Daily Kickoff
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2026
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on mounting criticism of Vice President JD Vance's silence on Tucker Carlson at the Republican Jewish Coalition summit and interview North Carolina Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley, who is emphasizing his support for Israel as he seeks to attract votes from the state’s Jewish community. We talk to Jewish graduate students who met with congressional offices to advocate for the Jewish American Security Act and share their personal experiences with antisemitism, and speak with Marcy Grossman, the new director of the American Jewish Committee’s Abu Dhabi office. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. Dave McCormick, Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed al Nahyan and Rep. Jahana Hayes.
Curated by JI Israel Editor Tamara Zieve and U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik, with an assist from Marc Rod.
Ed note: The next Daily Kickoff will arrive on Tuesday, after the Labor Day weekend. We will be publishing stories and updates throughout the weekend on our Live Briefing, which you can access via our app and website.
The Weekly Print
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week's edition — a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: Michigan AG Nessel tells Jewish Democrats to put ‘needs of world’ ahead of ‘our own survival’; Style Across the Aisle puts Jewish pride on the runway; and Prizmah CEO marks 10 years of boosting America’s Jewish day school system.
Today's Agenda
President Donald Trump will host several Hasidic rabbis in the Oval Office today to convey his Rosh Hashanah greetings.
Vice President JD Vance will deliver a White House press briefing this afternoon, the first in over a month and since former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stepped down last week.
The House is expected to vote today on the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act, bipartisan legislation that would require universities to certify annually that they are not engaged in a “nonexpressive commercial boycott” of Israel in order to be eligible to receive federal student aid funding.
One Thing to Know
By Marc Rod
Vice President JD Vance’s fireside chat with Republican Jewish Coalition Chairman Norm Coleman was met with a largely positive response in its immediate aftermath, with RJC board members largely agreeing that the event had helped Vance alleviate concerns among top Jewish Republicans, particularly about where he stands on Israel and antisemitism.
Several board members came out of the speech, which took place on Monday night at the RJC’s leadership summit in Las Vegas, saying they’d be prepared to support Vance if he runs in the 2028 presidential election.
Yet even shortly after the conversation, some observers, including some who were otherwise broadly supportive of Vance’s remarks, said that his comments — or lack thereof — on one issue had disappointed members of the crowd: Tucker Carlson.
The Big Reads
Republican reckoning
Sen. Dave McCormick: Republicans need to electorally ‘beat the s**t’ out of antisemites
Asked how he thinks the Republican Party can stop antisemitic figures from being elected in the Republican Party, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod the GOP should continue to “beat the s**t” out of them” — electorally. “We live in a country where you get to express your ideas, no matter how horrific and hateful those ideas are, and where anybody can run for office,” McCormick said on the sidelines of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s conference over the weekend. “That’s the country I want to live in. But the way that you ensure those ideas don’t get a foothold is you beat the s**t out of them. You beat them in elections. You beat their ideas with better ideas. … Within the Republican Party, we need to have that discipline.”
Hill huddle: Forty Jewish graduate students gathered on Capitol Hill on Monday for the Jewish Grad Organization’s Partners Summit carrying stories from campuses where they had felt increasingly isolated, targeted or ignored. They met with congressional offices throughout the day to advocate for the Jewish American Security Act, where they told JI’s Matthew Shea that they received a warm reception.
GULF COMEBACK
Marcy Grossman returns to Abu Dhabi to lead AJC’s Gulf diplomacy
In Marcy Grossman’s first interview since being tapped as director of the American Jewish Committee’s Abu Dhabi office, the former Canadian ambassador to the UAE told Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen that normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors has proven more resilient than many expected since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. Grossman attributes the concern from Emirati leaders about antisemitism in the West to “a shared interest,” telling JI, “At the end of the day, much of the antisemitism that we see in North America is fueled by violent extremism from non-friendly sources. Countering violent extremism is one of the main security priorities of the UAE.”
