If Darline Graham falls short on Tuesday, it could be an indication that a Trump endorsement is no longer the automatic ticket to victory
SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump congratulates Sen. Darline Graham after she spoke during a campaign rally at Myrtle Beach Convention Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on August 21, 2026.
Add JewishInsider on GoogleToday’s special election GOP runoff for Senate in South Carolina between appointed Sen. Darline Graham and five-term Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) will be a clear test over just how much juice President Donald Trump’s endorsement carries within the Republican Party, at a time when his overall political standing has been on the decline.
Graham has struggled through the shortened campaign to fill the seat of her late brother, dodging the media spotlight (unlike her brother) and sticking to generic talking points in talking about the issues. She faced blowback after admitting she didn’t know enough about foreign policy to answer a debate question about Taiwan — underscoring how much of a novice she is on an issue that defined Lindsey Graham’s legacy.
But Trump has been a loyal backer, holding a rally last Friday for her campaign, which featured appearances from the state’s Republican leadership, including Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is also the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Norman also hardly fits the profile of the up-and-coming challenger. He’s 73 and would be one of the oldest freshman senators in recent memory. And for more-moderate Republicans, his record of antagonism towards House Republican leadership and support for declaring martial law in the days leading up to President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration make him a deeply flawed choice.
For national security hawks, Norman’s votes against several Israel aid packages and opposition to Ukraine assistance are also some notable red flags that make Darline Graham the candidate more aligned with her brother’s worldview.
Trump’s endorsement record has been mixed this year, initially backing the losing gubernatorial candidate (Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette) in South Carolina — while endorsing unsuccessful candidates for governor in Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota and Wyoming. All told, he’s backed 10 unsuccessful candidates in primaries this cycle. But the president’s record in Senate races this year is still perfect, having successfully backed insurgent challengers to Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and John Cornyn (R-TX).
In fact, only three of Trump’s Senate endorsees throughout his political career have lost in primaries (Alabama GOP Sen. Luther Strange in 2017; West Virginia Senate candidate Evan Jenkins in 2018; Utah Senate candidate Trent Staggs in 2024).
Graham is hoping to avoid joining that club, and despite her flubs, she’s still got a strong chance of prevailing. She won the first round of balloting with 33% of the vote — eight points ahead of Norman — and finished a respectable second place in the northeastern corner of the state that makes up Rep. Russell Fry’s (R-SC) home base. (Fry endorsed Graham’s candidacy after finishing in third place in the primary.)
But if Graham falls short, it would not just be a sign that South Carolina voters were wary of her policy inexperience. It would be an indication that the Trump endorsement, while still valuable in Republican primaries, isn’t the automatic ticket to victory that it was for so long.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza native who lost 33 family members in Israeli airstrikes, argues in his new book that Hamas bears primary blame for Palestinian suffering and political stagnation
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who lived in the Gaza Strip from the age of 10-15, describes himself as an advocate for the Palestinian people. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel, 33 of Alkhatib’s immediate and extended family members have been killed. But in his latest book, Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, Alkhatib argues that Hamas — rather than Israel — bears primary responsibility for the suffering and political stagnation of the people of Gaza.
Alkhatib is a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he directs Realign for Palestine, a project focused on pragmatic, nonviolent Palestinian advocacy. There, he denounces Hamas and advocates for Palestinian statehood alongside a secure Jewish state.
On Friday, Alkhatib spoke with Jewish Insider about his new book, his experiences growing up in Gaza and his outspoken criticism of Hamas. He also discussed the backlash he has faced from within his own community and why he believes that, ultimately, the terrorist group will have no role in the enclave’s future.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Jewish Insider: What inspired you to write Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages, and what does your book add to public debate on this issue that isn’t already out there?
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: I wanted to weave in elements of my personal story with Gaza’s contemporary history, and add a human dimension to what I felt was Hamas’ devastating impact on the Palestinian people, their destructive role in setting back the Palestinian national project and the radicalization of the society.
I felt that there’s a consistent gap in the discourse from a Palestinian self-interested point of view. Even though many Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims will tell you privately how devastating Hamas is, there’s a disconnect in the discourse outside of Gaza versus inside Gaza — where you’ll find a ton more willingness to speak out, not just because of the consequences of Oct. 7, but because of the totality of the last 20 years of their rule.
One of the things that’s really frustrating is how there is this persistent narrative that Gazans are all Hamas, Gazans support Hamas. It’s very difficult for the other side, for the Israelis and the pro-Israel folks, to see the humanity of Palestinians because they so fundamentally believe that Gaza is inseparable from Hamas. Nevertheless, I argue and maintain that directly and indirectly, Hamas has taken Gaza captive and is holding 2 million people as hostages.
For the pro-Palestine folks, the goal is to burst the bubble of Hamas, which has been getting normalized since Oct. 7, getting called “resistance” or at best receiving token critique. It’s like a check the box: “Oh, I’m not with Hamas, but let’s keep going on Israel, and Israel this and everything is Israel’s fault.” At its worst, it’s actually been lionizing Hamas — refusing to call for the release of hostages, refusing to acknowledge the pain and suffering they’ve caused for the Palestinian people … Hamas has been a disaster. It has destroyed the seams of the Palestinian society and the fabric, and it’s been part of this devolution.
I also made it a short book deliberately for the average casual reader … I wanted to target a lot of younger audiences … because with the avalanche of new entrants to the scene since [Oct. 7], you have people that quite simply don’t know about Hamas, about the Palestinian people or about Gaza. I believe the theme of this book is that within the imbalance of power dynamics between Israel up here and the Palestinians down here, believe it or not, there is plenty of space for Palestinian agency, responsibility and accountability. That’s not blaming the victims or self-hatred — that’s actually the first step to empowering the Palestinians.
JI: You reflect in the book on your own experiences and those of your family in Gaza. How did these experiences shape the way you approach this book, and how did they shape your understanding of Hamas? Did you find that other Gazans shared your sentiments?
AFA: Well, in some ways, my lived experiences are very central to where I’ve arrived. My family are very devout Muslims and committed Palestinians. My family grew up in a Gaza context, and they were not immune to some of the broader trends. So on one hand the family context was helpful and relevant, and on the other hand it was not necessarily responsible for where I’m at right now because my family was kind of an average lower middle class that engaged in this topic. Very educated, but also not the most politically engaged. Very independent, very willing to stay clear and interested in staying clear from Fatah, from Hamas, from all the other different factions, and I think that was very key.
I remember the hope and optimism of the tail end of the Oslo [Accords] years in the ’90s — flying into Gaza’s airport, these shiny new Palestinian passports, the Palestinian airlines, the cell phones, the industrial zone, the kind of renaissance and the sense of hope and optimism and the march toward statehood. In the midst of all of that, Hamas’ counter-narrative was, “Oh no, the Palestinian Authority and the [Palestine Liberation Organization] sold out, they gave up 78% of historic Palestine, and we are going to bring you something better.”
And I just remember being like, “What’s there that’s better than the opportunity to travel freely, an airport, an incoming seaport, the beginning of the symbol of sovereignty and statehood?” On top of all of that, Hamas said, “We’re going to bring you the whole of Palestine from the river to the sea,” but then said, “Oh, by the way, we need to take this detour so let’s go burn a bar that has liquor, let’s control how women dress, let’s make the society more Islamist.” I distinctly remember [saying to] my parents and my uncles, “This is a detour that has nothing to do with negotiating a better outcome or achieving better results for the Palestinians.”
I tell the story of one time going to a summer camp that turned out to be a Hamas summer camp, and neither my family nor I knew that. I must have been 11, and I just remember being like,
“What is any of this?”
There was a very robust pushback against Hamas and against this trend, but parts of the society ultimately either acquiesced or essentially had no option but to go along because Hamas moved the Overton window — including for the moderate and secular Palestinian Authority and [former PLO and PA leader Yasser] Arafat, who had to accommodate Hamas and incorporate elements of Islamism and resistance culture. That is the theme I try to convey: Hamas slowly and gradually shifted the Overton window of what’s acceptable discourse, not just for itself, but for the entirety of Palestinian society, its national project and its political atmosphere.
JI: You talked to CNN earlier this week about what you described as the “troubling persistence of support” for Hamas among some Palestinian activists and diaspora communities, noting that 44% of American Muslims told Pew Research that they support Hamas. Why does support for Hamas persist in these activist circles, and how do you reverse that trend?
AFA: There are many Palestinians, Palestinian Americans, Muslim Americans and Arab Americans who, when you speak to [them] privately, will tell you that Hamas is a gift to the far right in Israel, that Hamas is gross, that Hamas is disgusting. They don’t want to live under a regime that resembles Hamas — they want to live a normal life. But when you step back in a communal dynamic — whether it be the clergy, elements of the community in academia or parents who are guilt-ridden — you have sociological factors and identity crises that contribute to this trend.
Then there is a much more sinister element: elements of academia, journalism and the “social justice” far left who are not Palestinian or Arab or Muslim, who have concocted a variety of frameworks for how you see these conflicts. They want to map out Israel and Palestine to existing frameworks in domestic discourse around immigration, abortion rights, LGBT issues and Black Lives Matter.
You have modern-day anti-Zionism regularly devolving into antisemitism, and a departure from the broad framework of two peoples, two states. Right now, it is very much so a “river-to-the-sea” eliminationist discourse. Israel is seen as an extension of the United States — whether due to the presence of Ashkenazi Jews that are white-presenting, even though half of Israel are Mizrahi Jews of essentially brown origin and darker origin from Arab lands and from the Middle East, whether it be Israel’s founding being considered a purely European Zionist-led colonial project and not something that has anything to do with Jewish peoplehood and heritage and connection to the land, and so there are just these overly simplistic narratives that are not conducive to productive dialogue.
Part of this support for Hamas is an overcorrection to what people felt was an effort by parts of the pro-Israel community to suppress legitimate critique of Israeli actions. But when the pendulum swung, it didn’t swing toward narrow, targeted advocacy for Palestinian freedom and self-determination next to a safe, secure, recognized Jewish Israel. It swung to, “No, actually, we need resistance to eliminate the Zionist entity.”
Hamas very much so cared about the public relations war and narrative warfare because it thought this level of activism would not only delegitimize Israel, but also coerce Israel into stopping the war. Neither happened. Palestinian suffering was irrelevant to a lot of these communities, because they didn’t react when I and many others in Gaza were saying what was necessary for this suffering to end: closing the page on Hamas taking 2 million people as hostages in its suicidal jihadi nihilism.
JI: Have you faced criticism from within your community for placing so much attention on Hamas in your book rather than Israel, and how are you navigating that?
AFA: It is very frequently that I face critique. People say that I’m obsessed with Hamas, that I’m a nutjob, I’m a Zionist, I’m paid by Israel. Now they’ve shifted to saying that I’m a traitor and a sellout.
I see no shortage of people talking about what Israel has done and what Israel is doing right now in Gaza — including Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, whom I acknowledge potentially worsened this situation through direct support for Hamas via Qatari funding. I have no illusions about the fact that Israel bears responsibility in worsening multiple aspects of the discourse, whether it be not empowering the Palestinian Authority, the aggressive expansion of settlements or the recent activities under the current coalition.
My goal is not to simply repeat what people who are even smarter than I am are out there talking about, often speaking in circles to their own choirs. I want to address a gap — and a significant one at that. That gap is that my family and tens of thousands of Palestinians would still be alive had Hamas simply kept its terrorists at home on Oct. 7.
Hamas is treated as an extra on a movie set when it needs to be one of the main antagonists in this whole film. Hamas is a central player in this whole devastation that has befallen Gaza. I see the rightward shift in Israeli society that everybody talks about all the time as inseparable from Hamas and what it did in Gaza and the suicide bombings and what it did to radicalize the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank.
JI: What do you believe Hamas will look like in the years ahead? Do you believe it is possible for Gaza to have a future without Hamas — and one that is different for both sides of this conflict?
AFA: I don’t believe there can be any coexistence with Hamas. I think they need to be effectively banned from the scene. When people say Hamas can’t be defeated, it absolutely can be defeated. I don’t care about Hamas’ ideology per se. The Nazi ideology lives on all these years. Al-Qaida is alive and well after [Osama] bin Laden. ISIS is alive and well, even though they don’t theoretically control mass territories like they once did.
What I care about is three metrics through which you can judge and assess Hamas’ ability to remain relevant and be defeated: Do they control territory? Do they have an executive force on the ground that can have a monopoly on violence and force and act as an administrative body? And do they control resources — financial, taxation, access to aid and incoming resources, or smuggling? In those three metrics, Hamas has been significantly rolled back.
More likely than not, it is my belief that Hamas is going to be largely irrelevant in Gaza. Hamas is not going to govern like it once did. The days of Hamas reigning supreme and controlling Gaza are over. Hamas may try to remanufacture itself as a political body, as a political entity, but in terms of controlling Gaza like it once did, I see that as incredibly unlikely. Their inventory of weapons and arsenal is very finite. They’re not smuggling weapons like they once did, and a lot of their supplies, workshops and spaces have been destroyed and rolled back. Whether it be through disarmament, Israeli elimination or decay — I think Hamas’ arsenal is going to recede to where it not only no longer constitutes a threat to Israel, but it no longer is adequate to entirely rule the Gaza Strip.
My concern is that Hamas is moving to Turkey. The Turks might be trying to help them reinvent themselves as a political organization. If they enter Palestinian elections, will they then further ruin democratic life? Will they evolve their so-called armed resistance narrative into something that can introduce political stalemate?
Right now, largely speaking, Hamas, Israel, the Board of Peace, the Trump administration and regional and international partners are in agreement over the next steps as far as disarmament, which is a prerequisite to get any kind of withdrawal or reconstruction happening in Gaza. However, now we’re in a space where the disarmament issue is actually logistical in nature. Logistics can make or break a war, a campaign or an effort, and right now, logistically, the disarmament plan is just — it’s not there. It’s not there. That’s what concerns me.
Plus, Rial pain for Tehran
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club on December 29, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida.
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how Sen. Darline Graham’s shaky debate performance earlier this week is prompting questions in the GOP about her electability, do a deep dive into efforts by the Democratic Socialists of America to win local and state-level races and report on Rep. Ryan Zinke’s advertised participation in an event hosted by the Turkey-linked group involved in the Eric Adams bribery scandal. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Marc Brown, Lauren Sherman and Eliya Cohen.
Curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod.
Today’s Agenda
We’re monitoring the situation in the Middle East following President Donald Trump’s announcement yesterday that the U.S. was launching a campaign of “economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale” targeting Iran. The president called the move the “MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY,” and warned that efforts to assist Tehran would be met with “economic consequences.” Read more here.
In Massachusetts, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) will face off in the last debate before the Sept. 1 Senate primary. A WCVB/University of Massachusetts Amherst poll released earlier this week showed Markey with a significant lead over Moulton in the race.
One Thing To Know
JINSA calls for change in U.S.-Israel military alliance
By Matthew Shea
As Israel and the Trump administration negotiate the next U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding, a new report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America demonstrates how even among hawkish experts in Washington, the question is increasingly not how to preserve the traditional military aid model, but what should replace it.
The report, titled “Shifting the Center of Gravity: Transforming the U.S.-Israel Security Partnership,” recommends that the two countries sign one final 10-year MOU — a sea change for Israel supporters who previously wouldn’t have dreamt to advocate for the end of these kinds of agreements between Jerusalem and Washington, though they largely hope for it to be replaced with cooperative and enduring programs.
The report comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself championed the eventual end of direct U.S. aid to Israel and as elements of both parties become resistant to defense spending overseas, a new reality that is forcing a reassessment of how Washington can sustain its commitment to Israel without relying on the traditional aid model.
The Big Reads
palmetto state politics
Darline Graham’s foreign policy flub rattles GOP ahead of S.C. Senate runoff
Sen. Darline Graham’s (R-SC) stumbling performance at the final GOP primary debate on Tuesday has prompted questions about her prospects in next week’s runoff against Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports. “The debate seems fairly consequential for a number of reasons,” said GOP campaign veteran Colin Reed. He predicted that Graham’s inability to sound articulate on foreign policy — all but taking a pass on a consequential national security question — was likely to have an impact on the outcome of the race because of the importance of national security issues to South Carolina’s “heavy military presence and large veteran community.”
GOING LOCAL
Socialist surge happening in under-the-radar local and state legislative races
Even as attention has focused on the Democratic Socialists of America’s victories in Senate and House primaries, many of the group’s more overlooked victories have happened at the state legislative level, where the DSA members are poised to wield significant power if they win, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. A new study by the Brookings Institution, released Wednesday, found that of the 104 state legislative candidates endorsed by national or local DSA chapters in 2026, 76 have won their primaries or advanced to the general election without a primary. At the local level, another 64 of the 99 DSA-endorsed candidates are moving on to the general election.
COLD TURKEY
Turkey-linked group in Eric Adams bribery scandal advertising event with Ryan Zinke
A Turkish-tied organization that launched in 2023 with an alleged straw-donor fundraiser for former New York City Mayor Eric Adams has spent recent weeks selling tickets for a Sept. 20 gathering listing Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) as a “featured speaker” — even as Zinke’s office insists he’s not attending the event, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports. The CEO Club New York and Turkish-American Business Association have posted materials online and created a listing on Eventbrite advertising the “World Business Summit New York & Award Ceremony 2026” next month, with the name and photo of the retiring Montana congressman, who served as secretary of the interior during the first Trump administration, prominently displayed.
The Rundown
EAST BAY SHOWDOWN
Wahab holds narrow lead over AIPAC-backed Hernandez in East Bay congressional runoff
CLOSE TO HOME
N.J. Jewish bridal shop owner detained by ICE
moving for mike
Michigan Jewish Dems circulate letter endorsing Republican Mike Rogers for Senate
On Our Radar
● The Live Briefing. Word on the street, clips, podcasts and quick updates — the items we’re tracking all day in our Live Briefing on the app (on Apple and Android) and website.
The U.S. has reportedly quietly established in recent weeks a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz that has allowed between 15-20 tankers to transit through the waterway nightly, allowing some 10 million barrels of oil to move out of the region each day…
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack doubled down on his criticism of Israeli strikes on a Syrian air base earlier in the week, which Israel said had been prompted by Turkish involvement at the base…
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met on Wednesday in Doha with Hamas leaders including Khalil Al Hayya; Al Thani praised the terror group for accepting the Board of Peace’s disarmament road map, which analysts told JI Hamas likely has no intention of abiding by, and called on the international community to “pressure Israel to fulfill its obligations”…
Reps. Greg Meeks (D-NY) and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) pressed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over his decision to loosen export controls on the United Arab Emirates, arguing he had failed to provide “justification or evidence that proliferation or diversion risk had been mitigated” and questioning whether the moves were driven by political or financial interests…
U.S.-based missile manufacturer Castelion closed a more than $1 billion round of funding co-led by Carlyle, JPMorgan Chase and Andreessen Horowitz to boost production of hypersonic missiles…
Fortune looks at ServiceNow’s acquisition of Yevgeny Dibrov’s Armis earlier this year, as the company — which was bought from Dibrov and cofounder, Nadir Izrael, for nearly $8 billion — becomes a core component of ServiceNow’s pushback against the AI-driven “SaaSpocalypse”…
The New York State Department of Financial Services issued a notice warning Holocaust survivors and their families about potential fraud by an organization calling itself the “Jewish Holocaust Claims Center” that is contacting such individuals about their eligibility for compensation…
Author and illustrator Marc Brown, the creator of the “Arthur” series, sold his Martha’s Vineyard home for $6.4 million…
The New York man accused of assaulting two people at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue last week is facing federal hate crimes after initially being charged with state-level hate crimes related to the incident…
L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman’s mayoral campaign confirmed plans to work with Fight Agency, as the consulting firm faces criticism from elements of the Democratic Party over its work with former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who dropped his bid following a rape allegation made by a former romantic partner…
Vanity Fair spotlights Puck’s Lauren Sherman, the lead author of the online publication’s “Line Sheet” newsletter, described as “one of the most influential — and polarizing — figures in fashion media”…
U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said London was preparing targeted sanctions against Israelis engaged in “illegal settlement expansion,” and summoned Israel’s chargé d’affaires in the country over the issue…
The IDF said it was opening an investigation into the death of 5-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza in January 2024 after finding that Israeli troops had fired at her family’s vehicle as it was traveling opposite the direction of an evacuation route; the IDF had previously denied responsibility for the incident, which drew global attention and inspired an Oscar-nominated film titled “The Voice of Hind Rajab”…
Australia summoned Israel’s ambassador in Canberra following the IDF’s announcement that it would not move forward with criminal proceedings regarding a 2024 IDF strike in Gaza in which seven World Central Kitchen workers, including an Australian citizen, were killed…
The Dubai-based DP World is moving forward with an $800 million plan to redevelop the Syrian port of Tartous on the Mediterranean…
Former Israeli hostage Eliya Cohen married his longtime girlfriend, Ziv Abud, on Wednesday night; the couple, who attended the Nova music festival along with Abud’s nephew and his girlfriend, survived a siege on the bomb shelter in which they were hiding during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks before Cohen was taken captive and held for more than 500 days…
Worthy Reads
Find more Worthy Reads in our Live Briefing via our app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Iran’s Best Friends: In The Washington Post, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Bradley Bowman and Cameron McMillan call on the U.S. to address continued Russian and Chinese support for Iran. “Perhaps most startlingly, Russia reportedly provided Iran with satellite imagery and other forms of intelligence to enable Iranian attacks on American military positions in the region, likely improving Tehran’s ability to target U.S. forces and high-value assets — such as radars and command-and-control sites — with drones and ballistic missiles. … Beijing has long provided Tehran with dual-use support, meaning items that can be used for civilian and military purposes. This is perhaps most evident in Iran’s ballistic missile program.” [WashPost]
Village People: In The Wall Street Journal, David Cohen, the CEO of Algemeiner, reflects on the communal response to the recent death of his brother, Jonathan. “The people filling the mourning house weren’t merely responding to Jonathan’s death. They were responding to Jonathan’s life. A few weeks later, my wife put it succinctly: ‘To have a village, you have to be a villager.’ We talk about the disappearance of community. Americans report loneliness despite technology that lets us reach anyone, anywhere, instantly. … Perhaps we have the equation backward. A village isn’t something we find when we need one. It’s something we build long before that.” [WSJ]
Picture of the Day
The IDF’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, visited Israeli troops in Syria on Wednesday, days after an Israeli strike targeted an air base in northern Syria meant to deter Turkish troops from deploying in the area. Credit: IDF
Birthdays
Mark Levin, film director, television producer and screenwriter, turns 58
Phoebe Bryan, Laguna Hills, Calif., resident
Connie Chung, news anchor and reporter for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, turns 80
Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council during the Trump 45 administration, now a commentator for Fox Business, turns 79
Lana Gordon, former Kansas secretary of labor, turns 76
Steven Klinghoffer, immediate past chair of the Golda Och Academy in West Orange, N.J.
