White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told ABC that yesterday’s U.S. airstrikes on weapons and ammunition storage locations in eastern Syria “were very much done in self-defense.”

• Kirby said the strikes “went right at targets that were tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. That is resourcing, funding, training, and making capable all these proxy groups.”
  
  
• Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes were “a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17.”

From The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell: “The United States has not provided evidence as to who is to blame for the assaults — which have consisted of a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets — but claims that Iran is behind them.” Read more here and here.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo announced new sanctions against individuals and companies in Iran, Sudan and Turkey on Friday as part of the U.S.’s “commitment to dismantling Hamas’s funding networks.”

“Why do some voting advocates fight equal access for the blind?” — Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind. (Read here)

“Americans want IRS modernization — why doom Direct File before it has a chance to succeed?” — Ayushi Roy, deputy director of New Practice Lab, recently named a winner of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas competition. (Read here)

Friday-Sunday: The Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit takes place, featuring several GOP presidential hopefuls.