Mamdani’s shaky antisemitism strategy
Plus, the 92-year-old trailblazing judge overseeing the Maduro case
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In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s leftward shift during last year’s presidential campaign contributed to his decision, announced yesterday, not to seek a third term, and talk to Jewish leaders in New York concerned about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first moves in office. We profile Judge Alvin Hellerstein, the 92-year-old Orthodox Jewish judge presiding over the trial of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and report on the Department of Justice’s 2026 funding package that will allocate $5 million to protect religious institutions. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Blake Blakeman, Jason Miyares and Sally Goldenberg.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with an assist from Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- House Republicans are holding their annual retreat today at the Kennedy Center. President Donald Trump is slated to address the gathering at 10 a.m.
- White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are meeting with European officials in Paris today for continued talks on the Russia-Ukraine war.
- Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is in Hargeisa today for meetings with senior officials, after Israel last month became the first country to recognize Somaliland.
- CES 2026 kicks off today in Las Vegas.
- In Florida, former Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and “Call Me Back” host Dan Senor will speak in conversation this evening at an event hosted by Palm Beach Synagogue.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar
The political fall of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who just months ago was near the apex of political prominence as Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election, is an object lesson in the consequences of pandering to the far left of the Democratic Party.
Last year, Walz looked like he was on the fast track in national politics. Now he looks to be ending his career as a disgraced two-term governor.
Walz announced Monday that he’s not running for a third term in office, amid a growing scandal over massive welfare fraud, where dozens of individuals from the state’s Somali diaspora were convicted in schemes involving over a billion dollars stolen from the state’s social services programs.
The scandal offers a snapshot of some of the Democratic Party’s most glaring vulnerabilities. Walz, along with others in the state’s Democratic leadership, oversaw the allocation of generous welfare payments without ample accountability, while turning a blind eye to corruption in a Somali community that’s become a reliable Democratic voting bloc.
A nimbler, and more moderate, politician would have aggressively led the charge against the criminals instead of coming across as a passive bystander. After all, a scandal like this threatens the sustainability of generous social welfare programs that have defined the ethos of the Minnesota Democratic Party. Instead, in his announcement Monday, he decried “political gamesmanship” by Republicans for drawing outsized attention to the issue.
A more pragmatic Walz would also have been comfortable speaking out against scandalous elements within the Somali community (without painting the entire community with a broad brush). Instead, his belated comments speaking out against the fraud typically avoided reference to the perpetrators of the scandal, and he frequently blamed Republicans as racist for invoking their backgrounds. That only dug him into a deeper political hole.
Walz’s sensitivity about not alienating the state’s Somali community also came up in other areas that underscored his progressive instincts. When a leading Somali mayoral candidate (state Sen. Omar Fateh) came under fire for employing virulently antisemitic staffers at the top levels of his campaign, Walz remained silent, even as Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) spoke up.
Walz also has been supportive of far-left Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) even when she’s faced controversies over using antisemitic tropes and embracing anti-Israel views that have placed her out of the Democratic Party’s mainstream. His selection as Harris’ running mate over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was cheered on by the anti-Israel wing of the party.
MAMDANI MOMENT
Jewish leaders question Mamdani’s antisemitism strategy
Days into Zohran Mamdani’s first week as mayor of New York City, some Jewish leaders are privately raising questions about whether his fledgling administration is prepared to implement a clear strategy to counter rising antisemitism, one of the key pledges of his campaign. Even as he swiftly moved to revoke two executive orders tied to Israel and antisemitism on his first day in office, Mamdani has yet to disclose how he and his team plan to substantively address what he has repeatedly called “the scourge of antisemitism” in remarks vowing to protect Jewish New Yorkers, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Wait and see: The mayor, a democratic socialist and outspoken critic of Israel, faced backlash from leading Jewish groups last week after he repealed executive orders issued by former Mayor Eric Adams, including ones that adopted a working definition of antisemitism used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and banned city agencies from engaging in boycotts targeting Israel. “He went from giving a speech about unity and collectivism to signing executive orders against the Jewish community,” one Jewish community leader said of Mamdani’s repeals. Rabbi Joe Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis who served on Mamdani’s transition committee for emergency response, said he was taking a wait-and-see approach to the first few weeks of the administration. “No further details have been released so there is nothing more to add at this time,” he told JI. “Let’s wait and see if there are changes.”