Sam Katz, mayor of Winnipeg, Manitoba, from 2004 to 2014 and the owner of minor league baseball’s Winnipeg Goldeyes, turns 75
Jay Knopf, managing director of equity derivatives at Rice Financial Products
Bradley Schneider, U.S. representative (D-IL), turns 65
Suzanne Grant, Wilmington, Del., resident and former treasurer of the board of the Jewish Federations of North America
Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, he was the U.S. trade representative during the Obama administration, turns 64
Steve Daines, U.S. senator (R-MT), turns 64
Patrick Drahi, founder and controlling shareholder of the Altice Group, he acquired Sotheby’s during 2019, turns 63
Etgar Keret, Israeli writer known for his short stories and graphic novels, turns 59
Matthew Gould, British ambassador to Israel from 2010 to 2015, the first Jewish U.K. ambassador to be posted to Tel Aviv, and former CEO of the Zoological Society of London, turns 55
Asher Fentahun Seyoum, Ethiopian-born, former member of the Knesset for Kulanu, turns 55
Ari Goldberg, chief communications officer at Nova Ukraine
Abigail Michelson Porth, executive director of Lisa Stone Pritzker’s LSP Family Foundation
Karen Brunwasser, co-CEO and one of the founders of the Jerusalem Season of Culture, a summer music festival that showcases Jerusalem
Rachel Fish, co-founder of Boundless Israel
Elhanan Miller, Israeli teacher and writer, he is the founder of People of the Book focused on communicating about the Jewish faith with the Arab world, turns 45
David Adelman, partner in the Iowa office of Cornerstone Government Affairs and foundation president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines
Meghan Ory, Canadian television and film actor, turns 44
Josh Flagg, real estate agent, author and television personality as an original cast member on the show “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles,” Josh Flagg, turns 41
Simon Shnapir, ice skating professional at The Skating Club of Boston, turns 39
Gianmarco Soresi, stand-up comedian, actor, podcaster and internet personality, turns 38
Roy Ziv, Canadian guitarist, YouTuber, producer and music teacher, turns 35
Sella Sharlin, triathlete and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Israel 2019, turns 30
The former NBA star became the first Israeli citizen and first Jewish inductee in more than half a century after secretly studying Torah for 20 years
M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Inductee Amar'e Stoudemire speaks during the 2026 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony on August 15, 2026, at Symphony Hall in Springfield, MA.
Amar’e Stoudemire spent years dominating the NBA hardwood as a six-time All-Star and five-time All-NBA selection, quickly becoming a recognizable powerhouse for the Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks. But when Stoudemire took the stage for his induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last week, he made history — becoming the first Israeli citizen, and the first Jewish player in more than half a century, to take his place among basketball’s legends.
Following 14 seasons in the NBA, which included stops with the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat, Stoudemire made a move not uncommon for veterans looking to continue their playing careers by heading overseas. However, when Stoudemire moved to Israel in 2019, he went for more than just basketball. He converted to Judaism, acquired Israeli citizenship, adopted the Hebrew name Yehoshafat Ben Avraham and revealed that he had spent two decades secretly studying Torah.
In his Hall of Fame induction speech on Aug. 15, Stoudemire told a room full of basketball royalty about the value of ending his career in Israel.
“At the end of it all, I wanted to go back to a place where I had a special connection to,” Stoudemire said. “I was learning for 20 years prior — secretly, I was learning Torah. … I wanted to go to a place where I can live and also play. So after my last game in Miami, I took my talents overseas to Israel, and I played in Israel, and I played in Jerusalem.”
For Stoudemire, moving abroad also meant trading the luxury of the NBA for a more grounded, purpose-driven experience with his family.
“I’m there with my family, and now go from flying on private planes to five-star hotels to now taking the bus,” he added. “Now we were playing in smaller arenas, but I was there for a deeper purpose and a reason, and my family and I truly enjoyed our time there.”
That shift in environment delivered on-court success as well. Suiting up for Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv, Stoudemire won Israeli League championships in 2017 and 2020, along with a Finals MVP award.
“I was able to win my first championship in Jerusalem, and then I was able to now go back from my last game as a player to Maccabi Tel Aviv, and lived in Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean Sea, living the dream,” Stoudemire said. “It was great. It was beautiful. I had a great time, and I finished my career with a championship and a finals MVP.”
In a statement, J Street said that its spending effort to boost progressive California state Sen. Aisha Wahab is intended to counter the pro-Hernandez spending by AIPAC and others
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
California state Sen. Aisha Wahab attends a press conference in Hayward, Calif., on March 2, 2026.
J Street Action Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the progressive Israel advocacy group, spent $108,000 on Thursday on digital advertisements to boost progressive California state Sen. Aisha Wahab in the special election in California’s 14th Congressional District.
The AIPAC-affiliated super PAC United Democracy Project has spent nearly $2.5 million — along with significant independent expenditures by other groups — attacking Wahab and boosting moderate former local mayor Melissa Hernandez in the special election runoff to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA).
J Street said in a statement that its spending effort is intended to counter the pro-Hernandez spending by AIPAC and others. The J Street ad praises Wahab for work on housing affordability issues.
Wahab’s campaign has raised concerns from members of the Jewish community, given that she voted against or abstained on votes on top-priority legislation to combat campus antisemitism and is closely aligned with teachers’ unions that have opposed antisemitism bills. She has also accused Israel of committing genocide and shared a page on her campaign site individually calling out specific “AIPAC-linked donors” supporting Hernandez’s campaign.
“Aisha Wahab is an Afghan-American and the first Muslim elected to the California State Senate,” J Street said in a statement. “In September 2025, she introduced a resolution calling for an end to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages. She is exactly the kind of compassionate leader constituents of the 14th District should have in Congress.”
Wahab introduced the 2025 resolution alongside Jewish state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running for Congress in another Bay Area district.
“This is once again a cynical attempt by AIPAC to defeat a candidate who won’t rubber-stamp their agenda,” Tali deGroot, J Street’s vice president of political and digital strategy, said in a statement. “AIPAC’s super PAC has failed time and again this cycle, and we expect this latest attempt to take Republican billionaire dollars and buy a Democratic primary to fail as well. Voters in the 14th deserve better, and they deserve a Member of Congress who will bring the kind of clear-eyed, nuanced and compassionate leadership that Dr. Wahab has shown throughout her career.”
A Jewish leader in the district said that, while they harbored concerns about Wahab, they did not believe that even significant UDP spending would be enough to swing the race against her and worried that UDP spending could push her toward stronger anti-Israel stances.
‘Your antagonism toward Israel has remained steadfast,’ Michael Morris wrote. ‘Your vote continues to demonstrate a lack of support for the Jewish state’
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Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) heads for a vote at the U.S. Capitol on June 01, 2026 in Washington, DC.
The publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times penned an open letter to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) on Wednesday pressing the senator over his repeated votes to block U.S. military sales to Israel, accusing Ossoff of failing to support Israel and of misrepresenting his positions to his Jewish constituents.
“I apologize for being blunt, but please, stop lying to me and your constituents. I hear you claim, over and over again, that you support Israel — that your support is ‘ironclad,’” Michael Morris wrote in the letter. “It is not. You vote against Israel on the Senate floor in Washington, then come home to Georgia and make this untruthful claim.”
The open letter is the latest expression of frustration with the Jewish first-term senator, who is up for reelection in November, from prominent leaders in Georgia’s Jewish community. Others have told Jewish Insider they feel that they have no good options in November’s midterm, between Ossoff, whose stances on Israel have frustrated them, and Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), whose rhetoric and ties to antisemitic and far-right figures have raised alarms.
“Your antagonism toward Israel has remained steadfast,” Morris wrote to Ossoff, highlighting his repeated votes for measures led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to cut off weapons sales to Israel. “Your vote continues to demonstrate a lack of support for the Jewish state.”
Ossoff’s Senate campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Morris said in the open letter that Ossoff’s support for Israel is only reliable on nonbinding rhetorical measures supporting Israel’s right to defend itself or condemning Hamas.
“But when a bill offers Israel tangible strategic support — munitions, rifles, bombs, military and financial assistance — your record is abysmal, and you throw Israel under the bus,” Morris said. “You are with Israel on the votes that cost you nothing, and against it on the votes that actually matter. All that heartfelt sympathy is smoke and mirrors.”
He said that supporting measures to stop arms sales to Israel is not consistent with a pro-Israel stance.
And he questioned whether Ossoff’s pro-Israel message, delivered to Jewish constituents, has remained consistent in front of other crowds, like the Muslim community.
“You campaigned as a supporter of Israel. You were elected to stand with our allies. You continue to claim that you support Israel. Demonstrate your support with your vote on the Senate floor,” Morris wrote. “If instead you choose to keep voting against Israel, at least do not come home and obfuscate your vote — own your record. Because if you are not telling us the truth about this, Senator, I am left to ask: what else are you not telling us?”
The results paint a picture of a Democratic Party deeply divided, with older voters, Black voters and Jewish voters forming the centrist coalition
(Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via Getty Images)
U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell speaks to media outside the Mid-County Branch public library on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, before voting in Missouri's primary elections.
Rumors of the demise of the mainstream, pro-Israel wing of the Democratic Party turned out to be somewhat exaggerated: The Michigan Senate race between Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Abdul El-Sayed is a lot closer than polls suggested, while Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) romped to victory over his anti-Israel opponent, with the help of pro-Israel, Jewish supporters.
Bell’s sweeping 22-point victory in a rematch over former Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) was an early election night highlight for Jewish and pro-Israel groups, which poured money and organizing efforts into ensuring the virulently anti-Israel Bush didn’t get a chance to return to Congress. AIPAC’s super PAC spent over $3 million on ads attacking Bush as corrupt and extreme, resources which likely played a key role in Bell’s landslide margin.
There were some other silver linings for the moderate side of the Democratic Party on Tuesday night: Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss won comfortably to succeed Stevens despite facing attacks over his pro-Israel record from his opponents. And Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the moderate ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee who faced harassment and threats over his longstanding pro-Israel record, won a clear majority of the vote against far-left challengers in Washington state’s all-party primary.
But there were plenty of warning signs about the changing ideological direction of the Democratic Party, as we’ve previously seen in deep-blue congressional districts across the country. Despite Stevens’ closer-than-expected showing, she still trails El-Sayed even after winning endorsements from top Democratic officials (including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer) and being the beneficiary of tens of millions in outside spending led by AIPAC’s ad blitz.
Meanwhile, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI), seen as a reliable pro-Israel ally, is trailing against DSA-aligned challenger state Rep. Donavan McKinney, who ran on an anti-Israel platform.
And in the battleground Michigan 7th District, left-wing activist William Lawrence prevailed with a plurality of the vote, largely because of a split between his two moderate challengers. Running in a district President Donald Trump carried in 2024, Lawrence will find his ideological baggage a major vulnerability as he tries to unseat freshman Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI).
The results paint a picture of a Democratic Party deeply divided, with older voters, Black voters and Jewish voters forming the centrist coalition, which is facing an insurgency from the left made up of younger voters, white progressives and Arab Americans.
What should be most concerning for the Jewish community is that virulently anti-Israel candidates are making inroads in the affluent, college-educated suburbs — areas where such views would have been politically toxic not long ago.
Stevens only narrowly won her home base of suburban Oakland County — the center of the state’s Jewish community — and lost badly in affluent Kent County, spanning the city of Grand Rapids. It underscores the point that the base of the DSA movement is among fairly well-off white voters.
But on the other side, there are plenty of red flags for El-Sayed after his underwhelming primary performance. El-Sayed struggled with Black voters, who make up the core of the party’s voting base. He got romped in the state’s rural counties. And El-Sayed’s overconfidence and the campaign’s grandiose expectations were undercut by the race’s close margin, and he didn’t get to enjoy a celebratory moment in the media spotlight on Election Night.
For AIPAC, which poured over $30 million into the Michigan Senate race, this is merely the first round of a lengthy battle against El-Sayed. If El-Sayed ends up prevailing, expect the pro-Israel advocacy group to remain actively engaged in the race as attention pivots to a general election with former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) as the GOP nominee.
The reality is that these candidates are politically problematic to the overall public for reasons that go far beyond their views on Jews or Israel
Mario Tama/Getty Images
An attendee wears a jacket at an Iowa caucus watch party organized by Metro D.C. Democratic Socialists of America, on February 3, 2020 in Washington, DC.
One of the unsettling realities that American Jews have been learning throughout this election cycle is that antisemitic behavior and virulently anti-Israel rhetoric has become so normalized that it doesn’t register all that much politically anymore.
The early tell was discovering that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s involvement throughout his life in extreme anti-Israel activism didn’t impact his ability to win an election in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world.
Then we learned that disgraced former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo — which he later covered up — made very little difference in his political standing in the battleground Senate race. It wasn’t until he was accused of rape that rank-and-file Democrats began to reconsider their support of him.
And today we’re grappling with the possibility that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who won’t acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state (like Mamdani before him), could prevail in a Democratic primary in a swing state.
Jews find themselves in the news often these days, and for that reason it makes sense to want to dwell on the extreme, often-antisemitic positions that these radical candidates have espoused.
But as we head into a general election where several far-left candidates will be testing their political viability in competitive states and districts against strong Republican challengers, it’s important to remember that their biggest vulnerabilities are on issues that don’t directly impact the Jewish community.
The reality is that these candidates are politically problematic to the overall public for reasons that go far beyond their views on Jews or Israel. The same Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform that rejects a Jewish state and condones terrorism also is one that envisions abolishing prisons and defunding the police and backs open borders.
DSA co-chair Megan Romer’s interview on “Fox News Sunday” last week where she enthusiastically endorsed all the exotic positions of the group’s national platform went viral — well beyond conservative media — because it was such a direct encapsulation of the ideas that these candidates actually believe.
DSA-aligned Wisconsin gubernatorial front-runner Francesca Hong, whose insurgent primary campaign hasn’t faced much scrutiny until recently, similarly struggled under basic fact-gathering interviews from Fox News and CNN.
In a similar vein, El-Sayed’s recent stumble when asked on CNN about his past support for defunding the police didn’t hurt him much in the Democratic primary. But you can bet his past views will be aggressively litigated in the general election, if he emerges as the nominee.
Unlike the deep-blue districts where DSA-aligned members have won primaries, Michigan and Wisconsin are shaping up to be clear tests of whether normie general election voters have turned so anti-establishment that they’re willing to back socialists and other like-minded allies to send a message against the party in power.
And if Republicans end up prevailing in an otherwise rough environment for their party, it’s going to be because their opponents’ far-left views on crime, taxes and border security matter a whole lot more to the average voter than their views on foreign policy.
Two Democratic operatives involved in Michigan and other targeted races told JI that left-wing candidates endorsed by Sanders and his far-left allies can expect to win about one-third of the primary vote
(Sarah Rice/Getty Images)
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Michigan Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) greet the crowd after El-Sayed spoke at The People V. The Powerful rally at the Detroit Opera House on July 18, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan.
In chatting with plugged-in Democratic strategists currently working on congressional campaigns, I was shocked — but not all that surprised — at the acceptance that the party has been all but dominated by the socialist faction, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), that has gotten more radical since his presidential campaign in 2016 and has played a key role in many Democratic primaries across the country.
Two Democratic operatives involved in Michigan and other targeted races bluntly told JI that left-wing candidates endorsed by Sanders and his band of far-left allies can now expect to win about one-third of the primary vote from the start if given the Sanders seal of approval. And far from being contained to deep-blue urban districts in New York, the trend is spreading into swing-district primaries and statewide nomination fights.
That’s certainly shaping up to be the case in Michigan’s 7th District, one of the biggest battleground districts in the country long held by now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI). Despite two candidates with cross-partisan credentials running — former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink — the Sanders-endorsed socialist activist William Lawrence is the front-runner, according to new polling conducted in the race.
And the socialist wave is building in statewide races in two of the biggest Midwestern battlegrounds, with Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed Francesca Hong running away with the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s governorship, despite her recent embrace of politically toxic views like supporting funding cuts to the police.
And as we’ve extensively covered in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed’s virulently anti-Israel and left-wing platform in the Senate race doesn’t appear to be stunting his primary campaign against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), even with popular Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s endorsement of Stevens.
There will be exceptions in certain moderate constituencies, especially those with sizable Jewish populations — like Army veteran Cait Conley’s success in the Westchester County district of Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) or former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett, who’s running against Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) in the northern New Jersey suburbs.
But even in the affluent suburban districts that were once immune to progressives, candidates running with Sanders’ backing are proving they can prevail, especially as anti-Trump sentiment has metastasized in an acceptance of extreme views. Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ), who was embraced as a close Sanders ally, easily won an affluent suburban seat filled with white-collar professionals.
The only constituency who defected en masse to her relatively moderate GOP opponent were the Jewish voters in the district. “People underestimate the radicalization of high-propensity Democratic primary voters,” Michigan Democratic labor activist (and a former DSA leader) Jake Altman wrote on X.
If El-Sayed, Hong and Lawrence (among others) win their primaries next week, the last line of defense for the political mainstream will be in the November general election. Unlike the earlier primaries where DSA-aligned candidates prevailed, these contests are still taking place in competitive battlegrounds.
But even general election polls suggest that partisanship runs so deeply these days that even positions that once made candidates unelectable aren’t the vulnerabilities they used to be. November may end up being the biggest test of the socialists’ staying power — and the last chance for moderating, independent-minded voices to prove they still wield political power.
Leading rabbis across the state are urging their congregants to vote for Stevens — even if they’re not saying so explicitly
Andrew Roth/Sipa USA
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) speaks at the Michigan Democratic Party Endorsement Convention in Detroit, Mich., on April 19, 2026.
Several large Detroit-area synagogues emailed their congregants earlier this summer to urge them to vote in Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary — what seemed at first to be a somewhat bland call to make their voices heard and exercise their civic duty.
Then, as primary day drew closer, the messages took on a sharper edge from the usual staid, nonpartisan rhetoric that houses of worship might have sent in the past ahead of major elections.
“While we aren’t going to tell you who to vote for and we have never sent a message like this in our congregation’s history, these are no ordinary times,” the leaders of Temple Israel, the Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield that was the site of a violent antisemitic attack in March, wrote in an email last month.
The rabbis did not directly tell congregants whom to support in the Democratic Senate primary between Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official. Instead, they merely described a politician who sounded a lot like Stevens: “a candidate whose record, actions, and rhetoric demonstrate the strongest commitment to protecting Jewish lives by combating antisemitism, seeking federal security funding for American Jewish communities, and supporting Israel’s security and right to exist as a Jewish state.” (The Conservative Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield used similar language in a letter to its congregants in June.)
El-Sayed, who has made attacking AIPAC a central tenet of his campaign, has refused to say whether he believes in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. El-Sayed condemned the Temple Israel attack — which did not result in any casualties aside from the assailant, a Hezbollah sympathizer who drove a truck into the synagogue preschool before opening fire — but said that “hurt people hurt people,” referring to the attacker’s ties to family members in Lebanon affiliated with Hezbollah who were killed in Israeli strikes.
