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Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell visit Israel and meet with Netanyahu amid looming crises
(JTA) — Judging from the photos and the tweets, it looked like a set of normal Congressional delegations to Israel: Senators posing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. ambassador declaring that “Bipartisanship is alive and well in Israel!!” Pledges of mutual support amid external threats. Sen. Chuck Schumer standing arm-in-arm with Netanyahu, grinning.
But these are not normal times in Israel, where the Netanyahu government is advancing legislation to sap the power of the judiciary, drawing hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in protest. On top of that, a wave of violence is cresting over Israel and the West Bank: An Israeli raid on militants in the West Bank city of Nablus this week killed 11 Palestinians, and the State Department said it was “deeply concerned.”
Both of those crises were crescendoing as Schumer, the Jewish Democrat and Senate majority leader — as well as the Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — led delegations of their parties’ senators to the country. A few other delegations of current and former U.S. lawmakers also descended on Israel this week.
Neither Schumer nor McConnell spoke out about the court reform, and they did not respond to requests for comment on it. But it was a subtext of some politicians’ public statements. And earlier in the week, McConnell — along with several other Republican politicians — addressed the Hertog Forum, a conference organized by the Tikvah Fund, a conservative group that is underwritten by American Jewish philanthropists who are sympathetic to the judiciary reform.
“We see you as a staunch ally on so many issues, you’re going to see here of course the internal and external issues that are on our agenda,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told Schumer. He explicitly mentioned external issues, including threats from Iran and efforts by Israel and the Biden administration to expand normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
But the “internal” issue preoccupying Herzog right now is Netanyahu’s court overhaul. Herzog has thrown himself into efforts to get the governing coalition to put the brakes on the changes and enter into negotiations with the opposition.
Schumer picked up on the hint and praised Herzog for his skills at conciliation. “You give everybody a great deal of optimism, somebody like you in this position with your talent and your ability to bring people together and listen to all sides,” Schumer said.
Biden administration officials have called for a pause on proposed reforms, which could endanger civil rights protections in Israel. In addition to being the administration’s top ally in the Senate, Schumer is one of his party’s staunchest supporters of Israel.
Schumer’s emphasis on Herzog’s aptitude at “bringing people together” was telling: Israeli presidents are not generally expected to be professional conciliators (though Herzog’s predecessor took that role on as well). The job has historically been mostly ceremonial, with a focus on diplomatic representation to other nations.
But Herzog, in a dramatic speech last week, begged to play a new more involved role, as Israel faces a potential constitutional crisis and protests against the reforms go on.
For his part, Schumer in his remarks with Herzog noted that the delegation “is a very powerful group of senators, each head of a major committee or major area and we wanted to stop in Israel.” Among the delegation were Rhode Island’s Jack Reed, who heads the armed services committee, and Oregon’s Ron Wyden, one of the most influential lawmakers in the area of intelligence.
The judiciary reforms did apparently come up in meetings Netanyahu had with a third congressional delegation, organized by an affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. This delegation was solidly aligned with AIPAC’s traditional pro-Israel positions, and in interviews with the Times of Israel, two members of he delegation said the proposed judiciary reforms did not trouble them.
“At the end of the day, the changes that are made or not made, I still think that Israel is a very strong democracy, the only democracy in the Middle East, and I think our relationship continues to get stronger,” said Rep. Juan Vargas, a California Democrat who is among the closest in his caucus to AIPAC. Agreed Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber: Netanyahu is “going to get this done.”
No one mentioned, at least not in public statements, the recent wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Releases from Netanyahu’s office were anodyne, praising the friendship of senators from both parties.
The American and Israeli leaders did openly discuss Iran as well as the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries. It may have been a sign that Netanyahu hopes Schumer is in the same place he was in 2015, when the senator was one of the few Democrats who opposed the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration.
President Joe Biden entered office pledging to reenter the deal, which former President Donald Trump had abandoned at Netanyahu’s behest. But in recent months Biden officials have said that talks to reenter the deal are all but dead.
Among the other congressional delegations in Israel was one including Sen. Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican who is said to have presidential ambitions. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is weighing a presidential run, was also in Israel. Pompeo and Cotton are both close to Saudi Arabia — Cotton posed with its de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, on his way to Israel — and Netanyahu has made clear his strong desire to normalize relations with the kingdom.
Netanyahu also met with a delegation of Democratic lawmakers organized by J Street, the liberal Israel advocacy group.
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Iron Beam: IDF’s First Operational High-Power Laser Defense System
The “Or Eitan” system. Photo: Spokesperson and Public Relations Division of the Ministry of Defense
i24 News – Israel has achieved a major technological breakthrough in defense with the delivery of its first operational high-power laser system, “Or Eitan” (Iron Beam), to the IDF. The handover took place Sunday at Rafael’s facility, with Defense Minister Israel Katz and senior military and industry officials in attendance.