Bonus: Mamdani tapped Anna Bahr, the communications director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to serve in the same role in the Mamdani administration.
Torah and bench
The judge overseeing the Maduro trial blazed a trail for Jewish lawyers
Judge Alvin Hellerstein is 92 years old, and with 27 years on the federal bench in Manhattan, he has presided over some of the most prominent trials in recent memory — including thousands of lawsuits brought in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a suit against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and, now, the criminal case against deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. It’s a remarkable final chapter in a legal career that was once nearly derailed by antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
The way things were: Hellerstein has described his judicial style as being influenced by New York Federal Judge Edmund Palmieri, for whom Hellerstein served as a law clerk in the 1950s. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, later a Supreme Court justice, clerked for Palmieri a few years later.) But that chapter almost didn’t happen. Hellerstein wanted to work at a law firm, but he ended up applying to clerkships because he said the non-Jewish law firms in New York would not hire him. “As a Jewish boy coming to interview at law firms, you met up with very strong discrimination, some of it overt, most of it implied,” Hellerstein said in an interview in 2020 on the podcast “Behind the Bima.” He ended up working at a Jewish firm — one of the first Orthodox lawyers to be employed at any New York City firm. Read the full story here.
TEHRAN TALK
More U.S. strikes on Iran are possible, lawmakers say
Senators said on Monday that an additional round of U.S. strikes on Iran remains on the table if the regime makes strides in rebuilding its nuclear program or other malign activities, echoing recent warnings from President Donald Trump. Trump also threatened last week that the U.S. would intervene to protect Iranian protesters if the regime cracked down on nationwide demonstrations, as U.S. officials are watching closely while Tehran reportedly accelerates efforts to restore its ballistic missile capabilities — developments that could spark renewed conflict with Israel and potentially the United States, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs report.
Military mindset: Republican senators expressed confidence that the president would strike Iranian nuclear facilities a second time if the U.S. determined that Tehran was working to restore its nuclear program. “I think there’s a chance” Trump will strike Iran’s nuclear sites again, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told JI. “If they go forward again and start building up nuclear facilities, yeah, I think Trump’s going to bomb the hell out of them.” Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) told JI, “President Trump is demonstrating that we have the most outstanding military in the world. And if he believes we have to hit Iran again, I believe he will do that.”
Read the full story here with additional comments from Sens. John Kennedy (R-LA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Tim Kaine (D-VA).
MONEY MATTERS
Department of Justice funding deal allocates $5 million to protect religious institutions
The House and Senate’s negotiated 2026 funding package for the Department of Justice includes funding for state and local law enforcement specifically allocated for protecting religious institutions, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What it does: The explanatory report accompanying the bill, released Monday, instructs the Department of Justice to allocate at least $5 million in DOJ law enforcement grant funding to agencies “seeking to enhance security measures for at-risk religious institutions and to address the precipitous increases in hate crimes targeting individuals on the basis of religion.” Such funding, aimed at providing law enforcement with additional resources to step up their security presence at synagogues and other houses of worship, has been pursued by Jewish community groups particularly amid rising antisemitic attacks in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel.
WALTZING OUT
Walz’s national ambitions foreshadowed his political fall
Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s decision to drop out of the 2026 gubernatorial race in a state heavily favored for Democrats marks a significant political fall for the party’s 2024 vice presidential nominee. Walz, 61, said while announcing on Monday that he would no longer seek a historic third term as governor that he had “every confidence” that he could have won his reelection bid — despite facing intense scrutiny for a state welfare fraud scandal that has gained national attention and become a political flashpoint in Minnesota. Still, Walz acknowledged that the fraud allegations, which have mostly been leveled at members of the state’s Somali community, and the broader scandal played a role in him ending his campaign, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report.
