections. Van Hollen and other critics of Schumer have largely been vague about their specific gripes with Schumer, who had been riding high off of sweeping midterm wins in deep-red territory, securing a substantial Democratic majority.
Left HUANG-ing?
Jensen Huang’s resignation raises questions about Nvidia’s Israel presence
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s abrupt resignation on Thursday has raised questions about the potential impact on the technology giant’s extensive footprint in Israel, where it employs roughly 6,000 people and operates its largest research and development hub outside the United States, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. The company’s Israeli teams have long played a central role in developing the networking and artificial intelligence technologies that allow data center chips to operate together. Engineers in Israel lead the development of Nvidia’s flagship networking hardware, which links tens of thousands of AI processors into unified supercomputing clusters.
The Rundown
The rest of today’s original stories from Jewish Insider — full stories, all published on the site.
PULLING THE PLUG
Follow-up bike rally targeting Jewish businesses in Philadelphia called off
RABB RESPONDS
Rabb declines to condemn rally targeting Jewish-owned businesses, criticizes counterprotesters
PORTFOLIO PIVOT
Trump directs Vance away from Iran negotiations, toward domestic issues
MONEY MATTERS
Trump’s demand for $350 billion in additional defense funds meets GOP skepticism
DERMER’S DISPOSITION
Ron Dermer: Israel has responsibility to expose foreign actors fomenting antisemitism
RESOURCE DENIED
Lawsuit alleges discrimination against Jewish employee org at NYC agency
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 compared the current rise in antisemitism in the United States to “Germany in 1939,” telling radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday that it is “pretty shocking to me”...
Former Vice President Mike Pence criticized “the people who are wringing their hands about U.S. support for Israel, [whom] I get the feeling sometimes are just using that as a thinly veiled excuse for their antisemitism”; Pence added he had “great concerns” with the rhetoric from Vice President JD Vance’s office regarding Ukraine and Israel…
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose term ends in January, said he will make a decision about a 2028 presidential bid “in the next few months”...
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS), asked about the status of U.S.-Israel cooperative programs in National Defense Authorization Act negotiations, told JI that he hadn’t yet seen a letter from several senior Senate Democrats demanding that the language be removed from the NDAA, but “I’m a huge supporter of Israel”...
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, summoned former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to testify before the committee next month regarding “national security and the protection of sensitive U.S. technology,” hours after Huang resigned from the company after admitting to a romantic relationship with a woman affiliated with China’s spy service…
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called Thursday for “dramatic change” in U.S. policy toward Israel, including U.S. military aid to Israel, saying at a press conference that the “status quo is unacceptable”...
In an interview with The New York Times’ Ezra Klein, far-left streamer Hasan Piker doubled down on his anti-Israel rhetoric, calling Zionism a “racist“ and “exterminationist” ideology; Piker also defended recent comments comparing suburban Jewish voters to the Ku Klux Klan…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is moving to fulfill his campaign pledge of disbanding the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group — the unit that handles counterterrorism and protest policing — with his administration planning to shift protest response to a new civilian unit…
Two Iranian men were convicted in a London court of spying on journalists from Iran International and British barrister Jonathan Turner, a founding member of U.K. Lawyers for Israel, as part of an operation linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps…
The IRGC said it targeted a U.S. early-warning radar in Bahrain, which hosts the Navy's 5th Fleet, alleging that the move came in response to a strike on a telecommunications tower in the southern Iranian city of Sirik attributed to “enemy fire”...
The Wall Street Journal looks at concerns among cybersecurity experts and officials in Israel and the U.S. over increasing Iranian efforts, bolstered by AI, to use cyberhacking to cause physical damage to targets…
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Thursday to renew sanctions on the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, including targeting potential dual-use materials, until November 2027…
Saudi Arabia is pressing the European Union to designate the Houthis as a terrorist organization amid renewed attacks on the kingdom — a move likely to face resistance over concerns of its impact on humanitarian aid being sent to Yemen…
Israel barred far-left French politicians Jean-Luc Mรฉlenchon and Mathilde Panot from entering the country on Thursday, citing what the Israeli Foreign Ministry described as their “blood libels” against Israel; the move follows France’s decision to deny entry to Israeli settler leader Yossi Dagan, which Jerusalem condemned Wednesday as “completely unacceptable”...
