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Good Thursday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the prospect of Rep. Wesley Bell facing a rematch against anti-Israel former Rep. Cori Bush, and talk to national security experts about potential Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps plots against Jewish communities in the U.S. We cover the ADL’s assessment that the Minneapolis Catholic school shooter used weapons inscribed with antisemitic and anti-Israel messages, and report on France’s walkback of its call for the “right of return” for Palestinians as part of Paris’ Palestinian statehood push. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jake Sullivan and Michael Anton.

Ed. note: The next Daily Kickoff will arrive on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Happy Labor Day Weekend!

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Last year’s election cycle marked a high point for pro-Israel groups, buoyed by the ouster of two virulently anti-Israel House Democrats (former Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman in New York), the defeat of a House Republican who opposed funding to Israel (former Rep. Bob Good of Virginia) and the success of mainstream Democrats in numerous contested primaries. 

But the political environment for next year’s midterms is looking somewhat choppier in the Jewish world, amid growing anti-Israel sentiment in the Democratic Party, an anti-establishment, transgressive mood in both parties and the reticence of moderate voices to speak up.

In this less hospitable landscape, pro-Israel groups will be playing more defense than offense — ensuring like-minded incumbents are able to avert serious primary challenges, while working to prevent virulently anti-Israel voices from emerging as nominees in key races.

One of the biggest potential showdowns is developing in St. Louis, where Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) faces the prospect of a rematch against Bush, whom he comfortably defeated by six points in last year’s primary. With the benefit of incumbency, Bell would be favored in any rematch, but he is facing an organized campaign by anti-Israel protesters who disrupted his recent town hall after he returned from a trip to the Jewish state. 

AIPAC’s super PAC spent over $8 million against Bush in the 2024 race, and would be expected to prioritize Bell’s reelection as a top priority if she ran again. Bush, for all her celebrity in leftist spaces, has numerous vulnerabilities that haven’t gone away since her last defeat — from her calls to defund the police, lackadaisical constituent service and ethical improprieties involving the use of campaign funds in paying her husband to provide personal security.

Still, in a sign that advocating against Israel can get far-left candidates some traction in deep-blue districts, a Bush comeback will be worth monitoring closely. Indeed, any pro-Israel Democrat running in an urban district with a distinct progressive bent will have to pay attention to any real or prospective primary challenges.

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A town hall organized by Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) last week in St. Louis turned contentious as a large group of demonstrators turned out to heckle the freshman congressman — fresh off a trip to Israel — over his support for the Jewish state, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. A scuffle later broke out between security guards and some of the demonstrators.

Looking ahead: The situation highlights the ongoing antagonism from the local far left against Bell, which could foreshadow a primary challenge to the congressman from former Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), whom Bell unseated, or one of her political allies. Braxton Payne, a St. Louis-based Democratic strategist, told JI he recognized some of the individuals involved in the demonstrations as longtime backers of Bush. He said that the political coalitions supporting and opposing Bell in 2024 have remained largely unchanged since Bell took office. “You’re still seeing the same bases, cohorts of support” as in the 2024 race, Payne said. “I do think there is a sentiment for someone to run against [Bell] in a primary” with support from the “de-facto Cori Bush base.”

Read the full story here.

The alleged gunman who opened fire on a Catholic school in Minneapolis on Wednesday, killing two children and injuring at least 17 people, most of them students at the school, used a gun that had antisemitic and anti-Israel writings across it, according to the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. 

Gunman’s inspiration?: The assailant’s gun also included praise for mass killers “across the ideological spectrum,” including white supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government actors, the ADL stated. Two of the names that appeared on the gun were Natalie Rupnow, who killed a staff member and a student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., last December, and Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019. 

Read the full story here.

National security experts are warning that Jewish communities around the world could face increased Iranian threats following the recent accusation by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps orchestrated attacks last year on a synagogue and kosher restaurant in the country, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

Threat level: “We’ve seen Iranian penetration in many Westernized countries, with Australia now being the latest. Though to see direct evidence of a linkage to actual violence — not just disinformation campaigns or cyber campaigns — is very frightening,” Rich Goldberg, a senior advisor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. “The FBI and NYPD have had live investigations that have resulted in arrests of Hezbollah operatives in New York City casing out institutions,” Mitch Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, which works to safeguard Jewish communities, told JI. “Iranians have a long timeline. Just because [an attack] hasn’t happened in the last six to eight weeks [since the Israel-Iran war] doesn’t mean that the Iranians haven’t stopped plotting.” 

Read the full story here.

France plans to remove a call for the “right of return” for millions of Palestinian refugees to Israel from its declaration, made alongside 60 other countries, for a Palestinian state, Ofer Bronchtein, an advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron, told Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov on Wednesday. Article 39 of the declaration calls for "a regional and international framework offering appropriate support to resolving the refugee question, while reiterating the right of return." 

About-face: Bronchtein told JI that opponents of the declaration are nitpicking to undermine it, and said that the declaration "is almost 20 pages long, and those are two words." Still, he acknowledged that the wording of Article 39 “could be problematic” and that Paris is “working with the Saudis to find a way to make it clear that was not our intention at all. Macron will say this is our stance. We are not planning to force the return of Palestinian refugees anywhere." 

Read the full story here.