Walz’s path: The decision to end his campaign means Walz will cap off two decades in elected office next January, less than two years after former Vice President Kamala Harris selected him as her running mate and thrust him onto the national stage. While holding a moderate voting record as a member of Congress, Walz largely governed as a progressive, and was the preferred choice of progressive Democrats critical of Israel in the 2024 veepstakes over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. On the campaign trail, Walz praised anti-Israel protesters and urged the U.S. to exert more leverage on Israel. He also drew scrutiny for appearing at events with an antisemitic and pro-Hamas Muslim cleric. He said last year after the election that war in Gaza was “rightfully” a “central focus” of the 2024 campaign.
DRAWING LINES
Bruce Blakeman outlines his approach to antisemitism if elected NY governor
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman suddenly emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee for governor of New York in December, with Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-NY) unexpected exit from the race against Gov. Kathy Hochul. Now, with the formal endorsement of President Donald Trump, Blakeman, 70, is preparing for an uphill battle in a reliably Democratic state. In an interview with Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod, Blakeman, who is Jewish, vowed to protect the Jewish community statewide against antisemitism, pledging that under his leadership, the state would step in if New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani fails to do so.
Taking aim: Asked about voices like Tucker Carlson and neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes who are working to mainstream antisemitic ideas in the Republican Party, Blakeman did not mince words in his condemnation, but described them as a small minority of the party and said he sees most antisemitism coming from the left. “Nick Fuentes is, in my opinion, a nut, but a dangerous one, and he has no place in the Republican Party,” Blakeman said. “Tucker Carlson is a big blowhard who has an issue with Jewish people, and it probably emanates from his chameleon-like personality. … He’s very unprincipled and I think he has biases that probably emanated from his youth.”
Worthy Reads
The Hawks are Back: Puck’s Julia Ioffe looks at how the Trump administration’s recent operation in Venezuela has shifted political and policy dynamics among conservatives split between neoconservatism and MAGA-style isolationism. “The affinity for using American military force has, weirdly, thrown Trump into alignment with the same neoconservative camp that he trampled during his ascent to the White House. This cohort, which has praised Trump’s moves in both Venezuela and Iran, has long insisted that Democrats are constitutionally uncomfortable with American power and that they are too scared to use it. In their view, liberals overlearned the lessons of Iraq and, as a result, grew too prone to overthinking and overanalyzing — imagining consequences to military action that are far worse than reality merits.”[Puck]
Digital Detox: In The Wall Street Journal, Vivek Ramaswamy, who is mounting a bid for governor of Ohio, explains why he is ending his personal use of a number of social media platforms. “There’s a fine line between using the internet to distribute your message and inadvertently allowing constant internet feedback to alter your message. That isn’t using social media; it’s letting social media use you. As someone who ran a digitally centered campaign for president, I’ve seen this effect firsthand — on myself and my competitors. Politicians want to respond to voters, and rightly so. But polls are expensive and infrequent. Social media offers a tempting alternative: free, abundant real-time feedback. It creates the impression that you’re hearing directly from ‘the people’ and responding in kind. Modern social media is increasingly disconnected from the electorate.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
U.S. officials reportedly told acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez that Caracas must boot operatives from countries — including Iran and Cuba — that are hostile to the U.S….