The email from a nonprofit religious institution was just one of many that are being forwarded between the inboxes of Jewish Michiganders in the final days of the Senate primary, which is open to all registered voters regardless of party affiliation. Rabbis’ unprecedented advocacy in the race reflects the urgency surrounding what many Michigan Jews view as one of the most important elections in their lifetime: between a moderate, pro-Israel lawmaker who has represented the hub of Detroit’s Jewish community for nearly eight years and an insurgent far-left candidate whom they view as dangerously misguided when it comes to matters of Jewish communal concern.
Rabbi Aaron Starr, of Shaarey Zedek, told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that Stevens is “a longtime friend of the Detroit Jewish community.” But he stopped short of publicly naming her as his preferred candidate. Still, he said that the stakes feel different in this election, prompting the stronger-than-usual message to congregants.
“This is not difficult at all because I just feel it is so important,” Rabbi Asher Lopatin, who leads the Orthodox Kehillat Etz Chayim synagogue in Detroit and is director of community relations at the Ann Arbor Jewish federation, told JI. “We really have seen a lot of energy, I would say really just in the last month. People have woken up, I think, to this danger.”
“We’ve spoken in condemnation of and in praise of elected officials’ and candidates’ rhetoric on both sides of the aisle,” he said of the synagogue’s past political commentary. “Yet this election feels like a more existential moment for the Jews of Michigan, of the United States and around the world.”
Other rabbis are being more overt in their support for Stevens. Rabbi Asher Lopatin, who leads the Orthodox Kehillat Etz Chayim synagogue in Detroit and is director of community relations at the Ann Arbor Jewish federation, sent an email this week to his personal contact list urging them to vote for Stevens. He also noted that his position does not formally represent the views of his employers.
“This is not difficult at all because I just feel it is so important,” Lopatin told JI. “We really have seen a lot of energy, I would say really just in the last month. People have woken up, I think, to this danger.”
Three dozen members of Detroit’s Orthodox community, including several rabbis, signed a letter calling on observant Jews to support Stevens, whom they described as an “outspoken supporter of Israel and a devoted ally to the Jewish community.”
Among Orthodox Jews, who are more likely than secular Jews to identify as Republican, there is an educational push to remind voters that in Michigan, they can vote in whichever primary they choose — Democratic or Republican — regardless of their party affiliation.
“In the primary, many of the Democratic challengers to these candidates are hostile to our community. It is imperative to vote for those who support us,” the Orthodox Jewish leaders wrote. “Having a voice in deciding who the Democratic candidate is will be important no matter who you vote for in November in the general election. You do not need to be a registered Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary.”
“We need all the help we can get, the people we can get, to represent the Jewish population,” Gail Mash, an 81-year-old resident of a senior housing facility operated by the Detroit Jewish Federation, told JI. “There are people who are homebound and have nothing to do. This is the best thing they can do: take an active part and feel that they’re doing something for the community.”
The frantic email campaigns and WhatsApp chains are joined by the actual bread-and-butter of campaigning: phone banking and canvassing. Gail Mash, an 81-year-old resident of a senior housing facility operated by the Detroit Jewish Federation, calls herself and her group of politically engaged girlfriends the “Bubbe Brigade.” (Mash described herself as a former “Kennedy girl” who has been a Democrat her whole life.)
The “Bubbe Brigade” makes phone calls each week to members of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, a grassroots group representing Jewish Democrats within the state party, and reminds them to vote.
“We need all the help we can get, the people we can get, to represent the Jewish population,” Mash told JI in a phone call on Tuesday. “There are people who are homebound and have nothing to do. This is the best thing they can do: take an active part and feel that they’re doing something for the community.”
The Democratic Jewish Caucus campaigned with Stevens in the Detroit suburbs over the weekend at a canvassing event that was also promoted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America, a national group that is supporting efforts to rally Jewish voters for Stevens. JDCA is hosting more than a dozen phone banking events, and it has also made a five-figure digital ad buy in support of Stevens.
“When Jewish Americans needed a champion, Haley Stevens stepped up,” the ad says. It touts Stevens as a leader in fighting antisemitism, “creating jobs” and “delivering for Michiganders.”
Polling has shown El-Sayed with a small lead, though the dynamics of the race have shifted in Stevens’ favor since a third candidate, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, dropped out earlier this month.
In the final debate of the campaign on Monday, El-Sayed repeatedly went after AIPAC and attacked Stevens for her support of the U.S.-Israel relationship. The rhetoric has left some Jewish Democrats in the state confused — and frustrated — at the way Israel, and its political supporters in the U.S., have become so central to a primary for a pivotal Senate swing seat.
“We have concerns that are sometimes unique from other communities’ concerns,” Ari Weisenfeld, the director of state relations at Agudath Israel, told JI. “If you want your elected officials to take them seriously, whether that’s at the local, state or federal level, you need to get out and vote.”
“The Jewish community is just like, why is there this obsession with this organization that a lot of us do not have an affiliation with?” said Decky Alexander, who chairs the Democratic Jewish Caucus. “It is just mind-blowing that this is such a consumptive issue when we have real threats to our Constitution, our democracy and the economics that are going on.”
Early voting is already underway, but campaigning will continue until polls close on Tuesday. Ari Weisenfeld plans to travel to Detroit from his home in Connecticut to urge Orthodox Jews to vote. As the director of state relations at Agudath Israel, an Orthodox umbrella organization, Weisenfeld is not promoting a particular candidate — all he cares about is that observant Jews get out and vote. He plans to try to visit as many synagogues as he can for morning minyanim between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m, reminding people to vote. If people need a ride to the polls, he’ll provide it.
“We have concerns that are sometimes unique from other communities’ concerns,” Weisenfeld told JI. “If you want your elected officials to take them seriously, whether that’s at the local, state or federal level, you need to get out and vote.”
Reps. Russell Fry and Ralph Norman have also entered the race for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s seat
Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images
Darline Graham, sister of Lindsey Graham, looks on during her ceremonial swearing in to become a U.S. Senator on July 14, 2026.
Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) said that she will run in next month’s special election to replace her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on the ballot as the GOP nominee for Senate in November.
Graham, who was appointed last week to serve out the remainder of her brother’s term in the Senate, announced her decision to run for a full term in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday.
“I’ve made a decision,” Graham said. “I’m in.”
Graham told Hannity, a friend of her late brother’s, that she had been “praying a lot” and “talking to my family” about the decision, which she acknowledged she needed to make at an expedited pace due to the week-long filing period for candidates beginning on Tuesday.
“With the love of my family, with the support of his staff, I know I’m a hard worker. I learned that from Lindsey. He cared about the people of this state. I’ve worked for almost 30 years for the people of this state,” Graham said. “I feel like I can do it. I feel an inner peace about it. Will it be difficult? Yes, absolutely.”
President Donald Trump publicly called on her to run in the special election after meeting her at the White House last week, promising his endorsement if she got in the race.
“These are just the laws of South Carolina. The filing begins tomorrow. I think you have a week, and by that time, the funerals won’t even have taken place,” Hannity said. “Then the president putting an ask on you — well, put it that way, it’s a lot of pressure.”
“It’s a tremendous amount of pressure,” Graham acknowledged in response.
Two sources familiar with Graham’s thinking told Jewish Insider on Friday that she was not interested in running for a full term when she initially agreed to accept the appointment last Sunday. The South Carolina senator began considering a bid over the course of last week, the sources said.
Reps. Russell Fry (R-SC) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) have also entered the contest, as has Mark Lynch, who lost to Graham in last month’s primary by 30 points and has committed $5 million of his own money to his campaign for the special election. Lynch ignored Lindsey Graham’s repeated calls during the primary to fire his political director despite the staffer’s record of making antisemitic statements, including posting a photo to social media last June of a boot stepping on the Talmud and calling it a “hate filled book” and “what drives today’s Judaism.”
Norman has been endorsed by Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT). Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who expressed interest in the Senate race, announced Monday that she won’t be running for Graham’s seat.
After Graham’s announcement on Hannity began circulating on social media, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) quickly endorsed her bid.
“Darline Graham is an excellent senator. She’ll continue to be an excellent senator,” Barrasso said in a statement. “She has my full support.”
“I’m proud to join President Trump and endorse Darline Graham,” Cotton wrote on X. “She’ll be a principled conservative leader and a strong advocate for South Carolina families.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), meanwhile, said on Monday that while Graham was a “strong candidate” who “obviously carries on Lindsey’s legacy,” he was not endorsing any candidates in the race “at the moment.”
“She’s a strong candidate. Sounds like the field is taking shape, and we’ll let the voters in South Carolina decide it,” Thune told reporters. “She obviously carries on Lindsey’s legacy and I think she’s a very accomplished person in her own right.”
As of this week, UDP has reserved $865,000 in ad time for the race and New Democrat Majority has reserved $500,000, ahead of the Aug. 4 primary
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) right, and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) attend the Congressional Chess Tournament hosted with the St. Louis Chess Club in Russell building on Wednesday, June 3, 2026.
A month ahead of Missouri’s primary elections, Rep. Wesley Bell’s (D-MO) campaign is being buoyed by an influx of outside spending from the AIPAC-linked United Democracy Project super PAC and another super PAC affiliated with the moderate New Democrat Coalition.
As of this week, UDP has reserved $865,000 in ad time for the race, while New Democrat Majority has reserved $500,000 ahead of the Aug. 4 primary. In at least one advertisement, UDP is taking a similar approach as it did in its attacks against Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) in 2024 when the group helped Bell unseat her, hitting her as an absentee and ineffective lawmaker and for voting against the bipartisan infrastructure package in 2021.
UDP’s ad features clips accusing Bush of having betrayed and disappointed organized labor and workers who supported her in her initial campaign.
A source familiar with Bell’s campaign said that it is confident going into the final weeks, but predicted a tight race, adding that the campaign expects a ramp-up in advertising in the final month of the race.
UDP’s attacks complement what the source said will be the main pitch of Bell’s campaign: the congressman’s work delivering for constituents through projects such as delivering funding for a local airport and tornado recovery, and standing up to the Trump administration on issues including immigration enforcement and releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The source said Bell’s campaign also aims to hit Bush as an ineffective lawmaker who failed to deliver for the district and was more focused on own public profile, as well as highlight past campaign finance scandals, which have continued to trail Bush, and Bush’s failure to embrace Vice President Kamala Harris during her 2024 presidential campaign.
The source also emphasized that Bell has sought to remain deeply and frequently engaged in the district, focusing on constituent services and frequent appearances at local events — gaps that hurt Bush’s 2024 campaign.
At the same time, with her campaign focusing on attacking Israel and AIPAC’s support for Bell, Bush is likely to attempt to weaponize the UDP spending against Bell.
Bell has faced some protests and backlash in the district over Israel, though the source said that voters are much more focused on affordability and quality of life issues at home and concerns about the Trump administration than Israel policy or AIPAC.
The source acknowledged that those issues have come up in the community, but argued that Bush is overplaying the extent to which voters in St. Louis are focused on them.
Bell’s campaign in 2024 ran a robust engagement and turnout operation in the Jewish community, bringing together leaders from across the community from various political and religious backgrounds. Stacey Newman, a former state representative, led that effort for Bell’s campaign in 2024 and returned to do so again, after having launched and led a local Jewish advocacy group in the intervening years.
Braxton Payne, a Democratic political strategist in St. Louis, said that the pro-Bell camp was significantly outpacing Bush and her supporters in media buys around the district, while Bush seemed more focused on the grassroots campaign tactics she has used in previous races.
Payne said he still sees Bell as the frontrunner because he hasn’t taken any votes that were considered to be particularly problematic in his relatively short time in office, has stood up against the Trump administration and has strong financial backing and outside support.
“I think that he’s going to be able to out-communicate Cori like he did two years ago, even without outside funding or outside groups,” Payne said. “Now, if Cori is able to get some grassroots money, and if the Justice Democrats [super PAC] or other groups that similarly align to them do decide to weigh in to that, I think that could make a difference.”
With Missouri’s two-week early voting window, early communication is key, Payne added.
One vote that Bush has repeatedly sought to hit Bell for is on a resolution condemning the antisemitic firebombing attack on a hostage awareness march in Boulder, Colo. that killed a Holocaust survivor and injured others. The Republican-led resolution included language expressing gratitude to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which Democrats who supported the resolution have condemned as a cynical GOP political gambit.
Payne said that the current progressive wave across the country would not necessarily have significant impacts on the St. Louis electorate — “St. Louis has always been a bastion of progressive and left-leaning politics, nothing has really changed there … I would say it’s very similar to people that would have voted two years ago.”
Unlike recent races in New York City and Colorado, Bell is young and still relatively new to Congress, not an old or long-entrenched incumbent. “Those differences of the generational change are just not here in this race,” Payne said.
He said that Bell has generally remained popular among the voters and community leaders who supported him in 2024, as compared to Bush who faced significant defections in that race among voters who had previously supported her.
On the other hand, he said, some progressive voters may be undecided at this point in the race, and, given Democratic outrage at the Trump administration, could be attracted to the more aggressive and confrontational style of politics that Bush has practiced.
And Bush has been working, Payne said, to re-engage with local grassroots groups that she had neglected during her time in office. “A lot of her supporters four years ago that were maybe not as [much] there for her two years ago, or even a year ago — I think they’ve all started to coalesce around her,” he said.
Members from both parties warned lifting penalties would reward Erdoğan's destabilizing actions, while senators at NATO summit said Turkey could rejoin F-35 program if concerns over Russian S-400 system are resolved
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Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks to supporters at his party’s Istanbul mayoral candidate Murat Kurum's campaign rally on March 29, 2024 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle remain deeply skeptical of President Donald Trump’s plans to lift sanctions on Turkey and revive its participation in the F-35 fighter jet program, but members of a bipartisan Senate delegation attending the NATO summit said Wednesday they could support the move if Ankara resolves longstanding security concerns over its Russian-made S-400 missile defense system.
Trump said at the NATO summit on Tuesday that he’s preparing to remove sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), explaining, “We don’t want to sanction friends.” The CAASTA sanctions block the administration from selling Turkey F-35s until it disposes of an S-400 missile defense system it purchased from Russia.
“Selling one of America’s most advanced fighter jets to Turkey is not in the best interest of the United States,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told Jewish Insider. “It risks compromising critical technology and sends the wrong message to our allies in Europe and the Middle East. Restrictions on the sale of F-35s to Turkey should absolutely remain in place while Erdogan continues to operate Russian S-400s, in accordance with existing U.S. law.”
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) also called on the administration not to allow the F-35 sale to proceed.
“Erdogan has aligned himself with Iran and Russia, harbored Hamas, refused to sanction Russia, undermined American counter-ISIS operations, continues to illegally occupy part of Cyprus, has repeatedly directed illegal military jet overflights above the Greek Islands, and called for the destruction of Israel,” Malliotakis said in a statement to JI. “Additionally, he continues to jail his political opponents and has denied dozens of journalists access to the NATO Summit.”
“Providing Turkey with our most advanced fighter jet would jeopardize U.S. national security, risk sensitive technology falling into the wrong hands, and endanger our allies in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East,” she continued.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said that lifting CAATSA sanctions or reopening the possibility of F-35 sales would be a “profound mistake” that “would reward Erdogan’s actions toward Israel as well as his domestic strongman behavior, and it would be tantamount to handing [Russian President Vladimir] Putin the blueprints to our technology.”
“Congress imposed these sanctions because Turkey’s acquisition of the S-400 posed an unacceptable threat to U.S. and NATO security, and those concerns remain every bit as valid today,” Sherman said. “Until Turkey permanently disposes of the S-400 system, we should not consider lifting sanctions or returning Turkey to the F-35 program.”
He emphasized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s repeated hostile language toward Israel as well as the threat that operating the S-400 in proximity to the F-35 would pose to sensitive U.S. stealth technology.
“Trump cannot unilaterally authorize the sale of F-35s to Turkey,” Sherman added. The legal process by which the White House could lift the sanctions unilaterally remains unclear.
Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) emphasized that Turkey remains in breach of CAATSA and the sale should not proceed.
“Congress passed CAATSA in 2017, and the law is very clear: it’s illegal to bring Turkey back into the F-35 program so long as it has the Russian S-400 air defense system. This violates the law,” Schneider told JI. “We cannot let President Trump give Putin a backdoor to one of our most technologically advanced aircrafts, just because an authoritarian leader who hosts Hamas flatters him.”
Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit at a press conference on Wednesday morning, members of a bipartisan delegation sounded a more positive note toward Trump’s effort.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-chair of the NATO observer group, noted that “[Sen.] Thom Tillis [R-NC] and I wrote the legislation that prohibited, that kicked Turkey out of the F-35 program because of their acquisition of the S-400.”
“If there is an acceptable way to deal with the S-400 and the threat that that poses to the technology and the F-35 and there is satisfactory agreement on the part of all parties about that, then I think having Türkiye back in the F-35 program would be a positive development, both for Türkiye and for the United States,” Shaheen added. “But we still have questions to answer with respect to what’s being proposed, and we haven’t gotten those answers, so we will wait to see what happens.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), also participating in the press conference, agreed with Shaheen on the matter, saying, “Hopefully it can be resolved. Türkiye is a major NATO contributor, and anything that we can do to provide them with the resources to be an even stronger adversary with regard to incurrences by Russia in Europe, the better off we all are, and one of those is to have that tool of the F-35.”
Asked about the U.S.-Turkey relationship, Shaheen said, “I think Congress views the relationship with Türkiye as positive, and particularly with respect to Türkiye’s role in NATO, there are some concerns about the commitment to democracy and how that is playing out in Türkiye with respect to elections, but I think that there is an appreciation for the importance of the defense industrial base in Türkiye, and how that contributes to NATO, and that that will continue in Congress.”
Rounds added, “we really need to re-energize” the industrial base “among all of the NATO countries.”
“We need what each of our NATO allies can offer with regard to that industrial base, and Türkiye does not stand alone, they stand with everyone else, but they have some real opportunities here for advancements,” Rounds continued. “They were one of the countries selected to participate originally in the manufacturing of the F-35 fighters and that shows a strong competency in technological areas that provided that award to them in the first place, and so we want Türkiye, along with all of our NATO allies, to be able to participate in this growth of an industrial base that makes it easier for us to respond to areas of aggression by Mr. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.…”
Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said during the press conference that “the details that have been shared with us do appear to be promising,” with regard to the F-35 and S-400 issues.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) added that “the legitimate national security concerns that drove the actions led by Sen. Shaheen … would continue if the S-400 were to be deployed somewhere else, so concerns about the possibility of critical American technology related to the F-35 being misappropriated or sent to Russia would also pertain if there were some resolution.”
Rep. George Latimer (D-NY), however, said that Congress should push to block the sale of F-35s if Trump insists on moving ahead with it.
“President Trump’s inclination for deal-making with dictators like President Erdoğan is grossly neglectful of our national security interests at home and abroad,” Latimer told JI. “This Congress — both houses and both sides of the aisle — needs to speak out against this situation and remain adamant for a Joint Resolution of Disapproval should this administration move to readmit Turkey back into the United States F-35 program.”
Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) and 17 other House Democrats sent a letter to House leaders on Monday urging them to “stand ready to exercise your authority under statute to prevent” the administration from allowing Turkey back into the F-35 program by introducing a joint resolution of disapproval to block the move.
The letter emphasizes that the administration is required to maintain the CAATSA sanctions until such time as Turkey disposes of the S-400 — which Turkey has not. “Beyond the legal question, we are also concerned about the strategic message this decision would send to U.S. partners in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond,” the letter continues, noting Turkey’s aggression against Greece, Cyprus, Armenia and Israel.
“CAATSA was passed by overwhelming bipartisan margins in both chambers precisely to ensure that Congress, not any individual president, retains a meaningful check on decisions to reward adversary-aligned conduct with American military technology,” the lawmakers wrote. “The integrity of that framework and the signal it sends to every country weighing whether to purchase Russian arms depend on Congress being willing to enforce it.”
Actually waiving or lifting the CAATSA sanctions is likely easier said than done, and could spark conflict with Congress. The original legislation provides little wiggle-room, requiring sanctions on anyone or any country that engages in business with the Russian defense or intelligence sectors.
Congress added a modified waiver provision in 2018 that requires the administration to certify that the waiver would not endanger U.S. alliances or adversely affect U.S. operations and that the waiver recipient is actively working to decrease its use of Russian military equipment or is otherwise cooperating with the U.S. on critical matters.
Updated certifications and reports to Congress are required every 90 days.
Under CAATSA, Congress can advance a joint resolution of disapproval to overturn the administration’s decisions on sanctions relief or arms sales, though it’s unlikely that the Republican-controlled Congress would publicly buck Trump on the issue.
Matt Zweig, the managing director for policy at FDD Action and a former congressional staffer who helped craft the original CAATSA bill, told JI, “Lifting these sanctions is generally easy to announce but will likely be hard to execute. The sanctions and the congressional review mechanism are embedded in the law, unwinding them runs straight through the Hill,”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said on X that he hoped that a report about Trump’s move was “wrong,” following up by sharing information about CAATSA sanctions.
