Unpacking the Israeli election

Unpacking the Israeli election

An interview with Andy Beshear about child care, and healthcare’s top role in the midterms

Back in college I used to write/report a lot about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I interned for the now defunct Open Zion blog run by Peter Beinart when I was 20, and spent a lot of time generally thinking about the issues. For reasons that are probably not too difficult to understand, I eventually grew so frustrated and decided I wanted to focus on less intractable-feeling policy and politics, especially those closer to home. That said, I do still pay attention somewhat, and of course Israel has become a major political issue in the U.S. and globally over the last three years. So last week was Israel’s first national election since the October 7th attack and subsequent war on Gaza, and I had a lot of questions and felt very confused about what everything meant, or didn’t mean. The main person who has been covering these issues at Vox recently left and I thought well, you know what, let me report the piece that helps answer my questions, as I’m sure I’m not the only one with them. So I spent the past few days doing some intense interviews, coordinating across Israel/U.S. time differences, hand-foot-and-mouth disease for my son, and other uncomplicated logistics.

So while now I’m definitely not going to be switching beats permanently, I am glad to share this report on the Israeli national election, the unexpected Arab turnout surge, and what the next few months could mean for the country, the Palestinians it rules, and whether pressure on Israel from abroad grows or fades. You can read it today, before the media becomes so overwhelmed with U.S. midterms coverage!

Last week I sat down (remotely) with Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to talk about his views on local and national child care policy, and his approach to spending on new programs more broadly. We talked about Ro Khanna's child care proposal, the role for employers, and how child care has gotten polarized in his state.

As the 2028 primary starts to take shape, Beshear is signaling both that he plans to run for president, and that he’d prioritize pre-K for 4-year-olds on the campaign trail. You can read our full interview here.

For a little backstory, his team reached out to me in early October to flag the work he’s been doing on pre-K in his state, and asked if I wanted to talk with the governor further about any of it. It was interesting to me that they wanted national media attention for this work, underscoring what I reported last month that all Democratic presidential hopefuls know and are getting ready to have some sort of position on childcare/preK in the 2028 primary. I think his team knows, given Beshear is a likely candidate in the race, that they could have gone to any national reporter with this interview opportunity. So I give them some credit to coming to me, someone who actually reports on child care regularly, and is more likely to ask them tougher, more specific policy questions related to his views. If you’re looking to run for president and want to talk about your vision for early childhood policy, you should email me too :D

And lastly, though many political donors are exhausted by healthcare policy debates, it’s more than clear that health care costs are top, top priorities for voters this cycle. I wrote about why the political backlash is just getting started, including for Medicaid cuts, for employer-sponsored plans, ACA premiums, and more. You can read that here.

I want to also flag Vox recently rolled out a new mobile app, and I’m very thrilled about it. It’s really nicely designed, integrates all of the company’s Youtube, social video, podcasting and text reporting in one place finally, and I think is much better suited to the kind of multi-platform work we’re headed as an organization in. You can download it in the App store (it’s free) and I know we’re all gearing up for a long all-hands-on-deck night tonight for midterms coverage that it could be useful to have for.

That’s all for now, happy voting, and thanks for reading!

© 2026 Rachel M. Cohen
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