In one of his final acts in office, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter on Monday reminding all K-12 superintendents and school boards in the state of their obligation to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism into their codes of conduct and discrimination policies, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…
Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner raised $4.7 million in the last quarter of 2025, despite numerous scandals related to past controversial social media posts and a tattoo that resembled Nazi imagery…
Attorney George Conway launched his bid in the crowded Democratic primary in New York’s 12th Congressional District to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)…
Harvard President Alan Garber said in a recent episode of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s “Identity/Crisis” podcast that the Ivy League school had erred in allowing faculty members to share their personal views on politically charged issues, explaining that faculty activism had a chilling effect on campus climate…
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison sold his Pacific Heights, Calif., home for $45 million, more than 10 times what he paid for the property in 1988…
Authorities in Germany are investigating a suspected arson attack targeting the home of the antisemitism commissioner of the state of Brandenburg…
Israel asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow for the continuation of a blanket ban on media access to the Gaza Strip, citing “security reasons” and suggesting that lifting the ban would endanger efforts to locate the body of hostage Ran Gvili; the court is set to rule on the petition, filed in 2024 by the Foreign Press Association as it sought access to Gaza…
The Israeli Communications Ministry approved a deal between Israeli and Palestinian telecom companies that will bring 4G access to the West Bank; the finalization of the agreement, which had been reached in 2022, had been delayed due to the Israel-Hamas war…
TheBank of Israel cut interest rates to 4%, the second straight time the bank has cut rates since Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire in October 2025…
Israel struck what it said were Hezbollah and Hamas sites in southern Lebanon, days before the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces is slated to brief officials in Beirut on the army’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah…
The Wall Street Journal looks at how Israel’s early recognition of Somaliland plays into Jerusalem’s broader strategy to establish diplomatic ties in a postwar era…
In an effort to curb ongoing protests around Iran over the country’s economic troubles, government officials announced a program to give approximately $7 per month to every Iranian citizen…
Politico’s Sally Goldenberg is joining The New York Times’ Metro section, covering New York City politics and the Mamdani administration…
David Rosen, the co-founder of Sega, died at 95…
Pic of the Day
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) met on Monday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Birthdays
English food writer and television cook, Nigella Lucy Lawson turns 66…
Retired EVP and senior counsel of the Trump Organization, George H. Ross turns 98… International businessman and philanthropist, Nathan “Natie” Kirsh turns 94… Canadian businessman, investor and author, seven Canadian universities have a school named for him, Seymour Schulich turns 86… Co-founder of private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Henry R. Kravis turns 82… Chairman, president and CEO of Phibro Animal Health Corporation, he is a past chair of the Israel Policy Forum, Jack C. Bendheim turns 79… Yiddish-language author, journalist, playwright and lyricist, Boris Sandler turns 76… Attorney general of Oregon from 2012 until 2024, Ellen Rosenblum turns 75… Film, theater, and television director, her debut novel was published in 2020, Jan Pringle Eliasberg turns 72… Academic official at Tennessee State University for 10 years, he now serves as a consultant to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Michael Harris turns 70… Retired television executive and political commentator, Mark E. Hyman turns 68… Founder and executive director of Healthcare Across Borders, Jodi Lynn Jacobson… Israeli celebrity chef, Eyal Shani turns 67… Member of the Ukrainian Parliament and president of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, Oleksandr Feldman turns 66… Daniel G. Slatopolsky… Founder of Pure California Beverages, Sarah Beth Rena Conner… Member of the Knesset for the Religious Zionist Party, she chairs the Knesset’s Labor and Welfare Committee, Michal Miriam Waldiger turns 57… Actor, painter and fashion designer, Greg Lauren turns 56… Author of 13 spy fiction novels and four nonfiction books, Alex Berenson turns 53… President and CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage, he is the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns of the NBA and Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA, Mat Ishbia turns 46… Israeli news anchor and host of the “Jewish Crossroads: Jewish Identity in Times of Crisis” podcast, Tamar Ish-Shalom turns 45… Israeli actress, best known for her role in “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” Efrat Dor turns 43… Award-winning investigative reporter at WCCO/CBS in Minneapolis, Jonah P. Kaplan… Social media program director at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), Aviva Slomich Rosenschein… Philanthropic advisor at the Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond, Sarah Arenstein Levy… Rabbinic fellow at NYC’s Park Avenue Synagogue, Aiden Pink… One of the youngest to ever sign a Major League Soccer contract at age 15, he is now a VP at Acacia Research, Zachary “Zach” Pfeffer turns 31… Rock climber for Team USA, he competed at the Paris Olympics in 2024, Jesse Grupper turns 29… Value accelerator lead at Goldman Sachs Growth, Anna Phillips…
