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Good Tuesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview today’s special election in Georgia to succeed former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and spotlight the high-stakes GOP primary in Kentucky, where Ed Gallrein, with backing from President Donald Trump and the Republican Jewish Coalition, is aiming to unseat Rep. Thomas Massie. We report on a threat from a group of six Senate Democrats to obstruct Senate proceedings in order to force hearings and debate on the Iran war, and spotlight Jewish siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, the co-founders of Anthropic, as the AI company confronts the federal government. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Argentine President Javier Milei, Ari Emanuel and Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd.

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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Voters are casting ballots today in the special election for the ruby-red House seat previously held by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), but the final outcome will likely remain uncertain for another month. 

With 17 candidates on the all-party ballot, the race is expected to go to a runoff — unless any candidate receives 50% or more of the vote, making today’s race effectively a competition over which two candidates are likely to finish with the most support. 

On the GOP side, the race is dominated by two candidates. The first is Clay Fuller, a local district attorney, veteran and former White House fellow who is backed by President Donald Trump. 

The second, former state Sen. Colton Moore, a hard-line conservative rabble-rouser often at odds with his own party’s leadership, is running as the anti-establishment populist — a profile that more closely matches Greene’s. 

The district is one of the most Republican in the country: Trump carried the district by 37 percentage points in 2024, and paid a visit to the district in late February to throw his support behind Fuller.

A third Republican candidate, Brian Stover, a local businessman, has raised a significant amount of campaign cash and is a wild card. 

On the Democratic side, the likely leader is Army veteran Shawn Harris, who lost to Greene in 2024 by nearly 30 points. He’s pulled in $4.2 million from Democrats outraged by Greene and who’ve been attracted by a far-fetched pitch that he can flip the seat. But he’s likely to secure a runoff spot, given how many Republican candidates are on the ballot.

Fuller’s campaign has been touting Trump’s endorsement, and his own military service. Fuller’s Air Force career included work on counterterrorism operations, and he was deployed in 2024 to the Al Udeid airbase in Qatar supporting U.S. Central Command operations. He also has the support of the conservative Club for Growth.

He has backed the U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran, and expressed support for Israel. “President Trump tried the peace route with Iran not once, not twice, but THREE separate times—and they refused. He's the peace President, but you can't negotiate with a death cult,” Fuller said, emphasizing he had supported operations against Iran and that the regime and its proxies had killed many Americans.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

Daily Overtime brings you what we’re tracking at the end of the day — and what’s coming next.

President Donald Trump drew two contradictory timelines for the ongoing war in Iran in remarks on Monday, saying that the conflict was both drawing to a close and in its early stages, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports. In a call with CBS News, Trump said, "The war is very complete, pretty much. [Iran has] no navy, no communications; they've got no air force. Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including the manufacturing of drones. … There's nothing left in a military sense."  

Timeline talk: The war has progressed faster than initially expected, the president added: "We're very far ahead of schedule." Also Monday, the Department of Defense posted on X that "we have only just begun to fight, with a graphic of a missile interceptor and the text: "No Mercy." At a news conference after his CBS News interview, Trump was asked whether the war is "very complete" or "just beginning." The president responded, "I think you could say both. It's the beginning of building a new country. We could call it a tremendous success right now, or we could go further." Trump added, "And we're going to go further."

Read the full story here.

More from Trump: The president also said repeatedly on Monday that he believed the Iranian regime was going to “take over the Middle East” and would have obtained a nuclear weapon “within weeks” had he not ordered the U.S. military operation against Iran, JI’s Emily Jacobs reports. 

President Donald Trump is headed to Kentucky this week to rally with Ed Gallrein, his endorsed candidate to take on anti-Israel and isolationist Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in the increasingly heated primary between the two men, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

The latest: The campaign stop comes at a time when Massie has made himself the face of GOP opposition to the war in Iran — among the litany of other issues on which he has also broken with the president. Massie was one of two lead sponsors of a failed effort in the House last week to stop the war in Iran, while Gallrein said in a statement that the war was justified and would prevent further attacks on U.S. servicemembers and the nation. In a ruby- red district, Massie’s opposition to the war could cost him politically, as polling shows Republicans have rallied strongly behind the administration and its efforts. For its part, the Republican Jewish Coalition is taking aim at Massie over his opposition to the war in a significant ad campaign.

Read the full story here.

The Trump administration on Monday moved to designate the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood (SMB) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity and announced plans to impose a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation on March 16, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.

Rubio’s statement: “The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood uses unrestrained violence against civilians to undermine efforts to resolve the conflict in Sudan and advance its violent Islamist ideology,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a press release. “The United States will use all available tools to deprive the Iranian regime and Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.” Experts have previously told JI that the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) is heavily influenced by the SMB, working alongside several Islamist militias and receiving attack drones from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has been designated as a terrorist organization by both the U.S. and the European Union. 

Read the full story here.

Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei are like countless other Americans who have built a family business together. Except that the business the Jewish siblings have built is artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, one of the fastest- growing companies in America — and in the five years since they left cushy jobs at rival OpenAI to start it, they have each amassed billions in wealth. But a dispute over Anthropic’s stated commitment to safety has now put the company squarely in conflict with the Trump administration, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Legal battle: On Monday, Anthropic sued Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and several other Trump administration officials over Hegseth’s decision to designate Anthropic a national security “supply-chain risk” last month, after the company told the Pentagon that it would not allow its technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance or in fully autonomous weapons. Hegseth is “within his right to cancel the contract. But I think that the people in the Department of War, they're trying to turn the screw. They're trying to make it tough for Anthropic to survive,” Will Rinehart, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who researches tech policy, told JI. 

Read the full story here.

A group of six Senate Democrats is threatening to immediately begin obstructing proceedings on the Senate floor in order to force public hearings in the Senate Armed Services Committee and Foreign Relations Committee and debate on the chamber floor on the war in Iran, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

The plan: JI first reported that several of those lawmakers — including Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) — introduced a series of five new war powers resolutions late last week. The senators indicated in a meeting with reporters on Monday that they plan to force votes on those, and possibly additional, war powers resolutions when they become eligible for votes next week, but that those resolutions are just part of a broader strategy to disrupt normal Senate business in an attempt to force greater public discussion about the war in Iran.

Read the full story here.

The two Pennsylvania men who allegedly hurled improvised explosive devices toward a protest against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will face federal charges for “ISIS-inspired terrorism,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch revealed Monday, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.

ISIS inspiration: Mamdani and Tisch addressed the press near the scene of the crime, the mayoral residence of Gracie Mansion, where far-right provocateur Jake Lang held a protest on Saturday to “Stop the Islamic takeover of New York City.” Tisch said Lang and his supporters were the targets of two homemade bombs that Emir Balat, 18, who had traveled from Pennsylvania with his accused accomplice Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, flung from amid the counter-demonstration. Tisch confirmed earlier reporting that the Islamic State appears to have inspired the alleged perpetrators’ actions — but maintained nothing at present pointed to any link between the attempted attack and the ongoing U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran.

Read the full story here.

Bonus: Mamdani posted a photo of his wife, who has come under fire in recent days for her social media support for Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks, and former Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who is facing potential deportation for his role in anti-Israel activity on the campus, having an iftar meal at Gracie Mansion.

Wolpe’s Wit: In a tongue-in-cheek essay in The Atlantic, Rabbi David Wolpe responds to a statement from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office reaffirming his belief in Israel’s right to exist, issued after the governor came under fire for a series of anti-Israel remarks. “Given this statement, I feel it is appropriate to affirm that I believe that Gavin Newsom also has the right to exist, and I further believe that California itself has the right to exist. And the right to defend itself, specifically from Nevada, but not necessarily from Oregon. … As a spiritual leader, it is my responsibility to follow my conscience and not the shifting polls, which, coincidentally, currently align with my conscience. Yes, this position may arouse some ire. Many insist that California is a colonial enterprise, and much of it was stolen from its original inhabitants, the members of the liberal-arts faculty of UC Berkeley.” [TheAtlantic]

Chaos Be Damned: In The Washington Post, Douglas Feith, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy from 2001-2005, posits that President Donald Trump is attempting a new strategy in Iran. “Trump shows no concern about chaos. He is giving the Iranians a chance to take control away from the ayatollahs. Trump sees that as a gift — he doesn’t think the U.S. owes Iranians an on-the-ground effort to prevent chaos or to make their country stable, let alone democratic and prosperous. The president’s goal is to deprive Iran of the power to hurt the U.S. and its interests. If dangers develop down the road, he expects to be able to deal with them far more easily than if he had left in place the Islamic regime that was pursuing nuclear weapons and developing ever-longer-range missiles.” [WashPost]

Doha’s Decision: In his Substack “The Abrahamic Metacritique,” Hussein Aboubakr Mansour observes the developing inflection point in Qatar as the Arab state’s leaders determine its political and diplomatic future. “The question we should ask is whether Qatar will use this moment of crisis to do what its critics have demanded for years: sever its ties to political Islam, expel the Muslim Brotherhood networks it has funded and housed since the 1990s, abandon the Hamas patronage that made it indispensable as a mediator but also made it a target, and, perhaps, reposition as a clean, reliable American partner. The question sounds simple, but the answer is not.” [AbrahamicMetacritique]

Ari the Interviewer: The New York Times’ Brooks Barnes spotlights former Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel following the launch of the Hollywood agent’s new podcast, in which he takes center stage as an interviewer. “For people who have dealt with the combative Mr. Emanuel over the decades, this can be a bit like watching a body-swapping comedy: Who are you, and what have you done with Ari Emanuel? In contrast to his reputation, Mr. Emanuel comes across on ‘Rushmore’ as eminently likable. He’s polite and thoughtful. He’s able to maintain his focus for more than 90 seconds. Mr. Emanuel even allows himself brief moments of vulnerability — when the armor slips, and he’s not the alpha.” [NYTimes]

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ANGELA WEISS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Argentine President Javier Milei was the featured guest at Yeshiva University last night for the latest in its “Great Conversations” series hosted by the school’s president, Rabbi Ari Berman (right). 

DIA DIPASUPIL/GETTY IMAGES FOR TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

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