Daily Kickoff
MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2026
Good Monday morning.
Welcome to our new and fresh Daily Kickoff. Let us know your thoughts on our new and improved format by replying to this email.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how the GOP’s generational divide over Israel has been bolstered by social media, talk to Sen. Rick Scott about antisemitism within the Republican Party and spotlight the South Florida Democratic primaries where Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jared Moskowitz are facing DSA-aligned opponents. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Lance Stroll, Andy Baker and Rizy Horowitz.
Curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with an assist from Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
Today's Agenda
Jared Kushner is in Israel today, where he is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The sit-down comes a day after Kushner met with Hamas officials in Cairo.
Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Board of Peace High Representative Nickolay Mladenov and Board of Peace senior advisors Aryeh Lightstone and Liran Tancman, who participated in the Cairo meetings, are also attending the meeting with Netanyahu, JI has learned.
Netanyahu’s Likud party is holding its primary today to select the slate for the upcoming Oct. 27 election.
In New York, the annual two-day Sephardic Rabbinic Conference kicks off today. Read more here.
Australia’s royal commission into antisemitism in the country began its final hearings today, following weeks of testimony from hundreds of witnesses including government officials, Jewish community leaders, Holocaust survivors, college students and faculty and relatives of victims of last year’s terror attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
One Thing to Know
Florida primaries to test antisemitism's reach in both parties
Tuesday’s Florida primaries are shaping up to be the starkest test yet of how widespread the scourge of antisemitism and extreme anti-Israel views are within both parties.
On the Democratic side, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), one of the remaining pro-Israel stalwarts within his party, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), a pragmatic Jewish lawmaker who is running in a new district after GOP redistricting chopped up her old seat, are both facing serious primary threats from their left flank.
Moskowitz is facing the more direct threat, going up against a Democratic Socialists of America-backed challenger in Oliver Larkin, who is running as a far-left candidate hostile to the U.S.-Israel relationship in a GOP-leaning district with one of the biggest Jewish constituencies in the country.
Larkin’s decision to run on a platform hostile to the district’s Jewish voters would typically be politically problematic. Deciding to campaign with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) during the primary’s final stretch, as Larkin did on Friday, is a curious campaign choice, to put it mildly. The blowback was intense enough that several Fort Lauderdale venues declined to host the socialist shindig.
But if there is a surge of left-wing, anti-establishment anger — and latent anti-Israel sentiment from the district’s non-Jewish Democratic voters — it’s worth keeping a close eye on the election results. Even a respectable 40-45% Larkin showing, short of victory, would raise eyebrows about how widespread the far-left ideology has penetrated the party.
The Big Reads
GENERATIONAL DIVIDE
Republicans face the implications of a fractured media world
At the National College Republicans convention earlier this month in Tampa, Fla., exchanges between lawmakers and student activists captured a broader tension within the Republican Party that was on display throughout the conference, which focused on recruiting, building chapters, training leaders and working on campaigns. But lawmakers and students kept coming back to simpler questions around where young Republicans get their news and whom they trust to give it to them, Sloan Rachmuth reports from Tampa for Jewish Insider.
SENATOR SIT-DOWN
Rick Scott: We have to ‘fight, fight, fight’ antisemites running in the Republican Party
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) expressed confidence ahead of Florida’s primary elections on Tuesday that voters will reject the Republican candidates who have embraced blatantly antisemitic messages as part of their campaigns. “The Republican Party is a broad coalition of people that care about this country, but we’re not going to allow antisemites into our party, period,” he said in an interview with Jewish Insider's Emily Jacobs. “Our party is not run by antisemites and will never be run by antisemites as long as I have any power to stop it,” he continued. “We have to fight, fight, fight.”
red line
Randy Fine’s primary opponent pushes openly antisemitic, pro-Hitler messaging
Rep. Randy Fine’s (R-FL) primary opponent, influencer Dan Bilzerian, is pushing blatantly antisemitic and pro-Adolf Hitler messaging in the closing days of Florida’s primary season. Bilzerian has made no secret of the openly antisemitic tenor of his campaign, having said from the outset that he is challenging Fine because he is Jewish and pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories about Fine, the Jewish community and Israel, Jewish Insider's Marc Rod reports.
The Rundown
The rest of today’s original stories from Jewish Insider — full stories, all published on the site.
PALMETTO STATE POLITICS
Both candidates in S.C. Senate runoff chase the pro-Israel vote, with very different records
On Our Radar
● The Live Briefing. Word on the street, clips, podcasts and quick updates — the items we’re tracking all day on the app (on Apple and Android) and website.
In what appeared to be a contradiction to Vice President JD Vance’s suggestion last week that the White House’s “goal No. 1” in the war with Iran was lowering gas prices for Americans, President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social site Monday morning that “The number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon”...
Trump said he ordered the Pentagon to scale down its joint military exercises with South Korea, citing in part Seoul’s decision not to join in the "Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran"; the president added that the scale of previous annual exercises with South Korea had sent a “signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea...
Axios reports that the Trump administration engaged in back-channel talks with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier this year, using Nechirvan Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, as an interlocutor.
Meanwhile, Kurdistan’s prime minister, Masrour Barzani, said on Monday that his office in Erbil was targeted in an Iranian drone attack…
The New York Times does a deep dive into the virality of a fabricated quote from a senior Iranian official indicating that Iran intended to become a nuclear state, which appeared to originate from an anonymous Indian social media account before gaining traction, eventually being referenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…
The Wall Street Journal looks at Iran’s “secret plan” to use the downtime of negotiations to prepare for an eventual escalation against the U.S., including expanding the powers of the IRGC and increasing production of missiles and drones…
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz marked the 14th anniversary of American journalist Austin Tice’s abduction in Syria, saying that former President Bashar al-Assad "is gone. His prisons have been opened. But Austin is still not home. President Trump has made clear that America does not forget its people"...
