
Daily Kickoff: Justice Dems’ decline + PIA shuts down
👋 Good Friday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look ahead to the Israeli High Court’s upcoming review of challenges to recently passed judicial reform legislation, and report on House GOP concerns that the Department of Homeland Security may end funding for two cooperative programs with Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Ben Judah and Dan Doctoroff.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: Delaware congressional candidate Sarah McBride casts herself as a staunch supporter of Israel; On Loop, an ancient matchmaking tradition becomes modern; Meet the Israeli actress telling the story of Israel’s creation – on Netflix. Print the latest edition here.
Justice Democrats, the far-left group founded by staffers from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) 2016 presidential bid that has backed candidates to primary moderate Democrats, is facing mounting challenges, HuffPo’s Daniel Marans writes.
Justice Democrats laid off nearly half of its 20-member staff earlier this summer — several of whom worked on legislative issues — an indication, Marans suggests, that the group is moving away from its efforts on Capitol Hill and refocusing on electing progressive candidates. But the group has not yet announced its slate of endorsements for primary challengers or for candidates making bids for open seats, five months before the nation’s first primaries.
The group is expected to throw its weight behind Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who has emerged as one of the leading critics of Israel since he was first elected in 2020 after ousting longtime Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) in the primary. Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a former state senator, has met with AIPAC to discuss entering the race.
The effort by pro-Israel groups to find a challenger to Bowman and other prominent critics of the Jewish state in Congress reflects a broader response to the activist left’s outsized focus on Israel. Marans spoke to one progressive senior House aide who said that policy discussions with Justice Democrats-backed incumbents were rare — except on one issue.
“Other than some Israel bills, we never talked about legislation,” the senior aide told Marans.
In another sign of Justice Democrats’ waning influence, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), who narrowly won his last two primaries against an activist-left opposition, released a list of endorsements from House Democratic leadership yesterday. It was a marked change for Cuellar, the Democratic caucus’ sole anti-abortion member, who “was left to fend for himself,” Politico’s Sarah Ferris wrote yesterday, “after getting exiled by most of his party in 2022.”
Cuellar’s endorsements underscore the degree to which House Democrats — and Democratic donors — are focused on retaking the House in 2024, and simply not, as one Democratic congressional aide told HuffPo’s Marans, prioritizing moving the party leftward.
In other news, the PAC Pro-Israel America (PIA) is shutting down and has filed a termination report with the FEC. The grassroots bipartisan pro-Israel PAC, launched in 2019 by former top AIPAC officials, will not be operating in the 2024 campaign cycle, its former executive director, Jeff Mendelsohn, told Jewish Insider.
PIA, which operated in the 2020 and 2022 cycles, said it had 150,000 supporters and raised $7 million for candidates in the 2020 and 2022 cycles from more than 8,000 donors.
But it was overshadowed in 2022 by AIPAC launching its own PAC and super PAC for the 2022 cycle that operated with similar goals. AIPAC PAC raised more than $18.5 million last cycle.
Mendelsohn told JI’s Marc Rod, “As we move into the 2024 cycle, Pro-Israel America PAC has closed its doors, but our donors and activists are continuing to support pro-Israel candidates on both sides of the aisle through other pro-Israel channels.”
balance of power
High Court hearing on controversial government legislation looks set to deepen Israel’s constitutional crisis

On Monday, one week after the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu passed its controversial “reasonableness clause” curtailing the Supreme Court’s judicial review, Israel’s Supreme Court President Esther Hayut announced that the High Court of Justice would convene a full panel of 15 judges next month to hear and review a slew of legal petitions challenging the legislation’s legitimacy. The government’s legislation, and the High Court’s review of that legislation, which limits the power of the court to overrule government decisions, is leading Israel into unchartered constitutional territory. It is also setting the Jewish state up for a seismic clash between the government and the legislature on one side, and the judiciary on the other, according to analysts and legal experts interviewed by Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash this week.
Fateful decision: Immediately following the passage of the legislation, several organizations and individuals submitted legal petitions calling on the Supreme Court, which becomes the High Court when debating constitutional matters, to strike down the law. The hearing for those petitions, which is expected to be broadcast live, is now set for Sept. 12. “It will be by far the most fateful, most dramatic and the most contentious legal hearing ever held in Israel,” Amotz Asa-El, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, told JI.
Fragile system: Professor Suzie Navot, vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute, told JI that because Israel has no formal or written constitution, with only a handful of Basic Laws that have been granted constitutional status by the Supreme Court and are very easy to enact and easily amended, the system is fragile and cannot be compared to the U.S.
Elsewhere: Arthur Dantchik, one of the Kohelet Policy Forum’s primary backers, reportedly announced that he is halting his donations to the Jerusalem-based think tank said to be the architect behind the Israeli government’s judicial reform push, eJewishPhilanthropy reports.