TAR HEEL TALK
Michael Whatley details his pitch to North Carolina’s Jewish voters
North Carolina Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley is emphasizing that he stands firmly with Israel as he seeks to attract votes from the state’s Jewish community. “The Jewish people matter [and] our relationship with Israel matters,” Whatley told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod during the Republican Jewish Coalition’s recent annual leadership summit in Las Vegas. “Israel has been and will be our No. 1 ally in the Middle East and they need to be and we need to make absolutely sure that we have a senator who is going to fight for that relationship.”
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.
In a phone interview with Israel’s Kan public broadcaster on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said Israel “should not worry” amid renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. “You know why? Because I’m the president and I will take care of Israel,” he added. Asked separately by reporters how long the military action will last, Trump said, “I don’t think too long”…
According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump is discussing with senior aides whether to declare the Iran war over…
White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff met last weekend on the island of Sardinia in the Mediterranean with UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed al Nahyan, Axios reports, to discuss next steps in the U.S.’ campaign against Iran…
The nuclear agreement signed between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia could open a pathway to uranium enrichment on Saudi soil up to 20%, according to the Journal. A nuclear expert told the outlet there’s a “civilian case” for such enrichment, but “the flip side is that at that level of enrichment you are most of your way toward producing weapons grade material”...
Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, voiced his opposition to the Senate-passed Iran and Russia sanctions bill, further complicating the bill’s prospects for passage in the House, despite strong bipartisan support in the Senate…
Elon Musk's America PAC disclosed its first independent expenditures of the general election — a relatively small $800,000 sum across battleground Senate and House races, according to an FEC filing. Its largest spend is in the Texas Senate race, where Attorney General Ken Paxton is the GOP nominee, and the Maine and Ohio races involving Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jon Husted (R-OH). The PAC also spent against Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate contest, and against Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) in South Florida…
Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT), 53, announced plans to challenge Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), 79, as the top Democrat on the House Education & Workforce Committee. Under GOP leadership, the committee has led congressional investigations of campus antisemitism…
Actor Mark Ruffalo reportedly tried to enlist Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt — with the assistance of Greenblatt’s former Obama administration colleague Norm Eisen — to help Ruffalo make amends after remarks he made opposing the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery were characterized by critics as antisemitic, an offer which Greenblatt refused…
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, wrote on X on Wednesday that the “Israelization of our societies is a fact,” claiming Israel is “a model of containment/repression dressed as democracy” and that pro-Israel advocacy groups “sell that image abroad”...
In an interview with Rolling Stone, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said it “makes sense” that Jews are sensitive to criticism of Israel crossing into antisemitism, highlighting recent FBI statistics showing anti-Jewish hate crimes make up the majority of religiously motivated hate crimes in the country. “You’ve heard the joke, but it’s serious: Paranoid people have enemies too,” he said…
Emanuel was spotted dining with Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in Washington on Tuesday and also headlined a dinner for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee earlier this week…
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, published Wednesday, Stevens said, “I believe that anti-Zionism is a hate movement that has taken over in America and throughout parts of the West”…
The New York Times speaks to Michigan Jewish Democrats about their continued skepticism of El-Sayed’s candidacy in the state’s Senate race…
The Republican Jewish Coalition endorsed former Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer, who is running against Moskowitz for a South Florida House seat. Singer attended the RJC's summit last weekend…
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a civil rights complaint on Wednesday alleging that an Alexandria, Va., beauty salon illegally denied service to an Israeli American customer over her identity, then posted video of her that led to online harassment and threats; the salon's owner says she ended the appointment over the customer's political comments…