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) said in a separate statement, “It’s outrageous for Trump to even consider readmitting Turkey to the F-35 program while Erdogan’s government continues to violate U.S. law and threaten our allies. We cannot reward Erdogan’s aggressive and destabilizing activity across the region.”
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) referred JI to a statement that Bilirakis and other Greek-American Republican House members previously released opposing the sale of military jet engines and F-35s to Turkey.
“As Greek American Members of Congress, we are deeply concerned about reports of a proposed military sale of jet engines to Turkey. Turkey continues to be a destabilizing force in the region through its expansive and disputed maritime claims, continued illegal occupation of Cyprus, and rhetorical demonization of Israel,” the lawmakers said, also raising concerns about Ankara’s decision to harbor Hamas leaders and refusal to sanction Russia.
“We are actively engaging with the Administration and House leadership to obtain additional information regarding this reported sale and to express our strong opposition to any prospect of Turkey’s reintegration into the F-35 program without complete compliance with CAATSA requirements,” the statement continued.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), one of the most vocal supporters of Turkey in the House, offered the most unqualified support for Trump’s effort to roll back sanctions.
“President Trump and [U.S.] Ambassador [to Turkey] Tom Barrack have displayed visionary leadership and pragmatism alongside valued NATO ally Türkiye,” Wilson said. “Türkiye has played an instrumental role in assisting Syria’s stabilization after over a decade of mass murder under butcher [Bashar al-]Assad, who correctly fled to Moscow. We don’t sanction friends. We work together for a better future.”
Black leaders in the district have failed to unite behind a single challenger, leaving the Jewish congresswoman favored in a plurality race but potentially vulnerable down the road
Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) reelection race has turned into a local and national flashpoint following the Republican-led redistricting process in Florida, and risks driving a wedge in traditional Black-Jewish alliances in the state and the party.
Wasserman Schultz is running in South Florida’s newly redrawn 20th Congressional District, a decision pitting the longtime Democratic leader and former Democratic National Committee chair against leaders who have criticized her for running in a seat historically represented by a Black lawmaker.
Yet, Wasserman Schultz also maintains dedicated supporters in the district and her home state at large, especially within the Jewish community.
“I have spent my whole adult life fighting for Broward County, and I want to continue the fight to make life more affordable for the families in CD20 who are stretched to the breaking point by the Trump MAGA agenda,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement to Jewish Insider.
“And as I meet with voters throughout District 20, the overwhelming response is that voters know my record of standing up for them and delivering billions in local funding for Broward parks, clean water and transit and other projects and all the jobs that come with them,” she continued. “Voters also know that I’ve always spoken out for them and they want me to keep up the critical fight against Trump’s high-cost, corrupt agenda.”
Despite repeatedly expressing support for all Democratic incumbents, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has so far declined to endorse Wasserman Schultz for reelection.
“As I’ve indicated relative to the congresswoman, she’s had an extraordinary career,” Jeffries told reporters last week. “She’s a valuable member of the House Democratic caucus, and I’m looking forward to having more to say about that when we are closer to the Florida Democratic primary.”
Black leaders in the area brought together various candidates running against Wasserman Schultz in an effort to consolidate around a single candidate, but ultimately failed to do so, leaving a divided field opposing the longtime legislator.
Democratic leaders in and around the district lamented the situation that the redistricting process, that effectively erased Wasserman Schultz’s previous district, has created, accusing the GOP both of trying to gerrymander seats for its own gain as well as create racial divisions in the Democratic Party.
“The situation we’re in is the result of a deliberate decision by the Republican leadership in our state to target all three Jewish members of Congress from South Florida, to target the two African American members of Congress from South Florida and deliberately set something up that was going to result in, let’s say, tension between those two historically allied communities,” said Joe Geller, a former Florida House Democrat, who lives outside the district and is supporting Wasserman Schultz.
Geller argued that the redistricting explicitly violates the Florida state constitution, which bans the drawing of districts based purely on partisanship, arguing that the recent Supreme Court decision allowing for racial gerrymandering doesn’t override that provision.
“This was done deliberately by enemies of both communities to create dissension between traditional allies,” Geller continued. “It’s cynical, it’s illegal and it’s disgusting.”
He said that state courts should immediately halt the redistricting and require that the election be run under the previous lines until the issue can be litigated further, claiming that Republicans had timed the redrawing specifically in order to try to avoid judicial review.
Wasserman Schultz, throughout her time in Congress, has been a fierce and vocal advocate for Israel and for the Jewish community, breaking at times with her party on the issue. She’s currently a co-chair of the Abraham Accords caucus, was a co-founder of the Congressional Jewish Caucus and is one of the most prominent Jewish leaders inside the Democratic caucus.
Mitch Ceasar, a former chair of the Broward County Democratic Party, predicted that, given challengers’ failure to unite behind a single candidate, Wasserman Schultz should still be favored to win the seat with a plurality of the vote.
Wasserman Schultz faced pressure to run in another neighboring district, but, observers on the ground acknowledged, that seat would have been tougher for Democrats to win.
Polling released in early June showed Wasserman Schultz leading with around 39% support, followed most closely by self-described democratic socialist Elijah Manley at 21% and former Broward County Mayor Dale Holness at 15%.
The polling found Wasserman Schultz would trail either of them, or rapper and free speech activist Luther Campbell, in a head-to-head race, though it’s now too late for any candidate to withdraw from the ballot.
A poll by Wasserman Schultz’s campaign released around the same time found her leading all of the other candidates combined, at 52%, with near-universal name recognition and 80% favorability across the district.
Manley’s candidacy is causing consternation among members of the Jewish community, due to the anti-Israel stance he has staked out over the course of the campaign, which includes an endorsement from the antisemitic group TrackAIPAC. Prior to his congressional bid, he described supporters of Israel as cultish and accused pro-Israel Americans of “meddling in our country’s affairs.” He said in 2020 he was in the process of converting to Judaism.
Manley has picked up support from the Florida Democratic Progressive Caucus and the president of the Democratic Black Caucus — though the caucus as a whole did not offer an endorsement.
He has also offered other fringe views, including describing police unions as “terrorist organizations.”
Ceasar noted that, while Manley has gained attention and support, he’s also a perennial candidate for office whose past runs have been unsuccessful. He also mounted a failed bid for the Socialist Party’s presidential nomination in 2020.
Ceasar also said that the other candidates in the race, including Holness, Campbell and former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) — the latter of whom resigned from Congress earlier this year and is facing federal criminal corruption charges — have taken more pro-Israel stances.
Wasserman Schultz has long enjoyed strong support from — and spoken proudly of — the Jewish community in the district, joking at times at Jewish community events about representing the large Jewish retiree population.
Ceasar said that there is still a Jewish bloc in the district, but the demographics even in traditionally Jewish parts of the area have been changing, with a growing minority retiree population — though he said that political stances of the two communities are fairly similar.
Cherfilus-McCormick, whose corruption trial isn’t slated to begin until after the election, remains something of a wild card, Ceasar noted. Holness, he said, has posted strong performances in the district in the past. Ceasar said he was somewhat surprised by Campbell’s candidacy, given that he has stronger roots in a neighboring district, which is also an open seat.
Richard Stark, who chairs the Florida Democratic Party Jewish Caucus, which is remaining formally neutral in the race, said that Wasserman Schultz has been a strong and aggressive campaigner going back to her first campaigns for political office — “she worked hard, she campaigned, walked door to door and she got that support, and chances are she’ll do the same thing now.”
Speaking in a personal capacity, Stark said Wasserman Schultz is also popular and well-known for delivering results for various communities she represents. He speculated that, given her stature in the state, Republicans particularly hoped to see her pushed out of Congress.
“She’s a star within the Democratic Party, for the most part. It’s really a shame that we have to have a race like that,” Stark said. “She’s looking for the best that she can do for the United States of America and for the Jewish people.”
Rabbi Mark Winer, Stark’s predecessor as the Jewish Caucus chair, said that Wasserman Schultz is “the most important Democratic politician in Florida, over many, many, many years” who has had “phenomenal influence beyond her district and beyond the Congress” and is a “real force within the district.”
Winer said it’s a “real question for the future whether she’ll get reelected — it’s tough — but she is a formidable politician, she really knows how to do retail politics.”
Winer and Stark traced some of the hostility toward Wasserman Schultz, particularly among progressives, to her role as DNC chair in 2016. Progressives continue to accuse the congresswoman of putting her thumb on the scale for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she campaigned against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the presidential campaign.
Looking further ahead, even if Wasserman Schultz ends up winning with a plurality of the vote against a divided opposition, that could signal vulnerability in a future primary election against a more unified opposition effort. But, Ceasar emphasized, “human nature always makes that difficult.”
While all three of the leading candidates have denounced Jewish hate, progressive Will Jawando has taken a more hostile stance towards Israel, leading his opponents Andrew Friedson and Evan Glass to jockey for the more moderate vote
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Montgomery County Council Member Andrew Friedson speaks during Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) "Sick Of It" rally against the Trump administration's health care policies on May 10, 2025 in Bethesda, Maryland.
Ahead of Tuesday’s primary election for executive of Montgomery County, Md., progressives have largely broken for Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando, leaving the more moderate Councilmembers Andrew Friedson and Evan Glass to jockey for the remaining undecided voters.
In a tight three-way race, the vote of the Jewish community — which is, according to a source familiar with the race, expected to account for more than one-fifth of primary turnout in the county with Maryland’s largest Jewish population — could be especially critical. Jewish leaders have raised the alarm on antisemitism in the deep-blue county — which saw the highest rate of incidents in the state in 2025 — and the particular issue of antisemitism in the area’s public schools.
Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told Jewish Insider that Jawando, Glass and Friedson “have all denounced antisemitism during their eight-year terms in the council” and said he hopes that other community leaders “awake from their slumber” to speak out against hate without needing to be prompted by the Jewish community.
“As County Executive, I will work with our Jewish leaders and faith leaders and leaders of all our communities to ensure that we protect our diversity,” Glass told JI, while Friedson said being executive would give him “a greater bully pulpit,” in addressing antisemitism in schools.
Earlier this month, the advocacy group EndJewHatred sent a letter to school district officials, including Jawando, who is chairman of the county council’s education and culture committee. The group called for the district to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and to adopt lesson plans to address current trends in antisemitism.
In a forum hosted by the JCRC last month, all three candidates pledged to address the rise of antisemitism within the local K-12 school system if elected as executive.
All of the front-runners voted in favor of the IHRA definition when it was adopted unanimously by the council in 2022, after months of community protests, two postponements and a council session disrupted by audience protest.
But “people who are running in this race were not helpful in that effort,” Friedson told JI. A Jewish communal activist said that “Will has stood up against antisemitism, but even if you review the way he spoke before the IHRA vote definition was taken, he was conflicted.” Jawando had said he thought the council “missed an opportunity here to find common ground.”
Rabbi Adam Raskin of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Md., just outside of Washington, was in the council chamber the night the IHRA resolution passed, part of a cohort of Jewish leaders convened by the JCRC to help shepherd it through. “He encountered a tremendous amount of resistance,” Raskin said of Friedson.
Friedson himself said he had “experienced quite a bit of antisemitism as part of that conversation,” telling JI that “there was a screaming crowd in the council chambers as we were taking this up, and it was heartbreaking to me.” Jewish day school students were in attendance when “other members of the community were screaming.”
“We need to ensure the safety of our Jewish residents, and we also need to ensure that everyone has the right to peacefully protest,” Glass said of the IHRA unrest.
During his time in office, Friedson has championed the county’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, a relatively rare local initiative designed to supplement the federal program, which has been criticized for failing to meet the needs of faith-based institutions. Jewish groups have been among the top beneficiaries of the Montgomery County program, which saw nearly $1.2 million has been awarded across 90 institutions in Fiscal Year 2026.
“Colleagues did not agree with me at first, including the colleagues who are running in this race,” Friedson told JI, “and I regrouped and was able to work together with Asian American leaders” on the initiative.
Glass, the first openly gay Jewish person elected to the county council, frequently leads with his Jewish identity on the campaign trail. His signature initiative on these issues is the Anti-Hate Task Force, a body he convened as council president that consists of a variety of identity-based cohorts, including one Jewish-specific. A source familiar with Glass’ campaign said he joined a synagogue after announcing his run for county executive.
Friedson and his family, meanwhile, are “three-generation members” of Har Shalom, according to Raskin. He has previously served on the boards of Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Hillel Maryland. “Andrew is motivated first and foremost by a sense of justice that was forged by his Jewish identity,” Raskin told JI, “both growing up in this synagogue and growing up with Jewish teachings and values.”
One Jewish activist who’s reached out to all three regarding collaboration on issues of antisemitism shared that Glass’ staff has been fairly responsive, especially in comparison to Jawando’s team.
While the candidates have all spoken out against antisemitism, they hold diverging views on Israel. Jawando is supported by several anti-Israel organizations, including the Council on American–Islamic Relations, the Working Families Party and Our Revolution, as well as the Montgomery County Educators Association union, which Jewish leaders have condemned for its hostility towards Israel. The Jews United for Justice Campaign Fund also endorsed Jawando, after JUFJ fought to strip Israel-related language from the IHRA resolution.
Jawando did not respond to JI’s request for comment on the race.
In vetting candidates, “several organizations in their questionnaires specifically ask about foreign policy in Israel,” Friedson told JI. “They ask about support for Israel. They ask about all kinds of different things that are completely unrelated to the roles of county executive and county council,” he continued.
In September, Jawando made a statement against funding the Maryland Israel Development Center, an organization promoting bilateral trade and economic development. In emails with Saqib Ali, a former Maryland delegate-turned-activist in favor of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, Jawando’s chief of staff wrote: “Will has committed to vote against any future funding for this organization.”
Jawando later clarified his position, saying, “We should never use Montgomery County tax dollars to support the development or production of offensive weapons,” declaring intent to look into how MIDC funds are used.
Around the same time, Jawando joined then-County Executive Marc Elrich on an economic development trip to China, subsidized by the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation.
MIDC received roughly $47,206 from Montgomery County in Fiscal Year 2026, out of the county’s nearly $8 billion budget.
Glass has been deliberate about drawing a boundary between local governance and foreign policy pressures that have seeped into the race. “I do not support all the actions that [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu has taken, and that’s okay,” he told JI. “I’m running to be county executive, not secretary of state.”
The candidates’ views on Israel did not define the mayoral race, but they were a throughline in the background
Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Janeese Lewis George volunteers continue to campaign for her at the Benning Stoddert Recreation Center on June 16,2026 in Washington, DC.
Voters in Washington, D.C., appeared poised to select Councilmember Janeese Lewis George to be their Democratic nominee for mayor, all but guaranteeing that she will be elected in November to replace Mayor Muriel Bowser, who is not seeking another term after 12 years in office. The race has not been called, but Lewis George leads by more than 15,000 votes with 64% of the votes counted.
Lewis George, a 38-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America, ran a campaign powered by local labor unions that was focused on cost-of-living issues and countering President Donald Trump. She is on track to defeat Kenyan McDuffie, a former councilmember who ran on a more pragmatic platform that eschewed DSA’s brand of radical politics.
The candidates’ views on Israel did not define the race, but they were a throughline in the background. Lewis George filled out a DSA endorsement questionnaire early in the campaign in which she pledged to avoid engaging with “the Israeli government or Zionist lobby groups.” Later, she promised to stand firm in fighting antisemitism while also supporting Palestinian human rights. McDuffie tried to use the comments to appeal to anti-DSA voters and Jewish Washingtonians.
Lewis George will represent a shift from Bowser, a moderate Democrat who in 2019 led a trade mission to Israel and who regularly addressed the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington before AIPAC canceled the event after 2020.
Elsewhere in Washington, Councilmember Robert White was elected in the Democratic primary to serve as Washington’s delegate to Congress, a nonvoting role. He’ll succeed Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is retiring after 35 years.
Aparna Raj, a DSA-backed candidate for D.C. Council, appeared likely to win the Democratic primary for Ward 1, a district that includes the neighborhoods of Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights. She told the D.C. Jewish Community Relations Council in a voter guide released last month that she “will not work with AIPAC or organizations whose mission is to lobby for pro-Israel policies.”
Meanwhile, it was a short night in Georgia, where Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) quickly claimed victory over former college football coach Derek Dooley in a Senate primary runoff. Collins picked up a last-minute endorsement from President Donald Trump, while Dooley’s backing by Gov. Brian Kemp wasn’t enough to push him to victory.
Collins ultimately finished the race around 10 points ahead of Dooley, a similar margin as in the primary election earlier this year. Dooley dominated in Atlanta and Athens, Ga., home of the University of Georgia, while Collins led around the rest of the state.
Dooley was widely seen as the more moderate and more electable of the two Republicans, as compared to Collins, who has been trailed by a series of scandals. Republicans may struggle to reclaim the seat from Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) with Collins as their standard-bearer in the race.
The race may also present a difficult choice for Jewish voters in the state, many of whom have been frustrated by Ossoff’s leftward turn on Israel issues and repeated votes to block arms sales. Some Jewish Ossoff donors sought, earlier in the cycle, to recruit Kemp to run for the seat.
But Collins might not be a palatable alternative for some Jewish voters, having endorsed a post by an antisemitic X account attacking a reporter for being Jewish. His current chief of staff was also recently revealed to be part of a group chat with several white nationalists, where he discussed his efforts to use his congressional influence to free a Holocaust denying far-right activist from prison. He also opposed the Antisemitism Awareness Act.
Many prominent Jewish conservatives supported Dooley in the primary, but could line up behind Collins for the general, given his consistently pro-Israel voting record in the House.
Already, some commentators are discussing the possibility that a decisive victory by Ossoff in the critical swing state could massively boost the rising Democratic star’s chances in the 2028 presidential primary, should he decide to throw his hat in the ring.
'They took a page out of the AIPAC playbook over the past 30 years, in terms of recruiting and maintaining relationships with members of Congress,' Democratic operative Sara Forman said
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Randy Villegas, running for California's 22nd Congressional District walking neighborhoods in Bakersfield, Calif., on Saturday, May 23, 2026.
The far left is gaining traction in its electoral battle against the mainstream pro-Israel political community, notching a recent string of victories in high-profile Democratic primaries as it now finds itself on stronger financial footing compared to past campaign cycles.
Thanks in part to a range of new super PACs created to counter AIPAC’s political spending, the far left has elevated several anti-Israel Democrats in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California to the nomination in key congressional primaries, with its sights set on closely contested upcoming matchups in New York City and Michigan.
In some cases, the anti-Israel left — buoyed by public opinion that has swung against the Jewish state in the wake of the war in Gaza — has been at parity or outspending pro-Israel groups, marking a significant change.
The most prominent vehicle for such spending is the recently launched American Priorities super PAC — which has pledged to spend at least $10 million during the midterms. The group most recently helped lift Randy Villegas, a progressive vying to unseat Rep. David Valadao (R-CA), in California. He claimed victory in the primary over Jasmeet Bains — a state lawmaker supported by pro-Israel activists and national Democatic leaders. American Priorities had invested heavily on behalf of Villegas, going toe to toe with Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm — whose $500,000 for Bains failed to help her advance to the November election.
The anti-Israel PAC also played a role in securing wins for Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, who faced scrutiny for pushing an antisemitic conspiracy theory before his House primary in Philadelphia last month, and Adam Hamawy, a retired Army surgeon who claimed the Democratic nomination in a central New Jersey district despite past controversial links to a convicted terrorist. American Priorities spent over $1.5 million in the crowded race to bolster Hamawy’s campaign.
Notably, AIPAC’s well-funded super PAC, United Democracy Project, chose to stay on the sidelines in all three of those races, as the far left has capitalized on the pro-Israel group’s unpopularity within the Democratic Party, particularly in heavily progressive districts where American Priorities is engaging most significantly.
AIPAC’s relatively cautious approach to Democratic races this cycle reflects a changing political landscape for the formidable pro-Israel group, which has flexed its financial resources in consequential primaries that meaningfully shaped the House Democratic caucus.
Just two years ago, UDP and DMFI PAC had both engaged in a well-resourced effort to defeat two of the most prominent Israel critics in the House, Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO), who were ousted by pro-Israel Democrats currently sitting in Congress.
By contrast, UDP has now been absent from major primaries where AIPAC-endorsed incumbents are facing serious challenges from the far left. In New York City’s June 23 primary, Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) and Dan Goldman (D-NY) are preparing to defend their seats in tough reelection fights against outspoken critics of Israel, backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who have highlighted their ties to AIPAC as a top vulnerability.
American Priorities, in a joint effort with Justice Democrats — the far-left, incumbent-challenging group that helped propel the Squad to Congress in 2018 — is now investing aggressively in Espaillat’s race to help Darializa Avila Chevalier, a community organizer and anti-Israel activist whose past deleted extremist online posts have recently fueled attacks against her from super PACs backing the incumbent.
Justice Democrats, which had struggled to raise money last cycle as it found itself on the defensive in primaries against UDP, has rebounded and become a driving force behind far-left candidates in the current election cycle — powered in part by a major donation from an anti-Israel dark money group also connected to American Priorities.