Speaking to members of the Florida Democratic Party Jewish Caucus over Zoom on Wednesday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) accused the Trump administration of not working in good faith to combat antisemitism, discussed recent Democratic National Committee votes on Israel and offered a strong defense of Israel against a growing chorus of critics, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Power grab: Wasserman Schultz argued that a series of moves by the Trump administration — attempting to place new conditions on Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding, gutting the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and eliminating Justice Department programs focused on hate crimes — show that the administration’s focus on antisemitism isn’t genuine. “None of that makes us safer, and all of it demonstrates that they don't really care about taking care of our community. They aren't concerned about antisemitism, they are concerned about maintaining power,” she said. “Let’s not let our community members believe the rhetoric and the BS.”

Read the full story here.

Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday that the “case for withholding weapons from Israel today is much stronger than it was one year ago,” adding that he now backs such efforts, Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss reports.

Situation shift: “The thing that we were grappling with throughout all of 2024, which is not the case today, is that Israel was under attack from multiple fronts,” Sullivan, who served under President Joe Biden, told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller. “It was under attack from Hezbollah, from the Houthis, from Syria, from Iraq, obviously from Hamas and from Iran itself. So the idea of saying, ‘Israel, we’re not going to give you a whole set of military tools’ in that context was challenging.”

Read the full story here.

Podhoretz’s Path: In The Free Press, Norman Podhoretz, who is 95, reflects on the “double life” he has led as a child of Brooklyn who was welcomed into Manhattan’s aristocracy before falling out of favor with the city’s elite. “In a peculiar way, my journey began when I escaped death at 6 years old, which I learned later was a very close call. It makes me laugh to think about how many people, how many of my former friends, might have reacted if they knew about my early brush with death. Damn, they might have said. If only. But I was, after all, rather good at escaping dire situations. The trauma of falling from the precipice of New York’s intellectual aristocracy in 1967 — a kind of social death — has stayed with me ever since. But over time, as I sat with and bore it, refusing to apologize for its truth or hide it from public view, the immediacy of the pain softened. In its place came opportunity.” [FreePress]

Get Tough on the Quad: In the Jewish News Syndicate, William Daroff and Betsy Berns Korn, respectively the CEO and chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, call on universities to take a strong stance against campus antisemitism as the academic year begins. “Rules against disruption and harassment must be applied evenly, not bent by politics. Online harassment and doxxing against Jews should be treated with the same seriousness as other threats and harassment on campus. … Campuses must recognize that for most Jews, support for the State of Israel is not a political slogan but an expression of identity. Treating Zionism as illegitimate means treating Jewish identity itself as suspect. Administrators and student-life offices must apply the same clear standards to safeguarding Jewish students as they do for all others. To that end, organizations and their members who target Jewish students must face consequences. Universities must clearly and broadly communicate their rules regarding protests and harassment, and then enforce them vigorously and consistently.” [JNS]

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Michael Anton, who serves as the director of the secretary of state's policy planning staff, is departing his post in Foggy Bottom this fall…

A new Quinnipiac survey found that 60% of Americans do not support sending additional military aid to Israel; half of those surveyed — 77% of Democrats and 20% of Republicans — said they believed Israel was commiting genocide in Gaza…

The New York Times does a deep dive into the federal investigation into former National Security Advisor John Bolton, following last week’s FBI raids of Bolton’s home and office; the investigation centers around the interception by a foreign country of emails sent by Bolton to individuals assisting with his 2020 memoir…

xAI, the parent company of the social media platform X and creator of the Grok artificial intelligence chatbot, said in a letter to lawmakers earlier this month that the antisemitic and violent rants posted by the chatbot last month were the results of an “unintended update” to Grok’s code, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

Microsoft fired two employees who participated in a sit-in in the Washington state office of the company’s president, Brad Smith, and demanded the company cut ties with Israel…

The Beverly Hills Unified School District, in a 3-2 vote, approved a proposal to fly the Israeli flag inside all schools and district buildings; the proposal also designates Oct. 7 as a day of remembrance and recognizes May as Jewish American Heritage Month…

State legislators in California are weighing new legislation that would establish an Office of the Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator and would prevent the use of learning materials “that would subject a pupil to unlawful discrimination”...

Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix and Jonathan Glazer signed on as executive producers of an upcoming film about the death of Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl alleged to have been killed by IDF fire in January 2024…

Authorities in Argentina raided a Buenos Aires villa in search of the “Portrait of a Lady,” a 17th-century portrait by Italian artist Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi that was believed to have been looted nearly a century ago from its Jewish owners by a Nazi official who took the artwork to South America after the war…

A group of policy experts from the N7 Initiative — a joint project of the Atlantic Council and the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation — met with senior Syrian officials, including Syria’s minister of defense, in Damascus this week. “We heard [a] real desire to find a way to not just have a ceasefire, but to have a security deal with Israel,” William Wechsler, the senior director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council, told Jewish Insider. He said a security deal is the first step on the path toward Israel-Syria normalization — which, he said, is not likely to come soon, but “there's so many things that can be done in the interim”… 

The International Atomic Energy Agency assessed that no enriched uranium has been moved from Iran’s nuclear site in Isfahan since the country’s 12-day war with Israel in June…

Florida businessman and philanthropist Stephen Muss, who saved both the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach and the Alexander Muss High School in Israel from closure, died at 97…

SHMULIK ALMANI

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar (left) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio met on Wednesday in Washington during Sa’ar’s first trip to the capital since becoming foreign minister.

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