Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza as early as two weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, before Israel’s ground invasion began nearly a week later and well before any other mainstream political leaders used the term.

“At the heart of the genocide being perpetrated against innocent Palestinians today is the Islamophobic trope that *all* Palestinians must be aligned with Hamas,” El-Sayed said on X on Oct. 21, 2023. “It’s the most murderous form of the post-9/11 lie our country told to take civil liberties from Arabs & Muslims then.”

Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Senate in Michigan, released a new ad featuring the University of Michigan student who confronted his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, over his positions on Iran and its repressive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a viral exchange last week.

In the 30-second campaign ad posted on Friday, Imam Dashti, who identifies as Persian American, says that his family “escaped oppression in Iran and found freedom in America,” before calling El-Sayed “a real threat to our national security and our values.”

Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee in Kansas’ Senate race running against Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), said in a Politico video interview that he wants to end offensive aid to Israel, but disagreed with characterizations of the war in Gaza as a genocide.

The comments are a signal of how unpopular Democrats believe U.S. support for Israel has become even in ordinarily deep-red states. The Cook Political Report rates the Kansas Senate race as “lean Republican,” making it unexpectedly competitive. Recent polling has shown a tight race and, in some cases, a narrow lead for Hamilton.

A group of 65 House Democrats wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday urging him to take action in response to what they described as Turkey’s “alarming campaign of repression against LGBTQI+ people, human rights organizations, and advocates.”

They specifically highlighted a recent “crackdown” by Ankara starting in mid-September that they said represented a “dangerous and significant escalation,” with raids and arrests targeting HIV and LGBTQ civil society organizations and protesters, internet restrictions and efforts to dissolve human rights organizations.

With the publication of regulations on Thursday for the new federal educational tax credit program, governors now have until the end of the year to decide whether to opt their states into the program.

The tax credit program, which has been championed by many Jewish community groups but opposed by teachers’ unions, has presented a choice for blue-state governors, many of whom¸ have been publicly undecided to this point on whether they’d join the program. Several said that they were waiting to see the regulations before they made a final decision.

Caught between a scandal-plagued Republican nominee and a young Democrat who tacks further left on Israel than many are comfortable with, Jews in the Lone Star State find themselves in a Texas-sized bind when it comes to the pivotal Senate race between state Attorney General Ken Paxton and state Rep. James Talarico.

“I think Texas Jews are between a rock and a hard place in this race,” Norri Leder, a co-founder of Houston Jewish Women Vote and a board member of the local Jewish Federation, told Jewish Insider. “On one hand, you have Ken Paxton, who has a lot of ethical issues that trouble a lot of voters across party lines. With Talarico, you’ve got someone who, like many Democrats, is just afraid to discuss this subject [Israel] with the Jewish community too much. That’s been hard.”

Not one of the 40 leading U.S. art museums evaluated by the Anti-Defamation League includes Jewish identity in its diversity commitments, according to a new report the group released on Thursday.

At the report’s launch event, held at the Jewish Museum on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, actor Selma Blair, who is Jewish, said she has felt a similar exclusion in Hollywood. After the “Legally Blonde” and “Cruel Intentions” actor publicly backed Israel in the months following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, “the brands I worked with were gone within a day,” Blair said as she addressed a crowded room of Jewish leaders, philanthropists, artists, influencers and reporters. “A few partnerships I built were shelved. My agency was gone. My lawyer was gone. My publicist was gone. My book agent was gone. My social media manager was gone. My son’s godmother was gone — my best friend.”

The Israeli military on Thursday released a database identifying 170 Palestinians killed during the Gaza war who it claims were at one point members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations — despite being members of the media or journalists. Among the group were 17 individuals whom the IDF said participated directly in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks.

“Over the past three years of the war, numerous articles, opinion pieces and reports have repeated the claim that the IDF deliberately targets journalists in Gaza, in violation of international law,” the database website reads. “But that claim does not tell the full story.”