The super PAC, led by a progressive strategist who was previously the independent expenditure director for Justice Democrats, has raised about $5.4 million primarily through a small network of Arab American donors who have contributed significant amounts. It entered June with $1.2 million on hand, according to its latest filing — a total that is greatly overshadowed by UDP’s nearly $95 million war chest.
But even critics of American Priorities and affiliated groups in its loose fundraising network acknowledge that the super PAC is spending wisely in races where it believes it can have a potential impact — especially as AIPAC has ceded some ground to its opponents by staying out of contested primaries in places including New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“They took a page out of the AIPAC playbook over the past 30 years, in terms of recruiting and maintaining relationships with members of Congress,” Sara Forman, a longtime Democratic operative and Jewish community activist, told Jewish Insider on Thursday. “They understood that this was all about funding.”
In many ways, American Priorities in particular has imitated UDP in both style and strategy, down to its vaguely patriotic-sounding name. The group has also accepted contributions from several donors who have given to Republicans, even as it has criticized AIPAC, which is bipartisan, as a Trojan horse advancing GOP interests in Democratic strongholds.
One donor, Hussein Mahrouq, a Texas businessman who has contributed $625,000 while also supporting far-right Republicans, told JI that he is “not affiliated with any political party,” and believes that “decisions affecting our country should be made based on what is best for the United States, independent of pressure from any foreign government, foreign interest group or partisan agenda.”
American Priorities is also involved with a new super PAC called Fighting for Michigan, which vowed this week to invest in “a multimillion-dollar” campaign to boost Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left Israel critic gaining momentum in the state’s three-way Senate primary set for Aug. 4.
“We know big-money groups representing the Israel lobby, corporate interests and AI billionaires are going to spend heavily against Abdul in the coming days,” Connor Farrell, a progressive strategist who is working with the super PAC, told Axios of its effort.
While AIPAC is viewed as a lightning rod in Michigan’s competitive Democratic Senate primary, UDP notably jumped into the race this week with an initial ad buy of around $2 million to help Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), a pro-Israel moderate also favored by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
It remains to be seen if AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations will be matched or outnumbered by opposing groups amid a surge of new spending in the race, which is among the most closely watched in the country.
With the anti-Israel left emboldened by a growing Democratic skepticism of the U.S. relationship with Israel and a national political environment favorable to anti-establishment views, some Jewish and pro-Israel Democrats are raising concerns that their community is not meeting the moment in response.
“This should be a wake-up call to the Jewish community,” said Kenneth Baer, a former Obama administration staffer who leads a communications firm.
Sam Lauter, a veteran pro-Israel strategist in the San Francisco Bay Area and a DMFI board member, said simply that the “playing field has gotten bigger” over the past several years.
But he also attributed the left’s ascendance to a strategic miscalculation in the pro-Israel activist community that had long been a dominant force in elections.
“Where our community failed is seeing that our opposition has been building and preparing and getting ready for the moment where they could take the fight to us, and our community neglected to pay close attention to that,” Lauter told JI.
Without a resolution to the ongoing tensions with Tehran, Netanyahu could find himself fighting his toughest battle yet
POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives for a press conference in Jerusalem on March 19, 2026.
The Likud party’s statement on Wednesday confirming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would stand on the ballot this fall put to bed long-swirling rumors that the prime minister was considering forgoing another run — potentially in exchange for the government dropping its legal case against him.
That speculation had deepened earlier in the week, when President Donald Trump publicly mused whether Netanyahu, whom Trump referred to as “a wartime prime minister,” might decide to exit politics. A survey released this week by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 61% of Israelis — including 57% of Jewish Israelis and 87% of Arab Israelis — think Netanyahu should refrain from seeking another term.
With Netanyahu ending speculation about his political future, the focus now turns to the candidates seeking to unseat him.
Gadi Eisenkot’s ascent — earlier this week, a Channel 12 poll found for the first time that more Israelis favored him over Netanyahu as prime minister — comes as the former IDF chief of staff, who lost a son and two nephews in the Hamas war, becomes increasingly critical of Netanyahu, in whose war cabinet Eisenkot sat. As Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal points out, Eisenkot “isn’t seen as aggressive toward anyone but Netanyahu.”
Meanwhile, former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid have experienced little momentum after they announced their merger into the “Together” slate in April.
The two made a risky bet in joining forces with many months to go before the election — one that can’t easily be undone. And while their broad coalition was successful in 2021, it’s unclear if Together’s tent is big enough for all the anti-Netanyahu voters — in a changed electorate post-Oct. 7 — whom Bennett and Lapid would need to pick up.
Bennett — whose previous party was called Yamina, the Hebrew word for “right,” and who has described himself as more right-wing than Netanyahu — will have the additional challenge of convincing his potential supporters that he will not be too accommodating to the left. It’s worth recalling that their previous “Change” government was felled by breakaway members who were angry over Bennett’s concessions to his more-liberal coalition partners.
Part of the Change coalition’s success in 2021 — and also its downfall the following year — was its recruitment of Mansour Abbas’ Ra’am party. Now, Ra’am remains the one Arab party not joining forces with the three others, as efforts to form an alliance falter. And Abbas said as recently as a month ago that Eisenkot, Bennett and former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman “are all worthy and have the experience to lead the next government” — even as all three have distanced themselves from Abbas.
But depending on how the seats are apportioned after votes are counted, the anti-Netanyahu opposition could potentially need Ra’am’s support to get to 61 seats. That possibility — though Bennett has said he will only sit with Zionist parties — could prove to be a poison pill for some right-wing voters disenchanted by Netanyahu who could otherwise be swayed to vote for Bennett in the election.
Though no election date has been set, it is increasingly likely that Israelis will cast their ballots in late October, close to the deadline mandated by Israeli law, and weeks after the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, which occurred on Netanyahu’s watch.
Even in spite of the Oct. 7 attacks, Netanyahu has sought to portray himself as a strongman protecting his country. But he is increasingly seen by Israelis — and even his own supporters — as deferential to Trump (who recently proclaimed, “I call the shots” regarding Iran moves). Netanyahu’s own envoy to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, told CNN last month that Israel was a “junior partner” to the U.S vis-à-vis Iran.
Without a resolution to the ongoing tensions with Tehran — to say nothing of the recent waves of ballistic missile attacks from Iran and Yemen, and Hezbollah’s ongoing fire targeting northern Israel — Netanyahu could find himself fighting his toughest battle yet.
Democrats also nominated pro-Israel former Navy pilot Rebecca Bennett in a neighboring district to run against Rep. Tom Kean Jr.
DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images
Dr. Adam Hamawy speaks during an AFP interview after meetings on Capitol Hill, in Washington DC, on June 14, 2024.
New Jersey, the state with one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, has become something of a political nightmare for Jewish voters who have seen Democrats turn to far-left, virulently anti-Israel candidates in this year’s primaries.
That trend continued Tuesday night as Democratic voters in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District nominated plastic surgeon Adam Hamawy, despite his past affiliations with Islamist extremists, who prevailed with about 28% of the vote in a crowded Democratic primary field.
Hamawy, with the support of left-wing groups, some progressive lawmakers and the anti-Israel American Priorities super PAC, prevailed over his opponents with regional bases but limited support outside their local communities. No pro-Israel groups or other moderate-minded outside PACs decided to spend money on anti-Hamawy attack ads, allowing him to consolidate enough backing from his base to prevail with a relatively small plurality.
Hamawy was a former associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as the Blind Sheikh, who was convicted of inspiring the terrorists who engineered the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Hamawy later served as a defense witness during Abdel Rahman’s 1995 trial, and volunteered around the same time in Bosnia with a group later shuttered as a front for Al-Qaida.
Despite his baggage, Hamawy is expected to win election to Congress in the November general election, given the central New Jersey district’s heavily Democratic electorate.
Democratic voters in the neighboring 11th Congressional District also overwhelmingly renominated left-wing Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-NJ), who was the surprise winner in a special election primary earlier this year after AIPAC’s super PAC spent money attacking the more moderate former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ)
But while Mejia won a whopping 82% of the Democratic vote against her long-shot opposition, there was a significant protest vote against her in the towns with a large Jewish constituency: Livingston and Millburn.
In more favorable news for pro-Israel moderate voters, Democrats nominated former Navy pilot Rebecca Bennett, who flew missions over the Straits of Hormuz, to run against Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) in a major battleground district.
“I just feel very strongly that Israel has a right to defend itself and has a right to exist, and that the United States needs to be able to support Israel, and it shouldn’t be partisan,” Bennett told Jewish Insider last August. “I think we should be supporting Israel as an ally, regardless of political party.”
She also told JI she supports continuing U.S. aid to Israel without restrictions or conditions.
Kean, who has represented the 7th Congressional District since 2022, has been missing from Congress for the last several months with an undisclosed illness. His uncertain personal circumstances have made Democrats bullish of their prospects in the swing district, which Kean only won by five points in 2024.
Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Menendez Jr. (D-NJ), a pro-Israel Democrat, comfortably brushed back a challenge from far-left, anti-Israel candidate Mussab Ali, winning 70% of the primary vote.
Shapiro, to Politico: ‘When you have people who are advocating for issues that they feel strongly about and they are having their voices silenced, I think that's a problem in our system’
Peter W. Stevenson/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sits for an interview at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on June 11, 2025.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro warned of the dangers of efforts within the Democratic Party to single out AIPAC, telling Politico in a new interview that painting the pro-Israel group as “toxic” could be seen as silencing Jewish voices in the American political system.
“I think it’s been used cynically by some to try and silence certain voices, to try and say that certain people participating in politics shouldn’t count, or should be viewed in a toxic way,” Shapiro said in the interview, which was released on Tuesday.
Where some Democrats have recently distanced themselves from AIPAC, Shapiro declined to do so.
“Do I agree with every political decision they’ve made, every endorsement they made? Of course not,” said Shapiro. “I think what we have seen is a weaponization of that. And I think that is a danger for our system. When you have people who are advocating for issues that they feel strongly about and they are having their voices silenced, I think that’s a problem in our system.”
Shapiro, a potential 2028 presidential contender, declined to say whether he would accept support from AIPAC, which does not get involved in state or presidential races, nor did he address AIPAC’s tactics or its involvement in any particular race.
He cautioned that efforts to vilify the group have sometimes crossed a line into targeting American Jews’ political advocacy, noting that sometimes Jewish donors who currently or have in the past supported AIPAC are tarred just for being part of the political process.
“I think it does get blurred because now what you are seeing is not ‘AIPAC money,’” said Shapiro, “but you’re getting the Jews who give to that candidate who also support AIPAC. I think it’s very dangerous in our system, if you are trying to silence certain voices based on their race, based on their faith, based on their particular ideology.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is warning about the dangers of efforts within the Democratic Party to single out AIPAC.
— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) May 26, 2026
“I think it’s been used cynically by some to try and silence certain voices, to try and say that certain people participating in politics shouldn’t count, or… pic.twitter.com/uighmwoMgu
Shapiro, who is one of the most prominent Jewish politicians in the U.S., described a “dramatic spike in antisemitism across this country.” He condemned the Islamophobic attack on a mosque in San Diego last week in which three people were killed while also pointing out that, overall, antisemitism is a much larger problem than other forms of hate.
“There is rising hatred and bigotry targeting people across the board, but it is also undeniable, and no one’s pain is greater or more important than others, but from a data perspective, there has been a dramatic spike in antisemitism that is unmatched elsewhere, and that’s a problem,” said Shapiro.
Asked whether he plans to run for president, Shapiro declined to answer. But he said his family had to consider whether he should run for reelection this year in Pennsylvania after an arson attack on the governor’s mansion last year on the first night of Passover.
“My family and I spent a bunch of time thinking about running for reelection. It is hard for me as a dad to know that doing this job I love, this job I find great purpose in where I get to help people, puts my kids’ lives at risk,” said Shapiro. “I’m not going to cower. I’m not going to be fearful.”
Republican nominees Lena Epstein and Michael Schostak, who both identify as Jewish, told JI they’re campaigning on fighting antisemitism at the school
Campaign website
Lena Epstein and Michael Schostak
Michigan’s statewide election for two seats on the University of Michigan Board of Regents — the body that governs the state’s flagship university — has become a surprisingly contentious race in a swing state full of high-profile match-ups.
After Amir Makled, a trial attorney with a history of antisemitic and pro-Hezbollah social media posts, unseated incumbent Regent Jordan Acker at the Democratic Party nominating convention last month, the two Republican candidates running for the board see an opening to pitch themselves to Democrats and Independents.
Acker, who is Jewish, had spoken out against efforts to divest Michigan’s endowment from Israeli companies, and faced antisemitic harassment from pro-Palestinian campus activists, while Makled has promoted efforts to boycott Israel. (Acker and Brown campaigned together during the primary, but Acker did not respond to a request for comment about who he’s backing in the general election.)
Lena Epstein, an oil executive who chaired President Donald Trump’s campaign in Michigan in 2016 before running for regent, told Jewish Insider in a recent interview that reaching disaffected Democrats who are upset about Makled’s place on the ticket is a priority for her.
“There are the individuals that believe that I’ll be a fabulous regent and really great at the job and able to effect positive change over these next eight years, and for the long term,” said Epstein, who also ran for the board in 2022 and narrowly lost. “Then there’s the other folks that simply don’t want the other gentleman who is nominated to win, and we accept support from Democrats, independents and Republicans.”
Epstein has an MBA from Michigan, as does the other Republican on the ticket, Michael Schostak, the treasurer of Bloomfield Township, a Detroit suburb. Schostak told JI in an interview that since Makled’s nomination, Michigan alumni around the country who are now closely following the race have been calling him.
“They care about their alma mater and they want to make sure that it stays in good hands, and they’re very concerned about what they’ve seen from Amir Makled,” Schostak said. “I’m not running to be the Jewish candidate. I am Jewish, but that’s not why I’m running. I got into this race eight months ago because I cared about affordability of tuition and college costs.”
The two regents who are elected this November to serve on the eight-person board will join an ongoing search for a new university president following a tumultuous few years for Michigan, one of the top public universities in the country — and the school with the fifth-largest Jewish student population, according to Hillel International.
Both Schostak and Epstein identify as Jewish, though Epstein has at times described herself as a messianic Jew, meaning she believes in the divinity of Jesus. For that reason, the mainstream Jewish community considers messianic Jews to be Christian. She recently told the Forward that she is “100% Jewish,” and that her family belongs to a Reform synagogue in Bloomfield Hills.
Both Republicans say fighting antisemitism is a priority for them if elected to the board of regents.
“Antisemitism should never be minimized, normalized or explained away. Jewish students deserve the same protection and dignity as every other student on campus,” Epstein said. “One of the most troubling failures that we’ve seen at the University of Michigan is the hesitation to call antisemitism what it is.”
Schostak recalled conversations with Jewish students who were afraid to wear Star of David necklaces on campus or scared to walk to class during the anti-Israel encampments two years ago.
“I felt terrible, just sick to my stomach for the Jewish students on campus who had to live through that, and the pro-Israel students. There are a lot of pro-Israel students who are not Jewish,” said Schostak. “We’ve got to acknowledge them, who felt like they couldn’t express themselves because they were going to be harassed or followed or shouted at, or whatever, and the fact that all this was going on, the encampments, and people felt like it wasn’t safe.”
Both candidates said the university did a poor job of handling the firestorm of campus events in the 2023-2024 school year after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks and called for more clarity about rules surrounding campus protests.
“When it comes to protests on campus at U of M, peaceful protest has been a very long-standing tradition at this fine university,” said Epstein. “Students have every right to speak out. Students do not have the right to make other students feel unsafe walking to class. A university simply can’t function if rules are enforced selectively, depending on politics.”
Schostak and Epstein said they will emphasize support for free speech across all viewpoints at a school where they think intellectual diversity is lacking. But the response to anti-Israel protests, even hateful ones, cannot be shutting all protests down, according to Shostak.
“Free speech to me is very important, and they have the right to protest and make noise, as long as they don’t disrupt the university’s business,” said Schostak. “What I would tell the Jewish and pro-Israel students is, ‘Look, you need to be just as vocal in your beliefs and standing up for Israel and standing up for the Jewish people as they are standing up for the Palestinian people.’”
After a Michigan professor delivered an anti-Israel speech at commencement this month, Epstein and Schostak released a joint statement questioning the choice of the professor, Derek Peterson, as a speaker and criticizing his rhetoric. “There is a time and a place for emotionally charged debate. A commencement ceremony is not it,” they wrote.
Makled and Paul Brown, the other Democratic nominee who was first elected to the board of regents in 2018, have both criticized President Donald Trump’s approach to higher education, and pledged to push back on funding cuts where possible. Schostak expressed concern about the cuts as well, while noting that the regents should encourage the university to work to not get additional funding cut off.
“I am concerned,” Schostak said. “The university is going to have to tap dance around that to make sure that they abide by all the rules to make sure that our research funding isn’t cut off or any of our other funding isn’t cut off.”
Epstein has declined to say much on the issue. When asked about Trump’s adversarial approach to universities, she pointed out that Michigan is a public institution.
“We do accept public funds, and we do work in concert with the government based on those financial dynamics,” she said. “With that said, I believe that the University of Michigan should be an autonomous organization.”
Both candidates understand that to the extent to which Michigan voters are even paying attention to the race, most will not make a decision based on issues related to Israel or campus protests. So their focus remains on issues like college affordability and job opportunities.
“[Voters] care about sending their kids to college, being able to afford to pay for it, having their kids stay here when they graduate, so that we can provide an environment where they can thrive,” said Schostak. “That’s what they care about, and those are the issues that I’m going to be speaking to.”
Plus, bipartisan push for Jewish American Security Act
Jeffrey Dean/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, speaks during a campaign event ahead of a primary election at Veterans Memorial Park in Vanceburg, Kentucky, US, on Monday, May 18, 2026.
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we break down the results of yesterday’s critical primaries, including Rep. Thomas Massie’s loss in Kentucky and Chris Rabb’s win in PA-03, and report on the introduction by Sens. Jacky Rosen and James Lankford of the Jewish American Security Act. We look at how Democratic officials speaking at the Center for American Progress’ convening on Tuesday sidestepped discussions about Israel even as it held multiple sessions on the Middle East, and cover a new report from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies warning about the effects of the erosion of American Jewish support for Israel on the relationship between Washington and Jerusalem. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nick Valensi and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- The House of Representatives is expected to vote today on the Iran war powers resolution sponsored by Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The vote comes a day after Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who last week fell short in his reelection bid after President Donald Trump endorsed an opponent, flipped his vote to advance a similar Democratic-led measure in the Senate. More below.
- The House Education Committee’s subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions is holding a hearing this morning on antisemitism in the healthcare field, with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law’s Deena Margolies, Dr. Jacob Agronin, Bend the Arc CEO Jamie Beran and American Jewish Medical Association CEO Eveline Shekhman set to testify. Read more here.
- Former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) is among those slated to speak at a hearing being convened this morning by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the State Department’s budget request for its adjacent entities.
- The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center in a session titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate.”
- Elsewhere in Washington this morning, the Jewish Federations of North America, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Combat Antisemitism Movement and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History are hosting a congressional breakfast to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month. Sam Salz, who in 2022 became one of the only Orthodox Jews to play Division I college football when he walked on to Texas A&M’s team, will give the breakfast’s keynote address.
- Down Pennsylvania Ave., the Hudson Institute is holding an event with Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, on modernizing public diplomacy to address global challenges. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) is slated to give introductory remarks at the event.
- The Federalist Society is hosting its inaugural Legislative Branch Summit today in Washington.
- In Israel, the Knesset unanimously advanced a bill to dissolve the body, which if passed would automatically trigger elections, which are slated to take place no later than October 27. The bill will still need to go through several more readings and votes before it is passed.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR
Pro-Israel and Republican Jewish groups helped oust one of their leading GOP antagonists on Tuesday night, aligning with President Donald Trump to defeat Rep.Thomas Massie (R-KY) in the most expensive House primary in recent memory.
Ed Gallrein, a military veteran and farmer recruited by the Trump White House to challenge Massie, decisively defeated the congressman by 10 points, 55-45%. Massie, a libertarian lawmaker who long cast lonely Republican votes against Israel funding and resolutions condemning antisemitism, increasingly trafficked in bigoted rhetoric in the closing weeks of the campaign.
In his concession speech, Massie continued his antisemitic vitriol against his opponent, telling the crowd: “I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.” Even though Trump’s outspoken opposition was the leading factor behind his demise, he routinely blamed Jewish and pro-Israel donors like Miriam Adelson for costing him his seat and insinuated that Israel was buying seats in Congress.
Massie first drew the ire of Trump for voting against his “big beautiful” reconciliation bill last year, and the anger was exacerbated by his work with Democrats to force the Department of Justice to release all of the files involving Jeffrey Epstein.