The Washington Post reports from Syria on how President Ahmed al-Sharaa's government is pitching the country as the overland answer to the blockaded Strait of Hormuz, with some 5,000 tanker trucks a day now hauling Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean port of Baniyas and a planned Chevron-led $5.7 billion pipeline from Basra backed by the Trump administration…
AI startup Wonderful, founded in Tel Aviv last year by Bar Winkler and Roey Lalazar, raised $550 million in a Series C round at a $5 billion valuation as it plans to grow its workforce to more than 1,000 by year’s end, The Wall Street Journal reports…
Pioneering feminist advocate and journalist Gloria Steinem died on Wednesday at 92…
JI Live Briefing · Free preview
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Behind the Unraveling: The New York Times' Jacob Bernstein, Vanessa Friedman and Dana Rubinstein do a deep dive into the collapse of the Met's planned John Galliano retrospective, reporting that Anna Wintour personally lobbied New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin — the daughter of a Holocaust survivor — before pressure from Menin and other city officials, major donors and unsettled board members forced the museum to scrap the show. "By pushing ahead with the plan, Wintour and other Met leaders appeared to misread some essential realities of the moment: The fashion world's forgiving and commercially driven values do not often reflect broader public sentiment. The Met leaders, many of them non-Jewish, seemed out of touch with the raw feelings of the city's Jewish residents, who had witnessed searing incidents of antisemitism over the summer." [NYTimes]
Squeeze Play: In The Wall Street Journal, Timothy Martin, Jared Malsin and Kejal Vyas examine why Washington's "Economic D-Day" against Iran faces long odds, drawing on the track record of autocracies from Cuba to North Korea to Russia that have absorbed years of sanctions. “Autocratic countries adapt in various ways. Sanctions typically push activity underground, creating flourishing black markets for goods, services and even people. Dictators also use outside pressure to rally their populations, especially among elites … ‘The fact that the U.S. can inflict pain is a given,’ said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist at Virginia Tech. ‘My feeling is that these pressures aren’t going to result in more pressure on the Iranian government to compromise.’” [WSJ]
Birthdays
Kaia Gerber, fashion model and actor, turns 25
John Nacion/WireImage
Irma Kurtz, London-based advice columnist for the U.K.'s Cosmopolitan magazine for over 40 years, known there as an agony aunt, turns 91
Robert Sugarman, past chair of the Anti-Defamation League and later the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, turns 87
Estella Sneider, Psy.D., media personality, psychologist and socialite, also known as Dr. Estella, turns 76
Gary Zaetz, retired software engineer at IBM for 39 years, he persevered after many years to locate and inter the remains of the crew of a crashed WW II American B-24 in the Indian Himalayans, turns 72
Steve Schirripa, actor best known for portraying Bobby Baccalieri on “The Sopranos,” more recently he has appeared in 146 episodes of CBS' “Blue Bloods,” turns 69
Jonathan Silver, chair of the global sustainability platform at Apollo Global Management
Brad M. Edelman, offensive lineman for the NFL's New Orleans Saints in the 1980s, now a professional photographer, turns 66
Adam Reiss, producer and reporter at NBC News, early in his career he spent eight years as a volunteer broadcaster and reader for the Jewish Guild for the Blind, turns 61
Edward Felsenthal, executive chairman of Time magazine, turns 60
Rick Perlstein, historian and journalist who has written four books on the rise of the American conservative movement, turns 57
Einat Kalisch-Rotem, mayor of Haifa until 2024, she was the first woman to lead that city, turns 56
Jason Rothstein, executive director at the Michael Reese Research & Education Foundation
Todd Lindeman, VP of data visualization at Moody's Corporation
Shawn Sachs, CEO of PR and communications firm Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis
Rustin Silverstein, founder of the Silverstein Group, providing strategic policy, crisis management and communications advice
Rabbi Avraham Bronstein, former rabbi of the Hampton Synagogue, turns 46
Avital Ingber, founder of Ingber Philanthropy Group, formerly chief advancement officer of Honeymoon Israel
Joel Kliksberg, head of global public affairs marketing at Meta / Facebook, Joel Martín Kliksberg
Brian Stelter, chief media analyst for CNN Worldwide and the lead author of the “Reliable Sources” newsletter, turns 41
Lindsey Glantz, South Florida-based attorney, she served as the co-chair of the Jewish Federations of North America’s national young leadership cabinet
Megan Amram, comedy writer, producer and performer, turns 39
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