As primary election season comes to an end, AIPAC is closing out its involvement in a dramatic cycle with an unexpected foray into a low-profile California House race on Tuesday where Israel has not been among the top issues.

In the last two weeks, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has spent nearly $2.5 million in an effort to defeat Aisha Wahab, a progressive state senator competing in a special election runoff against Melissa Hernandez, a moderate Democrat who serves on the Bay Area Rapid Transit board and is the former mayor of the East Bay city of Dublin.

Anti-Jewish hate crimes constituted two-thirds of all religious hate crimes in the country last year, according to FBI data released last week: Out of the 2,408 religiously motivated hate crimes reported across the country, 1,528 were targeted against Jews. 

Anti-Jewish hate crimes also constituted the second-largest category of reported hate crimes of any kind in 2025, behind only anti-Black or African American hate crimes.

A Brooklyn Democratic politician and housing activist with a history of pushing century-old antisemitic conspiracy theories blamed the property dispute that launched her to prominence on “Zionists” in a recent interview with an Egyptian social media personality.

The comments came from Carmella Charrington, who was elected in June to the unpaid but important role of Democratic district leader, a position that helps pick the party’s influential chairperson and judicial nominees — and who last fall shared on Instagram a video promoting Henry Ford’s notorious 1920s pamphlet series The International Jew. 

Florida’s Republican primaries on Tuesday will be a critical test for far-right candidates who have built their campaigns on open antisemitism, providing hard data on how popular those views have become in the GOP.

Neither gubernatorial candidate James Fishback nor Dan Bilzerian, who is challenging Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) in Florida’s 6th Congressional District, are expected to win. But the extent of the support they’re able to pick up will be instructive.

Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Dan Goldman (D-NY) continued to spar this week over the University of Washington’s decision to cancel a planned speech by antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker on the campus.

Jayapal last week criticized the public Seattle university for canceling the speech, which was scheduled for early 2027, and urged student groups that want to host him to engage with the school. Goldman, who chairs the House antisemitism task force and recently lost his reelection bid, suggested in response that allowing Piker on campus could create a hostile environment for Jewish students, in violation of federal law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced on Monday that Israel and the U.S.-led Board of Peace will launch two working groups to address key issues in the board’s plan for disarming Hamas and reconstructing the enclave.

The PMO announced the developments in a readout following Netanyahu’s “deep and constructive discussions” with Jared Kushner and Board of Peace High Representative Nickolay Mladenov, as well as their respective teams, in Jerusalem. Mladenov and Kushner had met a day earlier in Cairo with Hamas leaders and Turkish, Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

Tuesday’s Florida primaries are shaping up to be the starkest test yet of how widespread the scourge of antisemitism and extreme anti-Israel views are within both parties. 

On the Democratic side, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), one of the remaining pro-Israel stalwarts within his party, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), a pragmatic Jewish lawmaker who is running in a new district after GOP redistricting chopped up her old seat, are both facing serious primary threats from their left flank.

TAMPA, Fla. – The crosswinds buffeting the Republican Party and conservative media ecosystem over Israel and antisemitism blew through Tampa earlier this month at the National College Republicans convention, and both the politicians who addressed the gathering and the young Republicans themselves had their collars turned up. 

Gubernatorial candidate Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) warned the crowd: Don’t let social media think for you.