Outside groups, including a Trump-aligned super PAC (MAGA KY) and those affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition, AIPAC and Christians United for Israel, spent aggressively with ads and billboards attacking Massie over his record, with several pointing out his opposition to Israel and Trump’s foreign policy.
Massie’s defeat also underscores Trump’s strong and continued support within the party, with his endorsements in primaries almost always translating into his candidate’s victory. His opposition to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) led to his defeat last week, and he successfully ousted most of the Indiana GOP state senators who opposed his redistricting efforts.
POLICY PRIORITIES
Rosen, Lankford introduce bill championed by Jewish leaders to address antisemitism
Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) on Tuesday introduced the Jewish American Security Act, a broad new effort by the lawmakers, who co-chair the Senate antisemitism task force, to address antisemitism across multiple sectors of American society, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Similar legislation is also expected to be introduced in the House.
About the bill: The bill contains various provisions aimed at increasing security for Jewish communities through additional funding and federal resources. Key provisions include: additional security assistance and improvements to security grant programs for Jewish communities; addressing antisemitism on college campuses through new federal oversight measures including a federal official to handle campus antisemitism; and addressing the spread of antisemitism online by requiring new transparency reports from social media companies, among a range of related steps in each category.
EIGHTH TIME’S THE CHARM
Cassidy joins Democrats in passing procedural vote aiming to restrict Trump’s war against Iran
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) joined with Democrats to vote for a procedural motion advancing legislation that would end U.S. military operations against Iran, allowing the war powers resolution to move forward on Democrats’ eighth such attempt since the war began, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
State of play: Cassidy, who last week fell short in his reelection primary effort against a Trump-backed challenger, joined three other Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Rand Paul (R-KY) — in voting for the procedural motion, which was approved by a 50-47 vote. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) voted against the motion. The passage of the motion will now tee up further debate on and an additional vote on the resolution itself, at a time to be determined.
Money messages: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on U.S. allies on Tuesday to “step up” and join Washington in taking aggressive economic action against Iran and its broader terrorism financing networks, JI’s Matthew Shea reports.
LEAVING FINGERPRINTS
Secretive GOP-linked super PAC Lead Left boosting antisemitic Dem candidate in Texas
A newly launched super PAC with ties to Republicans has spent nearly half a million dollars to help boost a Democrat running for a competitive open House seat in Texas who is facing growing bipartisan furor over a series of virulently antisemitic social media remarks, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Boosting Galindo: Lead Left PAC, the GOP-linked group, has been aggressively promoting Maureen Galindo, a fringe San Antonio activist who finished first in the primary and has said that Jews “own Hollywood” and “worship the synagogue of Satan.” Last week, she said that, if elected, she would turn a local immigration detention center “into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” while adding, “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.”
Bonus: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) slammed Galindo’s comments, saying that “bigoted garbage and antisemitism should be nowhere near our politics” and suggesting that the “donors behind the Republican super PAC funding her should be exposed.”
MENDING FENCES
Israeli think tank warns erosion of American Jewish support could weaken U.S.-Israel alliance
A new study from the Tel Aviv University-affiliated Institute of National Security Studies warns that American Jews’ ties with Israel have weakened in recent years, and Israeli leaders do not seem to care enough about how these shifting attitudes might affect Israel’s national security. If Israel ignores the growing distance with the American Jewish community, the country could face long-term consequences, authors Ted Sasson and Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis argue, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Words of warning: “An American Jewish community that is less supportive of Israel would leave Israel more isolated globally, less capable of extending soft power, and less confident in its role as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” Sasson, a Middlebury College professor and INSS scholar, and Ben Sasson-Gordis, director of the Israel-United States Research Field at INSS, write.
DEM DISCUSSIONS
Center-left think tank’s conference avoids the elephant in the room: Israel
On Tuesday, more than a dozen Democrats pitched their vision for America to a roomfull of liberal donors, staffers and funders at the Center for American Progress’ IDEAS Conference, a convening that pledged to bring together “the broad center-left’s leading thinkers and doers” to offer ideas on a range of policy topics. American foreign policy was one of those topics. In the two sessions on national security, each of which devoted significant discussion to the Middle East, one topic was notably absent: Israel, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Iran war opposition: Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) kicked off the gathering with an address billed as “National Security Ideas for the Future.” He cited his own experiences as a member of the Marine Corps who served in Iraq, arguing that the war in Iran is misguided and harming Americans. ”I’m here today because right now our country is in danger. Will this president continue to drag America into another endless Middle East war?” Gallego said. “This is a war that wasn’t planned, wasn’t authorized and is not making us safer. [Donald] Trump got his war, and working families got stuck with the bill every day.”
FLOURISHING FRIENDSHIPS
Iran war is leading to stronger alliance between Israel, India and the UAE, experts say
While some geopolitical relationships have been tested by the Iran war, others have been strengthened: Emerging alignments between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and India are creating new opportunities for cooperation among three countries increasingly bound by shared defense and economic interests, experts told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Overlapping interests: On Friday, India and the UAE agreed on the framework for a strategic defense partnership, a step that could deepen ties between New Delhi and Abu Dhabi amid the regional fallout from the war. Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that the partnership also extends to Israel, which has remained a key ally of both countries. He said the emerging alignment is rooted in overlapping economic and strategic interests and shared adversaries.
Worthy Reads
Narrative War: Days after The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof published a piece alleging numerous abuses of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli security officials, Kristof’s colleague on the Opinion desk, Bret Stephens, observes the documented history of news outlets publishing falsehoods about Israel without basic fact-checking. “The common thread in these and many other stories is that they all involve strenuous, if ultimately embarrassed, efforts to prove that Israelis deliberately seek to kill the innocent and maim the vulnerable, apparently for no other reason than gratuitous cruelty. This isn’t a matter of reporters’ impartially trying to expose wrongdoing wherever they find it — if that were the case, the errors wouldn’t invariably lean in the same ideological direction. It isn’t speaking truth to power. It’s feeding narratives to the credulous.” [NYTimes]
Drawing Down Aid: In The Wall Street Journal, the American Enterprise Institute’s Daniel Samet argues in favor of winding down U.S. aid to Israel, calling it a “political liability” that could affect the future of the relationship between the countries. “Military aid to Israel, which Washington began supplying in significant amounts during the 1960s, has been a sound investment. The U.S. has financed a reliable ally that fights and wins wars against America’s enemies. Yet Israel no longer commands the affection of the American people as widely as it once did. Ending military assistance is a political imperative in changing times.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
U.S. forces in the Indian Ocean seized an Iran-linked oil tanker that had been under U.S. sanctions since March; the vessel was believed to be carrying upwards of a million barrels of crude oil that was loaded earlier this year from Iran’s Kharg Island…
The New York Times reports on an Israeli-developed plan, backed by the U.S., for former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was under house arrest in Tehran, to be installed as the leader of Iran; the plan reportedly fell apart after the hard-liner was injured on the first day of the war in a strike intended to free him from house arrest and, per the Times, “became disillusioned with the regime change plan”…
Ahmadinejad biographer and Israeli analyst Meir Javedanfar dismissed the report, calling it “a disinformation campaign initiated by those that tried to assassinate him”; Javedanfar said that the “disinformation is being used to create chaos within the ranks of the Islamic Republic of Iran” following what he described as “an assassination attempt gone wrong”…
Iranian state media reported that Tehran had offered a new proposal to the U.S. that would include the withdrawal of U.S. troops from areas near Iran, an end to hostilities targeting both Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon and reparations for damages the regime sustained in the recent war…
The United Arab Emirates said that three drones that targeted the country’s nuclear power plant over the weekend originated from Iraq, deepening speculation that Iran, which backs militias in the country, was behind the attack…
The Wall Street Journal spotlights the challenges facing Kuwait following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that has halted the Gulf state’s ability to ship crude oil…
President Donald Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s primary challenge against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) on Tuesday, dealing a significant blow to Cornyn’s bid for a fifth term, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports…
Former CIA officer Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, an ally of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, is departing her senior roles at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of Management and Budget to return to the private sector…
The Senate passed a resolution honoring Jewish American Heritage Month by unanimous consent…
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), responding to Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) primary defeat, said that Massie “lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war”; the California Democrat, who is mulling a 2028 presidential bid, said he welcomed “voters who feel rejected by Trump,” pledging to “build a movement to stand for Team America”…
The South Carolina Statehouse approved a new congressional map that would eliminate the district represented by Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the state’s only Democratic district; the new map will next head to the state Senate for a vote…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has in recent days held a series of meetings and listening sessions with Wall Street executives, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, after Mamdani angered business leaders by filming a video outside the home of Citadel’s Ken Griffin in which the mayor announced a plan to tax second homes in the city…
Police in New York are investigating the death of a Jewish bakery owner and former Hatzolah volunteer whose body was found in the Queens neighborhood of Flushing after he was shot in the neck and back…
The Strokes announced that guitarist Nick Valensi, who is Jewish, won’t be participating in the band’s upcoming summer tour, weeks after Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas said on the “SubwayTakes” web series that “American Zionists get the benefits of white privileged people, but talk like they are Black people during slavery”…
Mohamed Hagi, Somaliland‘s newly arrived ambassador to Israel, announced that Hargeisa planned to open its embassy in the country in Jerusalem…
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claimed that the International Criminal Court was seeking a warrant for his arrest; the ICC would not comment on the claim, saying that requests for warrants are confidential…
In what he said was a response to the ICC’s request for a warrant, Smotrich threatened to evict residents of the West Bank Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar…
Comedy writer Barry Blaustein, a longtime collaborator of comedian Eddie Murphy who worked on the screenplays of “Coming to America” and “The Nutty Professor,” died at 71…
Pic of the Day
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who is in Prague this week for meetings with senior officials, announced the launch of the Israel-Czech Republic Business Forum alongside his Czech counterpart, Petr Macinka.
Birthdays
Emmy Award-winning singer and songwriter, Rachel Platten turns 45…
CEO at Kings’ Care – A Safe Place, operator of multiple drug and alcohol rehabilitation and treatment centers, Ilene Leiter… Canadian businesswoman and elected official, she served in the Ontario Assembly and in the Canadian House of Commons, Elinor Caplan turns 82… Former member of the New York State Assembly until 2020, representing the 97th Assembly District in Rockland County, Ellen Jaffee turns 82… Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-CT) for 20 years, he was born in a DP camp in Germany after WWII, Sam Gejdenson turns 78… Chagrin Falls, Ohio, attorney, Robert Charles Rosenfeld… CEO emeritus of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Michael S. Miller… Seamstress and weaver, Bernice Ann Penn Venable… Retired in 2022 as a federal judge for the Southern District of Texas, she is now a mediator and arbitrator, Judge Nancy Ellen Friedman Atlas turns 77… Five-time Emmy Award-winning producer and writer who has worked on “Saturday Night Live,” PBS’ “Great Performances” and “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” Alan Zweibel turns 76… U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) turns 75… Former director of international affairs, policy and planning at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, following 12 years at the ADL, Michael Alan Salberg… Professor at Tulane, he was president of the Aspen Institute, CEO of CNN and managing editor of Time, Walter Isaacson turns 74… Born in upstate New York as Michael Scott Bornstein, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and then member of the Knesset, Michael Oren turns 71… Actor and singer, known for her work in musical theater, Judy Kuhn turns 68… CEO and founder of Abrams Media, chief legal analyst for ABC News and the founder of Mediaite, Dan Abrams turns 60… NYC location scout and unit production manager for feature films, TV and commercials, David Brotsky… Co-founder and CEO of Breitbart News, Larry Solov turns 58… Senior advisor at Majority Democrats, Ami Copeland… French singer and actor, at 13 she became the youngest singer to ever reach No. 1 in the French charts, Elsa Lunghini turns 53… Co-president of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays, Matthew Silverman turns 50… Principal of public policy at Amazon, Philip Justin “PJ” Hoffman… Program officer of Jewish life at the Michigan-based William Davidson Foundation, Vadim Avshalumov… Founder and CEO of Berkeley, California-based Caribou Biosciences, a genome engineering company, Rachel Haurwitz, Ph.D…. Senior director of government relations and strategy for the ADL, Lauren D. Wolman… Executive communications leader, Susan Sloan… VP of digital advocacy at McGuireWoods Consulting, Josh Canter… Beauty pageant winner who was awarded the title of Miss Israel 2014, Doron Matalon turns 33… Master of public policy candidate at Oxford University, Aylon Berger turns 26… Conservative political activist, he is a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Kyle Kashuv turns 25…
Democrats are uniting to condemn Maureen Galindo’s extremist candidacy — and blame the GOP’s opportunistic intervention
Katina Zentz/San Antonio Express-News via Getty Images
Maureen Galindo, left, and Johnny Garcia, right, participate in a TX-35 forum in San Antonio on May 6, 2026.
A newly launched super PAC with ties to Republicans has spent nearly half a million dollars to help boost a Democrat running for a competitive open House seat in Texas who is facing growing bipartisan furor over a series of virulently antisemitic social media remarks.
Lead Left PAC, the GOP-linked group, has been aggressively promoting Maureen Galindo, a fringe San Antonio activist who finished first in the primary and has said that Jews “own Hollywood” and “worship the synagogue of Satan.” Last week, she said that, if elected, she would turn a local immigration detention center “into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” while adding, “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.”
The comments, which circulated online Tuesday, fueled widespread condemnation from members of both parties, and drew further scrutiny to Lead Left, which has faced accusations of meddling in the race to prop up a weaker candidate in the redrawn district. Democrats see the district as winnable in November if they elect Johnny Garcia, Galindo’s moderate rival, in the May 26 runoff.
Lead Left, which has not returned requests for comment, had invested around $430,000 in the runoff to elevate Galindo as of Tuesday, according to federal filings. The shadowy PAC was expected to double that figure on Wednesday with a roughly $500,000 investment, bringing its total spending in the district to around $1 million with less than a week until the election, according to media buying figures from an internal reporting database that were shared with Jewish Insider.
Lead Left, which has not yet disclosed its donors, has also recently spent in other Democratic races across the country. While no Republicans have taken credit for the group, the metadata for its website links to a major GOP fundraising platform, strongly suggesting Republican fingerprints.
In a joint statement on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA), chair of Democratic Congressional Campaign Campaign Committee, said that “House Republican leadership must immediately cease propping up this antisemitic candidacy, pull spending in the race and forcefully condemn these comments.”
“This vile language by her is disqualifying and has no place in American politics, and certainly not in the Democratic Party,” the Democratic leaders added on Tuesday. “To embrace and uplift a fringe candidate with antisemitic — and extremely dangerous — rhetoric and views in order to win an election is beyond the pale.”
The DCCC recently added Garcia, a sheriff’s deputy in Bexar County, to its “Red to Blue” program for House candidates in battleground districts key to reclaiming the majority.
Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm, which is also supporting Garcia, accused Republicans of “deliberately elevating one of the most grotesque antisemites in American politics this cycle because they think it helps them win.”
“It is sick, it is cynical, and it tells you everything about a party that will fund anyone, including someone openly invoking the language of pogroms, as long as it serves their politics,” Brian Romick, who leads DMFI PAC, said in a statement after Galindo’s most recent comments came to light. “Democrats across the ideological spectrum reject Maureen Galindo and everything she stands for, completely and without qualification. Republicans should explain why they’re paying to keep her viable.”
Galindo, whose endorsement from the extremist anti-Israel account Track AIPAC was rescinded on Tuesday, garnered nearly unanimous denunciations from across the political spectrum, including Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and others who expressed outrage over her remarks.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) called Galindo’s recent comments about imprisoning and castrating Zionists “straight out of the Nazi playbook,” while Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) urged Democratic leaders to speak out against rhetoric “suggesting concentration camps for American Jews.”
Galindo, who has gained prominence on social media promoting conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel, narrowly finished first in the crowded March primary with 29% of the vote, two points ahead of Garcia, who placed second. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Galindo has attributed the surge of spending from Lead Left to “a billionaire zionist who made the pac to sabotage candidates,” according to a text message to The New York Times last week.
The embattled Kentucky congressman called his Trump-endorsed challenger a ‘puppet’ of the Republican Jewish Coalition
DANIEL HEUER/AFP via Getty Images
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) speaks to reporters at the US Capitol on Washington, DC on November 18, 2025.
In the closing days of his House reelection campaign against Trump-endorsed Navy veteran Ed Gallrein — which will conclude with Tuesday’s primary — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has focused his ire on pro-Israel and Jewish advocacy groups, claiming that his opponent is a “puppet” of such interests.
At a rally on Saturday, the congressman joked that Gallrein’s phone number had a Tel Aviv area code, part of a narrative by Massie that Gallrein is working on behalf of Israeli interests.
“After months of beating around the bush, one reporter finally writes the true story of my race and when asked, the lobbyists brag about it,” Massie said on X on Sunday, referring to a story in Politico about pro-Israel groups’ spending to defeat him. “A coalition of Israel’s lobbyists and donors is spending tens of millions of dollars in a blatant attempt to buy a KY congressional seat.”
The congressman also asserted that Gallrein is a “puppet” of the Republican Jewish Coalition and that “they are running his race.”
The RJC’s national political director, Sam Markstein, responded, “I am speaking for ALL Republicans who want to see you lose tomorrow — including President Donald Trump.”
On Friday, Massie called his primary, which has become the most expensive intraparty congressional contest in U.S. history, “a referendum on whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.”
“I’ve never seen Great Britain, Australia or even Germany play in our elections here in the United States. But Israel gets so much from the United States. It’s a one-sided relationship,” Massie said. “They get us to be their proxies in wars they want against their enemies. They get our military assistance. They get our technology. They get our bombs. They get our tax dollars. And I think it’s a very one-sided relationship. At least with NATO, we pretend that they would come to our aid someday if we needed it — and even that’s a ruse.”
Massie also reportedly hosted at least two antisemitic social media figures at his home for an event over the weekend. Some of the attendees said online that Massie brought a group of several dozen influencers into his home for the event. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the event or on the individuals invited.
One of the individuals pictured at the event was Ryan Matta, a Holocaust denier who was pictured with Massie at a separate event wearing an “American Reich” sweatshirt. Another was David Reilly, a self-described antisemite who also has a history of racist and otherwise offensive comments.
Various figures with records of antisemitism including Tucker Carlson, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Carrie Prejean Boller, who was booted from the White House Religious Liberty Commission over her antisemitic views, Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes and Ian Carroll have all declared their support for Massie, framing his race as a battle between him and Israel and its supporters.
He’s also picked up support from a variety of anti-Israel and Israel-critical figures on the left.
In the final days of the campaign last week, Massie also introduced the “AIPAC Act,” demanding that the pro-Israel group, and other interest groups supporting other countries, register as foreign agents — a longtime talking point by the congressman that leans into antisemitic dual loyalty tropes.
Rep. Julia Letlow is now the favorite to win the Louisiana race; she faces state Treasurer John Fleming in a June runoff
Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) speaks to media on the first day of early voting outside of the Louisiana State Archives on May 02, 2026 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Dogged by his vote to impeach President Donald Trump in 2021, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) lost his bid for reelection on Saturday night, finishing in third place in the Louisiana Republican primary behind Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) and state Treasurer John Fleming.
Letlow and Fleming, the top two finishers, will now compete in a runoff, which will be held on June 27. Cassidy only received 25% of the primary vote, lagging well behind Letlow, who received 45% of the vote, and Fleming, who won 28%.
The race offered another strong signal that Trump’s backing is the most important factor in Republican nomination fights. Of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump at his 2021 impeachment trial, only two remain in the Senate. One of them, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), faces her own difficult reelection.
The results also come two weeks after Trump and his political allies successfully ousted five Republican state senators in Indiana primaries, after they opposed the Trump administration’s push to redraw the state’s congressional lines to further favor Republicans.
Cassidy, first elected to the Senate in 2014, had long been one of the more bipartisan members of his caucus, using his experience as a doctor to take the lead on health care issues. He drew close scrutiny for his decision supporting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be confirmed as health and human services secretary in his role as HELP Committee chairman, despite holding serious misgivings over Kennedy’s record opposing vaccine requirements.
In his concession speech, Cassidy told supporters: “When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. But you don’t pout. You don’t whine. You don’t claim that an election was stolen from you.”
The next big test of Trump’s influence in party politics will come on Tuesday, when Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a virulent opponent of Israel, will face off against Trump-endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein, a Navy veteran. Trump allies and outside pro-Israel groups have poured millions into the race to defeat Massie. Polls show the race is competitive, with Gallrein holding late momentum.
If elected mayor of Washington, D.C, Janeese Lewis George’s victory would hand a major win to Washington’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter
Craig Hudson for The Washington Post via Getty Images
D.C. councilmember and mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George is seen on Capitol Hill for a press conference in Washington, DC on March 10, 2025.
The open race for mayor of Washington, D.C., has been largely uneventful ahead of next month’s primary — so much so that the first TV ads run by the leading candidates, Kenyan McDuffie and Janeese Lewis George, sound nearly identical. Both candidates tout affordability and safety on the campaign trail, with promises to build more housing and stand up against President Donald Trump.