Developed over several years, “Iron Beam” is the first interception laser of its kind in the world to reach operational maturity.
During extensive testing, the system successfully intercepted rockets, mortar shells, and drones under conditions simulating real combat scenarios.
The laser will be integrated into Israel’s multi-layered air defense network, complementing the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow systems. Operated by the Israeli Air Force, it offers a significant economic advantage: its marginal cost per interception is nearly zero, a major shift in the cost equation for missile defense.
The project was led by the Ministry of Defense’s Directorate of Research and Development in close cooperation with Rafael, Elbit Systems, responsible for the laser source, and other Israeli defense companies. Combining an advanced laser source with a unique electro-optical sight, the system provides maximum accuracy and efficiency at extended ranges.
The system’s name, “Or Eitan,” (Iron Beam) honors Captain Eitan Oster, who fell in battle in southern Lebanon.
Minister Katz described the milestone as a “game changer” that sends a strong message to Israel’s adversaries, from Tehran to Sanaa and Beirut. Rafael hailed the delivery as the beginning of the defensive laser era, placing Israel at the forefront of interception technology worldwide and reinforcing its strategic technological edge for future security challenges.
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21 Arab, Islamic, African States and Entities Condemn Israel’s Recognition of Somaliland
The signatories’ flags enclosed in the statement in Arabic. Photo: Screenshot via i24.
i24 News – A group of 21 Arab, Islamic and African countries, organizations and entities issued on Saturday a joint statement condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland sovereignty.
The statement’s signatories said that they condemn and reject Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “in light of the serious repercussions to peace and security in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region, and its serious impacts on international peace and security, which also reflects Israel’s clear and complete disregard for international law.”
It was signed by: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Maldives, Nigeria and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The joint statement voiced support “for the sovereignty of Somalia and reject any measures that would undermine its unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty over all its lands.”
The signatories also “categorically reject linking Israel’s recognition of the territory of the land of Somalia with any plans to displace the Palestinian people outside their land.”
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Nvidia, Joining Big Tech Deal Spree, to License Groq Technology, Hire Executives
A NVIDIA logo appears in this illustration taken Aug. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Nvidia has agreed to license chip technology from startup Groq and hire away its CEO, a veteran of Alphabet’s Google, Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday.
The deal follows a familiar pattern in recent years where the world’s biggest technology firms pay large sums in deals with promising startups to take their technology and talent but stop short of formally acquiring the target.
Groq specializes in what is known as inference, where artificial intelligence models that have already been trained respond to requests from users. While Nvidia dominates the market for training AI models, it faces much more competition in inference, where traditional rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices have aimed to challenge it as well as startups such as Groq and Cerebras Systems.
Nvidia has agreed to a “non-exclusive” license to Groq’s technology, Groq said. It said its founder Jonathan Ross, who helped Google start its AI chip program, as well as Groq President Sunny Madra and other members of its engineering team, will join Nvidia.
A person close to Nvidia confirmed the licensing agreement.
Groq did not disclose financial details of the deal. CNBC reported that Nvidia had agreed to acquire Groq for $20 billion in cash, but neither Nvidia nor Groq commented on the report. Groq said in its blog post that it will continue to operate as an independent company with Simon Edwards as CEO and that its cloud business will continue operating.
In similar recent deals, Microsoft’s top AI executive came through a $650 million deal with a startup that was billed as a licensing fee, and Meta spent $15 billion to hire Scale AI’s CEO without acquiring the entire firm. Amazon hired away founders from Adept AI, and Nvidia did a similar deal this year. The deals have faced scrutiny by regulators, though none has yet been unwound.
“Antitrust would seem to be the primary risk here, though structuring the deal as a non-exclusive license may keep the fiction of competition alive (even as Groq’s leadership and, we would presume, technical talent move over to Nvidia),” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday after Groq’s announcement. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s “relationship with the Trump administration appears among the strongest of the key US tech companies.”
Groq more than doubled its valuation to $6.9 billion from $2.8 billion in August last year, following a $750 million funding round in September.
Groq is one of a number of upstarts that do not use external high-bandwidth memory chips, freeing them from the memory crunch affecting the global chip industry. The approach, which uses a form of on-chip memory called SRAM, helps speed up interactions with chatbots and other AI models but also limits the size of the model that can be served.
Groq’s primary rival in the approach is Cerebras Systems, which Reuters this month reported plans to go public as soon as next year. Groq and Cerebras have signed large deals in the Middle East.
Nvidia’s Huang spent much of his biggest keynote speech of 2025 arguing that Nvidia would be able to maintain its lead as AI markets shift from training to inference.