Washington Post reporter Michelle Boorstein, who covers religion for the outlet, was named the 2027 Sakka Family Religion and International Journalism Fellow at Georgetown University…
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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Kneecapping JD: The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser looks at the decision by President Donald Trump to remove Vice President JD Vance from the Iran portfolio as the two diverge on their approaches to the Islamic Republic. “[Trump] can hardly have expected Vance, with his obvious desperation to end a conflict that seems to be destroying what remaining hope he has of becoming President, to drive a hard bargain. … Whatever the proximate cause of the President’s decision, it has underscored — in the all-caps way that Trump likes his decisions to be underscored — that on the matter of the conflict in the Middle East, his Vice-President no longer speaks for him.” [NewYorker]
Cold Front: In The Wall Street Journal, Andreessen Horowitz’s Anne Neuberger considers how to address the threats posed by cyberwarfare in the AI age, following a widespread attack on grocery refrigerators in France that was attributed to Iran. “AI is shrinking the time between when a weakness is found and when attackers can exploit it. Defenders who still work at human speed will lose that race. … Next time it won’t be freezers. It will be pumps, breakers and hospital systems. We have the tools to prevent it.” [WSJ]
New Direction: The New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, David Halbfinger, considers how Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot could improve Israel’s standing in the U.S. if he becomes the country’s next prime minister. “A new government should frame its actions as a sharp change in direction, experts said, reversing [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s drive toward annexation of the West Bank and reviving the possibility of a Palestinian state beside Israel one day. Even if the government’s initiatives encountered domestic resistance in Israel, that would help elicit good will, and buy time, in Washington, experts said.” [NYTimes]
Picture of the Day
Vice Adm. Curt A. Renshaw (right), commander of the United States 5th Fleet, concluded a visit to Israel on Friday as a guest of the Israeli Navy commander, Vice Adm. Eyal Harel. IDF
Birthdays
Vanessa Bayer, actor and comedian best known as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” turns 45 on Saturday
KATIE FLORES/WWD VIA GETTY IMAGES
FRIDAY
Gad Zeevi, Israeli industrialist with holdings in energy and real estate, turns 87
Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome, turns 77
Ken Rudin, publisher of the independent “Political Junkie” blog and podcast
Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general throughout the Biden administration, turns 74
Nochi Dankner, once the controlling stockholder of a large Israeli conglomerate, turns 72
Sharon Freundel, coach for Pedagogy of Partnership
Ruth Wattenberg, former member of the D.C. State Board of Education for eight years
Alexandra Shulman, former editor-in-chief of British Vogue for 25 years, turns 69
Dan Sullivan, U.S. senator (R-AK), turns 62
Matt Weitzman, producer and writer, he has written for 10 television shows, turns 59
Katherine “Katya” Palkin, San Jose, Calif., resident
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born activist who has served in the Dutch parliament, she is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, turns 57
Ariel Atias, former Israeli government minister for the Shas party, he has served as minister of communications and of housing, turns 56
Kevin Pailet, co-founder of Pailet Financial Services, a predecessor agency of what is now the Dallas office of Marsh McLennan Agency
Rabbi Andrea Dobrick Haney, Conservative rabbi, wife of S. Fitzgerald Haney who is a former U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, turns 53
Geoff Freeman, president and CEO at the U.S. Travel Association
Meirav Ben-Ari, member of the Knesset on the B’Yachad list, turns 51
Jeff Rossen, television journalist, turns 50
Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations for MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers, turns 50
Yaakov “Kobi” Shimoni, Israeli rapper and record producer, generally known by his stage name “Subliminal,” turns 47
Paul Lurie, CEO of the JCC of Greater Baltimore
Charlee Minkin, judoka who won three national titles (2000, 2002 and 2004), she competed for the U.S. at the Athens Olympics in 2004, turns 45
Ari Morgenstern, senior director of policy and communications at Christians United for Israel
Jared Goldberg-Leopold, political communications consultant
Mark Botnick, PR and communications consultant
Jarryd Goldberg, professional soccer player, then a soccer coach and now a sales account executive at Les Friedland Associates, turns 41
Michael Schwab
Jonathan Topaz, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project
Troy Neiman, former relief pitcher in the Colorado Rockies organization, he pitched for Team Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic, now an EMT in Los Angeles, turns 36
Bar Brimer, Israeli film, television and stage actor and model, turns 29
Cole Deutch, attorney at Marrs Ellis & Hodge LLP
Danielle Mor, VP of Israel and global philanthropy and director of Christian Friends of the Jewish Agency for Israel
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