But if elected, Lewis George’s victory would mark a significant shift away from the centrist brand of politics espoused by outgoing Mayor Muriel Bowser over the last 12 years, and would instead hand a major win to Washington’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter, of which Lewis George has been a member for years.
Lewis George has faced criticism throughout the campaign from some in the Jewish community for comments she made on a DSA endorsement questionnaire pledging to boycott events that “promote Zionism” and criticizing Jewish activists’ approach to combating antisemitism. Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, on Tuesday called DSA an “evil” organization that seeks “to make being Jewish unacceptable in polite society.”
DSA has activated its small but growing membership to knock on doors for Lewis George, a member of the D.C. Council, tapping into a grassroots energy that they hope translates into success at the ballot box. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of two DSA members currently serving in Congress, attended a recent DC DSA rally alongside Lewis George.
DSA’s Metro DC chapter is relatively small. Yet its current roster of roughly 3,400 members represents a massive increase from its pre-2016 nadir of just 200 members — and mirrors DSA’s growing clout nationally.
“For most of the ‘80s and ‘90s and 2000s, DSA was a small organization with maybe 5,000 or 8,000 people at the most. I would say the average age was probably over 60, maybe higher than that,” said Peter Dreier, an emeritus professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles. “Then Bernie [Sanders] ran for president in 2016 and started talking about democratic socialism in a way that made sense to, particularly, a lot of young people, and he kind of opened the door to people to be in DSA.”
Overall, DSA is still a small organization on the fringes of Democratic politics. Even the highest membership counts — adding up DSA’s local chapters — don’t top 100,000. But the unexpected popularity of Sanders’ 2016 presidential run sparked a resurgence of interest in democratic socialism not seen in generations, and that has continued well past his two campaigns. A 2025 Gallup poll found that 42% of Democrats have a positive image of capitalism, down from 54% a decade ago, while 66% have a positive view of socialism.
“If [young people] don’t remember the Cold War, then what do they think when they hear the word socialism? There’s still a battle over that, but they’re more likely to think, ‘Oh, countries that have more equality, or students that get free or almost free higher education, everybody has access to healthcare,’” said Dreier.
“We are going to raise money and develop a plan over the course of the next few months to try to make them toxic, to make it unacceptable for major figures in the party or anybody actually running for office to be affiliated with the DSA, the way it should be unacceptable to be affiliated with [neo-Nazi influencer] Nick Fuentes if you’re running as Republican,” Third Way’s senior vice president for public affairs, Matt Bennett, said.
The key question now facing capital-D Democrats — one they sound unsure of how to answer, or perhaps unwilling — is how to handle an insurgent faction that has galvanized people over its straightforward messaging on corporations (bad), taxing the rich (good) and Medicare for All (necessary), while at the same time promoting far-left positions like prison and police abolition that are nowhere near the Democratic mainstream. The group has long promoted the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, as well as calling for an arms embargo on Israel, and its members passed a resolution last year affirming their commitment to anti-Zionism. On Oct. 7, 2023, DSA released a statement holding Israel accountable for the Hamas attacks and calling on members to take to the streets to protest U.S. support for Israel.
The centrist Democratic group Third Way plans to launch a major PR campaign against DSA in the coming months, one of the group’s executives told JI, arguing that its far-left positions and incendiary brand of politics will be harmful for the party’s electoral prospects.
“We are going to raise money and develop a plan over the course of the next few months to try to make them toxic, to make it unacceptable for major figures in the party or anybody actually running for office to be affiliated with the DSA, the way it should be unacceptable to be affiliated with [neo-Nazi influencer] Nick Fuentes if you’re running as Republican,” Third Way’s senior vice president for public affairs, Matt Bennett, said.
In the decade since Sanders’ 2016 campaign, DSA has had an outsized impact on national politics. The 2018 congressional victory of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a DSA member, raised the group’s profile. A steady stream of more than 200 DSA-aligned candidates have been elected to state and local offices since, culminating with the election of DSA member Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City last year.
“To the degree that people need to pay attention to DSA, it’s because they built this kind of political machine,” said Micah Sifry, a journalist focused on left-wing political organizing. “In a time when people are, for the most part, not very organized, the ability of any small group, relatively speaking, to punch above its weight grows.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, New York has the largest bench of DSA-affiliated state lawmakers. The group has slowly but steadily been gaining electoral power in state and local offices in some unexpected places, too, like Minnesota, Colorado, Delaware and Wisconsin. The group’s largest foothold is in city council races, where a small but committed cadre of volunteers can swing elections in low-turnout races.
National Democratic leaders are divided about how to treat the small but vocal socialist minority in the party.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) declined to support Mamdani in the primary election but ultimately endorsed him ahead of the general election last year. Weeks later, Jeffries voted in favor of a Republican-led resolution condemning socialism. He has been skeptical of the left-wing ideology throughout his political career: “There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism,” he said in 2021. A spokesperson for Jeffries declined to comment this week when asked if he believes Democrats should be welcoming socialists into the party.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin has been more open-minded about socialists. Asked by Fox News last year whether progressives like Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez make his job harder, he said no.
“The party is a big tent. But just like we have to believe it’s a big tent, the DSA also has to believe it’s a big tent, and I’m not sure they do,” Brian Romick, CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, said. “Democratic leaders want to win elections, and that means a big tent, and that means that Democratic base voters and pro-Israel voters and moderate people who maybe voted for [Donald] Trump sometimes because they’re concerned about prices have to be in the tent.”
“I don’t think they make it difficult at all,” Martin said in August 2025. “The difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is that we’re a big tent. We have lots of people in that tent from all of the different ideological wings, from conservative Democrats, to centrists, to progressives, to these new leftists.” A DNC spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week.
Brian Romick, CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, told Jewish Insider this week that he is concerned about the inroads DSA is making in the party. He agreed with Martin that the Democratic Party should be a big tent, but noted that DSA members — who are at times intent on putting litmus tests even on would-be allies — don’t extend the same understanding to more moderate members of the party.
“The party is a big tent. But just like we have to believe it’s a big tent, the DSA also has to believe it’s a big tent, and I’m not sure they do,” Romick said. “Democratic leaders want to win elections, and that means a big tent, and that means that Democratic base voters and pro-Israel voters and moderate people who maybe voted for [Donald] Trump sometimes because they’re concerned about prices have to be in the tent.”
The questionnaire Lewis George filled out in Washington to earn DSA’s endorsement reveals how important hard-line opposition to Israel is to the organization, which requires even candidates for local offices with no connection to foreign policy to all but disavow the Jewish state. Most voters who support DSA-aligned candidates likely are not drawn to them because of their views on the Middle East; Mamdani’s message was first and foremost about affordability. But DSA’s growing reach among Democrats gave a foothold to anti-Israel views that may have once been rare, though global attention on the war in Gaza also contributed to shifting Democratic orthodoxy on the conflict. (Other far-left groups like Justice Democrats have played a role, too.)
Zach Shartiag, a Jewish Democratic campaign operative from Chicago, told JI that Democrats he has talked to who support DSA candidates generally do not do so because of DSA’s stance on Israel, even if the activists are themselves critical of Israel.
“People might be very anti-Israel now, but at the same time, it’s like, what does that have to do with local politics?” said Shartiag, who is currently working on a congressional campaign in Hawaii. “I’ve talked to a lot of people, just in general, normal humans, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, I might be against what Israel’s doing, but what does that have to do with the local and the city and the state?’”
The full picture of DSA’s influence in the party will not be known until all the votes are tallied at the end of this year’s midterm elections. A number of DSA-affiliated candidates are gaining ground in congressional primaries, such as Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, who has garnered progressive endorsements in a Philadelphia-area open seat, and New York state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who has Mamdani’s backing for her congressional campaign.
Still, the election outcomes in states across the country this year will present only a partial picture of where the Democratic Party is moving. In the same year that Mamdani won in New York City, for instance, Democratic moderates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.
The only certainty, then, is that the battle between centrists and socialists will continue into 2028.
“I think you’re going to have a real mixed verdict, with us yelling about our side and the left yelling about their side,” Third Way’s Bennett acknowledged. “So what that means is, unsurprisingly, we’re going to go into the presidential primary season with the two camps demanding that they are right.”
The NYC mayor cited violence against Jews to justify his eight-figure funding boost for the city’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani presents the fiscal year 2027 executive budget at City Hall in New York, US, on Tuesday, May 12, 2026.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced his administration would allocate $26 million annually toward anti-hate crimes measures, signaling that the significant funding increase — promised during the campaign season — would go toward a program that funds both leading Jewish organizations and left-wing nonprofits.
The new funding, part of a sprawling $124.7 billion budget that would resolve the city’s fiscal woes largely by delaying pension payments, would go toward the city’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes — though the mayor provided few details about the funds’ destination in a Tuesday afternoon press conference. He did, however, acknowledge that Jewish New Yorkers represent a minority of city residents yet a majority of hate crime victims, and promised the anti-hate crime campaign would operate “alongside” the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism to reduce the number of prejudice-inspired incidents.
“These are investments in programs that have been found to be effective. And too often the only response offered to a hate crime is exactly that, it’s a response to the hate crime. We want also to do the work of preventing those hate crimes,” he said, adding that his antisemitism czar, Phylisa Wisdom, would soon embark on a “listening tour” to develop a “municipal approach to fighting antisemitism.”
Additional details were not immediately available, and Mamdani’s office did not respond to questions from Jewish Insider.
Initial reports asserted that this represented a $23 million increase over a prior $3 million budget. That $3 million figure matches the amount the Partners Against the Hate (P.A.T.H.) FORWARD Initiative, which operates under the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, provided last year to “50 community-based organizations representing the city’s diversity to help combat hate and bias motivated incidents,” according to an analysis the Mamdani administration also released on Tuesday.
A list of subvendors for the initiative released last year features a wide range of social service providers, including a number based in or supporting Jewish communities across the city. Sources at several of these participating nonprofits did not immediately answer questions as to whether P.A.T.H. Forward might benefit from the new spending — and one, Devorah Halberstam of the Jewish Children’s Museum of Crown Heights, told JI she had “no idea, because he just announced it.”
P.A.T.H. Forward also provides resources to multiple leftist organizations, such as Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, that supported Mamdani’s election through political affiliates.
One X-factor keeping Republicans competitive is the Democratic Party’s lurch leftward in the last year, leading to the emergence of extreme, exotic and out-of-the-mainstream candidates in pivotal battleground races
Graham Platner campaign/Travellers & Tinkers/Wikimedia Commons/Kenneth C. Zirkel/Wikmedia Commons
Graham Platner/ Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan/Abdul El-Sayed
The combination of history and polling is pointing to the likelihood of a Democratic wave election in the 2026 midterms, which would give Democrats control of the House and a fighting chance to claw back a Senate majority.
Polls show Democrats holding a sizable edge on the generic ballot, their favored candidates are running competitively even in red states and congressional districts, all while President Donald Trump’s approval rating is sagging amid high gas prices, executive overreach and an uncertain outcome in the aftermath of the war in Iran.
But the one X-factor keeping Republicans competitive is the Democratic Party’s lurch leftward in the last year, leading to the emergence of extreme, exotic and out-of-the-mainstream candidates in pivotal battleground races.
Indeed, a new poll commissioned by The Argument magazine finds that the generic ballot shows Democrats have been stuck with a six-point lead for a while even as Trump’s job approval has declined precipitously in the last several months. They’re voting to put a check on the GOP’s dominance of Washington, without endorsing the direction of the Democratic party.
“Democrats still have tangible policy misalignments with many voters who dislike Trump,” The Argument concluded in its polling analysis.
All told, the question becomes: Will the anticipated Democratic wave closely resemble the Democrats’ version of the GOP Tea Party election of 2010? In that election, Republicans swept into power in the House but far-right and extreme Senate candidates in key races blew golden opportunities, costing Republicans the upper chamber.
That dynamic repeated itself in 2022, when many experts anticipated a Republican wave election, but the party’s nomination of hard-line MAGA candidates in battleground contests led to a marked underperformance.
The alternative outcome is that partisanship and tribalism now run so deeply that an individual candidate’s flaws — even seemingly disqualifying ones — don’t mean what they used to. Right now, Democratic primary voters look like they’re ignoring personal baggage in favor of candidates that are the most ideologically progressive, personally authentic and who are burning hot with rage against Trump and the leadership class.
On the Senate side, Maine Democrat Graham Platner fits that profile to a tee, and is all but locking down a primary victory against longtime Gov. Janet Mills, the favorite of the party establishment. If he’s the nominee, he’d then face Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who has a record of winning tough races even in dismal environments for her party.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed holds both a radical record and support from a dedicated progressive base of young voters and Arab Americans. That has put him in contention for the Democratic nomination, but many Democrats fear he’d lose the seat to former Rep. Mike Rogers, the expected Republican nominee.
And in Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan holds lots of left-wing baggage but that’s not hurting her insurgent primary campaign against Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), a more traditional and moderate Democratic contender. Former sportscaster Michele Tafoya is the GOP favorite in this race.
There are even more House races where problematic candidates are in contention in swing districts — like Ammar Campa-Najjar in the race of retiring Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Colorado state Rep. Manny Rutinel, running to unseat Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO).
If 2010 offered any lessons, it’s that ideologically extreme, problematic candidates typically underperform expectations. That often makes the difference in a battleground state or district, where the margin of victory is typically close. It’s easy to get nostalgic for a time when a candidate like Christine O’Donnell (who notoriously proclaimed she was not a witch!) was as exotic as it got in politics. Now one of the Democrats’ leading Senate candidates is known for proclaiming he’s “not a secret Nazi.”
But given the tribalism of the current environment and the intense anti-Trump sentiment among Democrats and independents, do voters care about candidate quality anymore? Last November, Virginia voters elected an attorney general who survived revelations that he wished violence on a political opponent, only mildly underperforming the rest of the Democratic ticket.
This year’s midterm elections will put that proposition to the test. With strong battle-tested moderate recruits — like former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and former Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola — in purple and red states, Democrats are expanding the Senate map and giving themselves a fighting chance for a clean sweep.
But they risk jeopardizing those gains with some (potentially) not-ready-for-primetime players in the biggest battlegrounds of all: Maine and Michigan.
Vance has struggled to appease a coalition of anti-war critics on the populist right who feel his alignment with Trump’s foreign policy agenda represents not only a betrayal of their values but also the noninterventionist views he long espoused
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U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks during a Turning Point USA event at Akins Ford Arena at the Classic Center on April 14, 2026 in Athens, Georgia.
As Vice President JD Vance has recently found himself navigating tenuous negotiations between the United States and Iran, his central role in the talks to end the war is highlighting his own vulnerabilities on the domestic front — where he is facing pushback from the isolationist right that is seen as part of his coalition.
In many ways, Vance’s political troubles recall his predecessor, former Vice President Kamala Harris, who in her 2024 presidential campaign drew fierce protests from far-left activists who objected to former President Joe Biden’s support for Israel amid the war in Gaza.
Harris, who has grown more openly critical of Israel since losing the race and leaving office, strained both to articulate a consistent message on Gaza that would satisfy the far and center left and to distance her campaign from an aging, unpopular president whose approach to Israel, according to her recent memoir, was not fully aligned with her own.
Anti-Israel activists continue to insist, even years after the election, that Harris’ association with Biden while he supported Israel’s war against Hamas cost her votes that contributed to her defeat, while pro-Israel Democrats claim she failed to draw red lines around growing extremism within the party that alienated moderates, and is now inflecting the midterm elections. More recently, the former vice president faced anti-Israel hecklers during a book tour last year.
In recent weeks, Vance, who is widely seen as a top 2028 presidential prospect, has likewise struggled to appease a restive coalition of anti-war critics on the populist right who feel his alignment with President Donald Trump’s robust foreign policy agenda represents not only a betrayal of their values but also the noninterventionist views he himself had long espoused.
Last week, in a disruption reminiscent of Harris’ campaign experience, Vance was notably heckled during a speaking appearance at a Turning Point USA event held at the University of Georgia, where an attendee interrupted his comments to accuse the Trump administration of supporting “genocide” in Gaza and “killing children.”
“If you want to complain about what happened in Gaza, why don’t you complain about Joe Biden and the last administration? We’re the administration that solved that problem,” Vance said in response to the heckler, after defending what he called Trump’s “peace agreement in Gaza.”
He also touted his so far unsuccessful efforts to broker a resolution to the Iran war — about which he reportedly voiced resistance behind the scenes before Trump greenlit the campaign in late February — saying he is pursuing the president’s goal to achieve an ambiguously outlined “grand bargain” on nuclear enrichment.
“The United States had never had meetings at that level with the Iranian government in 49 years,” Vance said at the event, days after returning from talks with Iran in Islamabad where he tried and failed to reach a diplomatic agreement.
The vice president was expected on Tuesday to leave for resumed negotiations in the Pakistani capital as a two-week ceasefire was set to soon expire, but his trip was put on hold and the ceasefire extended, raising questions about the prospect of a swift settlement.
While Vance had sought to keep the war at arm’s length in the initial days after the attack on Iran, his high-profile position in the negotiation process has now forced him to identify more closely with the sort of foreign military conflict he had built his political career on opposing.
As a junior senator from Ohio, Vance even wrote in a January 2023 opinion piece that he was supporting Trump’s reelection campaign because the president “started no wars” in his first four years in the White House.
With Trump’s approval ratings trending downward — and as Republicans fret that the war in Iran as well as rising gasoline prices could undercut their chances of holding the House and Senate in the midterms — much is riding on Vance’s efforts to put an end to the conflict as he lays the groundwork for a potential White House bid.
While polling has shown that Trump’s war aims continue to garner widespread backing within his party, including the MAGA wing, independent voters who were a key part of his winning coalition in 2024 are divided, as are younger voters whom Vance has targeted.
In Georgia last week, Vance seemed to acknowledge disappointment among audience members over the war. “I recognize that young voters do not love the policy we have in the Middle East, OK,” he said. “I understand.”
“I’m not saying you have to agree with me on every issue,” he said at the Turning Point event. “What I am saying is: Don’t get disengaged because you disagree with the administration on one topic. Get more involved, make your voice heard even more. That is how we ultimately take the country back.”
Ahead of 2028, Vance is no doubt hoping that his involvement in the Iran negotiations will help yield a deal that satisfies the president and that he can wave before the far-right base he has continued to indulge, even as it has grown increasingly hostile to Jews and Israel.
Meanwhile, Vance has at the same time made some overtures to pro-Israel Republican donors skeptical of his close relationship with Tucker Carlson, a vocal detractor of Israel whose commentary regularly veers into antisemitic rhetoric that the vice president has ignored or downplayed.
But as Harris’ problems demonstrated two years ago, Vance may ultimately find it is not possible to have it both ways.
While Democrat Analilia Mejia comfortably won the special election to succeed Mikie Sherrill, Jewish voters swung to the right
Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Analilia Mejia, US Democratic House candidate for New Jersey, speaks to members of the media outside of the Montclair Municipal Building on the first day of early voting in Montclair, New Jersey, US, on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026.
Rep.-elect Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) cruised to victory in last Thursday’s special election for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, but the results showed notable defections among Jewish Democrats — an early warning sign for both the left-wing Mejia and her party.
Mejia ran significantly behind other recent Democratic candidates in two municipalities that have traditionally strongly favored Democrats — Livingston Township and Millburn Township — both areas with significant Jewish populations. In Millburn, Mejia lagged 22 percentage points behind former Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance in the 2024 presidential election, and 17 percentage points behind Harris in Livingston.
Dan Cassino, the director of the Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll, said that, given that Livingston favored Democrats by 34 percentage points but Mejia won it by just two, “you could count [that] as a 32-point underperformance.”
Joe Hathaway, the GOP nominee against Mejia, worked during his campaign to attract Jewish voters, casting himself as a moderate centrist and Mejia as an antisemitic extremist.
Jeff Grayzel, the deputy mayor of Morris Township who ran in the Democratic primary against Mejia, said that the special election presented an “actual Sophie’s choice” for Jewish Democrats.
“Some Jews surely voted for her because of their anger with President [Donald] Trump. But many Jewish Democrats I spoke to refused to support Mejia because of her genocide position,” Grayzel, who had hoped to rally support from Jewish voters across the district in the primary, said. Mejia accused the Jewish state of genocide shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.
“So some Jewish Democrats voted for Hathaway, which was evidenced by the result in Livingston, and others simply stayed home,” Grayzel continued. “We will see from voter turnout data how many Jews actually sat out this election. Unfortunately, our voice is our vote, and declining to vote will only hurt the Jewish community in the long run.”
Jason Shames, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, said “it’s disappointing to see someone representing New Jersey or any district in America who not only doesn’t fight antisemitism but seemingly aligns with those who delegitimize Israel. Her comments on Israel’s self defense to the horrific terror attack by Palestinians [are] alarming and should not be dismissed.”
Cassino said that while Mejia outperformed other Democrats who have run in this district, she “did slightly worse than we would have expected from a generic Democrat in the special election,” given that the environment strongly favored Democrats.