Jewish leaders and local officials in Philadelphia are expressing concern following the vandalism last week of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, the second time in a year that the building has been vandalized…
The Wall Street Journal spotlights Florida's exclusive Indian Creek Country Club, where both Jeff Bezos and Jared Kushner have yet to gain membership…
The New York Times reports on the efforts of Rizy Horowitz, the program manager at Nachas Health and Family Network, as the organization assists Holocaust survivors and adapts to the evolving needs of the dwindling community…
Canadian Formula 1 driver Lance Stroll posted a photo of himself wrapped in tefillin as part of a recent Instagram roundup that also included a photo with his girlfriend, Israeli model and actress Yael Shelbia…
CF Montreal banned two fans of the soccer club following an investigation by Major League Soccer into the recent harassment of New England Revolution player Dor Turgeman, who is Israeli…
A new plan to build an apartment complex on top of a World War II-era Nazi bunker in Berlin is drawing debate over whether to continue with construction or to preserve the area as a historical site…
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, speaking on the podcast of former Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski, suggested killing “30-40 each night” in “targeted assassinations” in Gaza…
The New York Times spotlights “Azad,” an Iranian YouTube program that hosts debates on hot-topic issues in the Islamic Republic and provides a platform for both supporters and critics of Tehran’s policies…
Nuclear physicist and engineer Yehonathan Hazony died at 94…
JI Live Briefing · Free preview
You’re seeing a snippet of the Live Briefing.
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
Be featured: Community Comms are paid— email us to reach the JI readership with your upcoming event, job opening or other communication.
Opportunity Knocks: In The Wall Street Journal, Lt. Col. (ret.) Or Horvitz posits that Israel is “missing a strategic window” to engage with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa as Damascus looks to reintegrate with the West. “A comprehensive peace treaty isn’t currently realistic. But Israel’s strategy need not run only through the barrel of a gun. In Mr. al-Sharaa’s Syria, an opportunity is emerging for limited cooperation against the Shiite axis, which could lay the groundwork for broader arrangements, foremost a security agreement in southern Syria.” [WSJ]
Can El-Sayed Win?: The New York Times’ Nate Cohn considers the degree to which Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is a liability for Democratic efforts to take back the upper chamber. “He may not be a self-identified democratic socialist, but he’s an unapologetic ally of democratic socialists like [Rep. Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez and the influential Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. He’s defined in part by his support for progressive causes, like opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza. To this point, he has campaigned as a firebrand, often with the language to match.” [NYTimes]
Picture of the Day
Rep. John James (R-MI), fifth from right, the GOP nominee for governor of Michigan, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), sixth from right, on Thursday visited Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., the site of an attempted attack earlier this year,
Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Courtesy
Birthdays
Gail Berman, co-owner and founding partner of The Jackal Group, a television and film production firm, turns 70
Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images
Rabbi Baruch Dov “Berel” Povarsky, leader of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, Israel, turns 95
Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle Corporation, one of the wealthiest people in the world, turns 82
Millard "Mickey" S. Drexler, head of Drexler Ventures and 16-year board member of Apple until 2015, turns 82
Norm Coleman, former U.S. senator from Minnesota, his family name was originally Goldman, turns 77
Eliot Lauer, partner in Katten Muchin Rosenman, he represented Jonathan Pollard
Louise Citron, audiologist and disability activist in the Boston area
Barry Ted Moskowitz, senior U.S. district court judge for the Southern District of California, turns 76
Sharon Taksler, retired special education teacher with an interest in Holocaust studies and human rights education
Jeffery Alan "Jeff" Smisek, former chairman, president and CEO of Continental Airlines and then United Airlines, turns 72
Lee A. Solomon, associate justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey until 2024, turns 72
Jordan Levy, founder and managing partner of venture capital firm SBNY, he is a past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Buffalo
Deborah Kessner Peskin, communications coordinator at Temple Beth El in Longmeadow, Mass.
David Harold McCormick, U.S. senator (R-PA), turns 61
Revital Swid, former member of Knesset for the Zionist Union and Labor parties, she is a leading Israeli criminal defense attorney, turns 59
Brian Kowitz, former MLB baseball player, now an insurance advisor in Baltimore, turns 57
Zvi Yehezkeli, Arab affairs correspondent on Israel's i24 News, turns 56
Judd Milo Ehrlich, Emmy Award-winning documentary film director and producer, turns 55
Glen Caplin, special assistant for baseball operations at Major League Baseball
Hadassa Robyn Waxman, partner in the white-collar and securities litigation groups at Proskauer Rose
Jon Lovett, former Obama White House staffer, now a podcaster and comedian, turns 44
Elyse Cohen, chief impact officer at Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez
Raphael Bob-Waksberg, comedian, writer, producer and actor, turns 42
Ben Brody, technology reporter at Punchbowl News
Ari Meyerowitz, one of the Sprout Brothers from Great Barrington, Mass.
Aaron Taxy, executive director of California Jewish Action Network
Amanda Horwitz Langer, project manager of real estate at BDT & MSD Partners
Marhu Teferi, Israeli marathon and half marathon runner who represented Israel at the 2016, 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics, turns 34
Eli Diamond
Gabriel Berger
John Kohan
Get the Jewish Insider App
Account or login help? Contact our team → or Visit my Account
Manage email preferences · Manage tracking preferences · View in browser · Advertise with us
© 2026 Jewish Insider. All rights reserved.
228 Park Ave S • PMB 40660 • New York, NY 10003