Cassino said that it’s a “reasonable hypothesis” that attacks on Mejia’s stance on Middle East policy drove Democrats in Millburn and Livingston to vote for Hathaway.
“I would be really cautious, though, about saying that her stance on Palestine, or any other issue, cost her any particular number of votes, because all of these numbers are conditional on turnout,” he added, noting that all of the voters who turned out for Mejia might not have turned out for a different Democratic candidate.
Cassino said that strategists are likely to read the results to mean that attacks on Mejia’s stance on Israel were effective.
“Maybe the most important thing here is that strategists — Democrats and Republicans alike — are going to look at these results and conclude that the attacks on Mejia worked, and ramp them up in November,” he added. “They’re also likely to try and use them against any candidate where they might plausibly stick. So, I hope voters liked those ads, because they’re going to be seeing a lot more of them.”
Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said that the apparent protest votes in the Jewish community “could … matter in a different election,” but this time, “Mejia picked up other votes in their place.”
“A lot is being made about these 900 or so votes, and I want to be balanced about how I see them. Yes, they were certainly noticeable. Yes, you can never take any voting bloc for granted,” Rasmussen added. “But electoral coalitions do shift. What can’t be denied is that Mejia’s current margin of 19.5 percent is larger than any other candidate for federal or statewide office since [former Rep.] Rodney Frelinghuysen’s (D-NJ) 25.2 percent win over Mark Dunec in 2014.”
The Maine Senate candidate quickly deleted his post, in which he approved of a message by neo-Nazi radio host Stew Peters
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U.S. senatorial candidate from Maine Graham Platner speaks at a town hall at the Leavitt Theater on October 22, 2025 in Ogunquit, Maine.
Graham Platner, a far-left Senate candidate in Maine, amplified a social media post on Thursday from a far-right conspiracy theorist well-known for viciously antisemitic commentary — before quickly deleting the statement.
In a comment to X late Thursday morning, Platner approvingly boosted a remark from Stew Peters, an extremist radio host who has frequently promoted antisemitic tropes and engaged in Holocaust denial, calling a war with Iran “the only thing Republicans and Democrats have both given a standing ovation for.”
“As always, there’s one thing that brings Republican and Democratic politicians together: sending other people’s children to die in stupid wars in the Middle East,” Platner, a 41-year-old Marine veteran turned oyster farmer who has sharply criticized U.S. military engagement abroad, wrote in his own post.
He deleted the post an hour or so after it had been flagged by online observers who noted that he was elevating a problematic figure with a long record of hostile rhetoric toward Jews.
The Anti-Defamation League has described Peters as a “prolific antisemite” who blames “‘the Jews’ for everything he believes is wrong with society,” while the Southern Poverty Law Center has said his radio show has “become a central hub for antisemitic and conspiratorial content.”
He has said Judaism is “satanic” and a “death cult,” promoted blood libels, called for a “final solution” to mass-deport American Jews and questioned the existence of gas chambers that exterminated Jews during the Holocaust, among other conspiratorial assertions.
In a statement to Jewish Insider, a spokesperson for Platner said the post had been published due to an oversight. “We were reposting a C-Span clip of Trump speaking about the potential war with Iran and didn’t realize that the video had been posted by a despicable account,” the spokesperson said. “When we learned who the poster was we immediately deleted the post.”
The social media blunder is a particularly sensitive issue for Platner, who earlier in his campaign faced scrutiny over a Nazi tattoo on his chest, which he had covered up last October. He has insisted he was not aware the tattoo closely mirrored a Totenkopf, a skull-and-crossbones icon used by an infamous Nazi SS unit, even as a former acquaintance told JI that he had years ago specifically identified it as such. He has denied such claims.
“I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner said in a podcast interview last year, while calling himself “a lifelong opponent” of “Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general.”
Despite such baggage, polling has shown Platner holds a commanding lead in the Maine Democratic primary race, where he is facing Gov. Janet Mills to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who is one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents up for reelection in the midterms.
Democrat Graham Platner entered the race accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza
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Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) addresses the press on Nov. 6, 2022.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is criticizing Graham Platner, a Democrat running against her in next year’s election, for singling out AIPAC as a “weird” interest group in new remarks to a local newspaper published on Tuesday, where he pledged to decline support from the pro-Israel lobbying organization.
“Sen. Collins is a strong supporter of AIPAC, a bipartisan organization that promotes stronger ties between the United States and Israel,” Shawn Roderick, a spokesperson for Collins’ campaign, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday. “Nothing about their work is ‘weird’ — in fact, it has never been more important given the aggressive antisemitism that we have seen around the world since the appalling Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack.”
In his comment to the Midcoast Villager, Platner, a 40-year-old oyster farmer and Marine veteran who announced his bid to challenge Collins on Tuesday, noted that his campaign would reject backing from corporate super PACs and donations from interest groups such as AIPAC that he dismissed as “weird.”
“My view here is very simple,” Platner told JI on Wednesday when asked to elaborate on his initial comment, which had not been quoted in full. “What is happening in Gaza is a genocide, I refuse to take money from AIPAC or any group that supports the genocide in Gaza.”
In other interviews this week, Platner, a political newcomer, has similarly accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and also endorsed efforts to block U.S. arms sales to Israel.
AIPAC’s political action committee is backing Collins, in keeping with its commitment to defend friendly incumbents who are up for reelection. Collins, who is now seeking her sixth term, has been among her party’s leading moderate voices, pushing to maintain a bipartisan consensus on support for Israel.
Marshall Wittmann, a spokesperson for AIPAC, questioned Platner’s recent comment about the group in a statement to JI on Wednesday. “More than 12,000 Maine voters are members of AIPAC and advocates for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship who don’t think it’s ‘weird’ for Americans to engage in the democratic process,” he said. “We are proud to support Sen. Collins who is a stalwart champion of an alliance that benefits Maine and America.”
Still, Platner’s seemingly off-handed remark more broadly underscores a growing disconnect between AIPAC and the Democratic Party, where even some of the staunchest supporters of Israel have been put on the defensive amid an international uproar over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In recent weeks, two Democratic House members who have received financial backing from AIPAC’s super PAC in their primaries, Reps. Maxine Dexter (D-OR) and Valerie Foushee (D-NC), both said they would support efforts to block transfers of offensive weapons to Israel. Foushee, for her part, also said earlier this month that she would not accept further support from AIPAC in her reelection campaign next year.
Meanwhile, Mallory McMorrow, a top Democratic candidate running for Senate in Michigan, revealed on Wednesday that she is urging AIPAC to refrain from engaging in the primary, where she is facing a strong pro-Israel advocate, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), and a prominent left-wing critic of Israel, Abdul El-Sayed, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The group declined to comment on McMorrow’s request.
Even as AIPAC has been under attack, it has continued to maintain friendly relationships with Democrats and Republicans, hosting a number of freshman lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on trips to Israel this month.
Jewish community not yet coalescing behind any of the progressives in a race that could be ‘personality-driven’
Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Former Boston City Council President Michelle Wu speaks with the media after announcing that she is running for Mayor of Boston in Roslindale, MA on Sept. 15, 2020. (Photo: Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Nearly 200 years after Boston elected its first mayor, the city recently swore in its first female mayor and its first mayor of color, almost by accident. Two-term mayor and former union boss Marty Walsh left his post in March to serve as secretary of labor in President Joe Biden’s administration, leading then-City Council President Kim Janey to become acting mayor. Just 12 years ago, the city elected its first woman of color, Ayanna Pressley, to the City Council. In 2018, Pressley also became the first woman of color to represent Massachusetts in Congress.
Now, Janey and five other candidates, all of whom are people of color and self-described progressives, are running to serve a full four-year term as mayor in a race widely seen as the christening of the “New Boston”: The city is close to becoming a majority-minority city, and all six candidates are quick to point out that Boston is no longer the mostly white, mostly Catholic city it once was. (The race is nonpartisan, so candidates are not technically affiliated with the Democratic Party, but the city is overwhelmingly Democratic: 82% of Boston voters cast their ballots for Joe Biden last November.) The deadline for candidates to enter the race was last week, kicking off a critical period of campaigning before a September primary that will send the top two vote-getters to the November general election.
“The community of Boston is in a period of transformation, and asking questions about what kind of city it wants to be going forward, both as an urban center and as the hub of a region,” said Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.
While the candidates come from diverse personal and family backgrounds, most have relatively similar electoral histories and political views, leading to questions of how voters will ultimately differentiate between them. Five of the six major candidates serve in city government, and three of the candidates — Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell and Annissa Essaibi George — currently serve on the Boston City Council, as did Janey until earlier this year. A fifth candidate, John Barros, served as chief of economic development under Walsh. The final candidate, Jon Santiago, is a state representative and emergency room doctor.
“If you’re a progressive Democrat or a liberal Democrat, you by and large like all these candidates,” said Erin O’Brien, associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “There seems to be pretty substantive policy agreement on the major issues. I think [the race will be] more personality driven.”
For the most part, all six candidates are highlighting a robust, equitable economic and public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a key focus of their campaigns. Other major issues include education and teacher pay, access to housing, adapting to and mitigating climate change and expanding transit options.
State Rep. MD Jon Santiago shows support for presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren at a morning press-conference in Boston to support Warren’s plan to handle infectious disease outbreaks on Feb. 27, 2020. (Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
In a city where unions remain dominant, one major change is that none of the candidates are actively seeking the endorsement of the city’s police union. Essaibi George is the only candidate who has spoken out against the movement to defund the police, as she believes the city’s police force should be reformed, not defunded.
“[Essaibi George] has done it in terms that are much more palatable to progressives and less so to the police union,” O’Brien explained. “But I really feel like the police union is used to having political clout, and their clout isn’t anything these candidates want.”
Other unions in the city have not coalesced behind a single candidate, as they did when Walsh first ran in 2013. The construction union endorsed Santiago, and the nurses’ union endorsed Barros. The firefighters’ union endorsed Essaibi George, as did William Gross, former commissioner of the Boston Police Department.
Polling has been limited in the race, with more than three months until the primary, but a late April poll found that 36% of voters remain undecided. Wu narrowly leads Janey and Essaibi George, but each had only about 15% support.
The Greater Boston Metropolitan Area is home to about 250,000 Jews, but only about 10-20% of the area’s Jewish population lives in the city of Boston, with the rest scattered in the surrounding suburbs. Still, members of the Jewish community in suburbs like Newton and Brookline closely follow city politics. “Broader Boston serves as a real center of the region, and what happens in Boston — the success of its educational systems, the health of its economy, the vibrancy of transportation, the leadership the city provides — sets the tone for the region,” explained Burton.
In conversations with community leaders, Burton has not seen Jewish community members coalesce around a particular candidate. “To the extent that they settle on candidates, they are sort of all over the place, so nobody has emerged yet as a clear favorite candidate,” he said. In part, this has to do with the diversity of the city’s Jewish community, which Burton described as three-pronged: an Orthodox immigrant community in Brighton; a more secular, older community downtown comprised of empty-nesters; and a younger, progressive, LGBTQ-friendly community largely residing in the southern part of the city. “They are not necessarily seen as one distinct, highly visible community,” Burton noted.
“If you’re a progressive Democrat or a liberal Democrat, you by and large like all these candidates,” said Erin O’Brien, associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Many of the candidates have engaged with the organized Jewish community in some form, either by speaking at panel discussions hosted by Jewish groups or appearing at events including Holocaust remembrance ceremonies. Two candidates — Janey, the current mayor; and Campbell, a city councilor — have traveled to Israel with the Boston JCRC, and Barros participated in a trade mission to Israel as a member of Walsh’s administration in 2014.
Unlike the ongoing mayoral race in New York City, where all eight Democratic candidates have weighed in on the recent violence in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not crossed into the Boston race. But across the Charles River, the Cambridge City Council held a seven-hour meeting Monday night on a resolution that Burton described as aligned with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. The council is slated to vote on the resolution Tuesday evening.
“One of the issues that’s being raised in the community is in fact that they largely haven’t done orders like this targeting other companies or countries (or at least not in many, many years),” Burton told JI. JCRC’s website notes that “there are hundreds of American companies that are working overseas and engaged in transactions that could be tied to questionable human rights practices,” and the “focus on Israel betrays a deeper and concerning animus to the world’s only Jewish state.”
City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George stands for a portrait in Savin Hill, the Dorchester neighborhood where she grew up, in Boston on Jan. 27, 2021. (Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
The only candidate who responded to questions from Jewish Insider about the resolution — and how they would vote if it came before them as mayor — was Barros, who did not answer the question. “The City of Boston is a diverse and inclusive community, and as mayor I would work to make sure our purchasing power reflects our values,” Barros said.
Who are the candidates hoping to become Boston’s next chief executive? Four of the six major candidates — all but Janey and Campbell — spoke with Jewish Insider about their campaigns.
Michelle Wu
Councilor Michelle Wu got her start in politics while working on the Senate campaign of her Harvard Law School professor and mentor Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Like Warren, Wu’s campaign is full of plans — “many, many plans,” she told JI — and also like Warren, she argues that she has the experience necessary to get the job done. Wu is the longest-serving city councilor in the race, but she says the city needs change from the top to truly serve all its residents. “I believe that the way to deliver transformational change is to rethink our approach and recognize how intersectional our issues are,” Wu said.
Her election to the city council in 2013 made her the second woman of color to ever sit on the body, alongside Pressley, and she noted that people urged her not to run. “There were many, many well-meaning mentors, advisors and politicos around town who all told me not to do it,” Wu said. “It was with the best of intentions that people were saying, ‘You won’t get elected: You’re a first-generation American woman, young, not born in Boston. It’s not possible.’ And at that time, when you looked at the makeup of the city council, that made complete sense.”
Wu’s grandparents fled mainland China for Taiwan to escape civil war, and her Taiwanese-born parents then immigrated to the U.S., where she was born. “I can’t remember one instance where we discussed politics or current events at the dinner table,” Wu recalled, adding that “in my family’s multi-generational immigration story, politics was fear and famine, and war and corruption, and all of the many things that we were supposed to stay far away from growing up.”
After attending Harvard as an undergraduate, she returned home to Chicago to care for her younger sisters as their mother dealt with a mental health crisis. “All of a sudden, the bubble around us that had kept us completely walled off from politics and government bursts, and I had to deal with government all the time in extremely frustrating ways,” Wu said. She had witnessed people call the police on her mother, and she also had to learn to manage local government bureaucracy in Chicago when she opened a small business to support her family.
Wu has advocated for limiting funding for police, and instead rerouting it to mental health or social services. “I am one of the candidates in this election cycle that has committed to not accepting donations from the police union. We are in a moment of national reckoning on systemic racism that Boston must show leadership on,” she said.
She noted the strong partnerships between Jewish and Asian populations in the city, and credited Boston’s Jewish community for its activism dating back decades. “I feel very grateful for the efforts and the work that has been done with civil rights and antisemitism that has really laid the groundwork and continues to be the foundation for so much anti-racism work here in our city,” Wu said. “There are so many incredible community leaders and organizations building community, not just to connect members of the Jewish community, but really to create community across the board.”
Annissa Essaibi George
Councilor Annissa Essaibi George spent 13 years as a teacher at Boston public schools, a unique perspective she wants to bring to Boston’s top job. “Teaching in the classroom, teenagers gave me, I call it, a front-row seat to the people of Boston,” Essaibi George said. “When I taught high school, 11th and 12th grade, you sort of see the end result when systems fail our kids and fail our families.”
She ticked off some of the challenges she witnessed from that vantage point: “The impacts of substance use disorders on our kids and on our families; the impact of trauma; the impact of poverty; the impact of food insecurity; the impact of not being able to access healthcare, whether it’s physical healthcare or mental health care; [and] the impact of not having access to a high-quality education.”
“The community of Boston is in a period of transformation, and asking questions about what kind of city it wants to be going forward, both as an urban center and as the hub of a region,” said Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.
Born and raised in Boston, Essaibi George is a first-generation immigrant, the child of a Tunisian father and a Polish mother. Her mother had been born in a displaced persons camp in Germany after World War II. “My grandmother, as a teenager, was taken to work in a labor camp in Germany, and my grandfather was in the Polish army and was a prisoner of war,” she explained. Essaibi George grew up largely within Boston’s Polish community, and she was raised Catholic, but she also grew up learning about Islam and Tunisian culture from her father. Her campaign office is located in her grandparents’ old house, where her grandfather once owned and operated a TV and radio repair business.
“I share a common thread, I think, with most Bostonians, certainly those that are first-generation Americans, as a daughter of immigrants,” Essaibi George said. “Boston is rich in its ethnic and cultural diversity.” Should she be elected, she hopes to “first and foremost [build] a cabinet and an administration that is diverse and reflective of Boston to best tackle … systemic inequities.”
Essaibi George views police reform as part of addressing inequality in the city, but “I don’t support defunding the police,” she said, adding that many voters have told her they also hope to see more police officers. “I’ve heard how important public safety is, and we’ve seen some significant violence recently in our city. I have residents calling for more public safety, for more police, for a heightened presence of police officers across our city.” Shootings and homicides were up in 2020 — the city had 57 murders, compared to 37 in 2019 — but overall crime was down in the city.
Essaibi George expressed a commitment to combating antisemitism in Boston. “At the city level, we have a certain responsibility to be very intentional when thinking about and working against racism, antisemitism or hate,” she said. “A number of years ago, the Holocaust memorial in Boston was damaged, and as a city we came together to support our Jewish community and to support and honor what that memorial recognizes, remembers and reflects upon.”
Jon Santiago
As an emergency room doctor and a state representative, Santiago has had a busy year serving people at Boston Medical Center and in the state house. He knows that if he becomes mayor, he’ll have to put his medical career on pause — but that’s what he’s always wanted, he said: “That was always the game plan. I wanted to practice medicine for six to 10 years, but my eyes are always on the bigger picture, on those root causes [of the city’s critical problems],” he explained. “The way I look at problems is through a very comprehensive lens.”
When a gunshot victim enters his emergency room, Santiago said he considers the factors that could have led to that moment. It’s “a number of factors of a comprehensive, larger nature,” he said, including “housing, transportation, economic opportunity, education” that could ultimately contribute to who gets shot. “It’s not a coincidence why almost all the gunshot victims are young, Black or brown males.”
Born in Puerto Rico, Santiago moved to Boston as a toddler, and first began to see how public policy could impact health outcomes when his uncle contracted HIV. “Boston has been a place of opportunity where if you work hard, if you dream big, good things can happen. For me, it’s always been this inspirational place, but at the same time, it’s been a place of tragedy,” he said. “It’s a place where my uncle likely became infected with HIV and passed away from AIDS later on, leaving his son, my cousin, to become an AIDS orphan.” Seeing his uncle get sick and die led to his decision to go to medical school. Santiago later served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic and studied as a Fulbright scholar in Paris.
Santiago presents himself as an outsider, having beaten a 36-year incumbent in his election to the state house in 2018, and he thinks Boston needs a mayor who does not come from within city politics. “The question I asked myself is, was I happy with the situation the city of Boston is currently faced with right now?” Santiago said. The answer was no. “There’s probably about 30-plus combined years of City Hall experience in those five candidates, not just years of experience, but also in leadership positions, multiple city council presidents, the chair of a department there,” he added. “The question for me is, Why are we going to the same people who have been in charge of the system — who enabled the system?”
Although Santiago has expressed support for reallocating money from the Boston police budget, he shied away from referring to his position as defunding the police. “I think that the term ‘defund the police’ is a term that has not served anything, anyone or any community,” he said. “I’m a person of color. I grew up in urban America for a number of years. I know what it feels like to be intimidated by cops,” Santiago noted, adding that he also sees the other side of the issue: “I understand the role that the cops do daily because I work with them in the emergency room. I see them each and every shift, and I respect the work they do.”
Like the other candidates, Santiago is running as a progressive. But he is also pushing a message of unity and understanding across political differences. “I think we have a lot more in common with each other, and I just believe in this American pragmatism,” Santiago argued. “I want to bring a sense of belief that Boston is a place where things can happen, where people can come together and work to achieve and address these complex issues.”
Santiago said that he met with members of the Jewish community at the urging of some Jewish members of his staff. “Their issues are very much intertwined with everyone’s issues — housing affordability, transportation, equity, education, how can we fight for a city that is responsive, and that reflects all of our interests,” he noted. “I’ve developed relationships with them. I’ve knocked on their doors and spoken with their community leaders, and will continue to do so.” He said he spoke with Jewish day schools in the area about the challenges of operating during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’ve been back in the community several times since then, to really engage them and to learn from them,” Santiago noted.
John Barros announces his campaign for mayor of Boston, in a crowded Haley House Bakery Cafe, on Thursday, April 25, 2013. (Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
John Barros
Although John Barros has never held elected office, he is the only candidate to have previously run for mayor — and the Boston Globe endorsed him in 2013. That race also had a historically diverse field, though it culminated with Walsh’s victory. Barrow joined Walsh’s administration early on to oversee economic development issues. “I’m not running to make history. I’m not running because I feel like I need to be elected as a Black man. I’m running because I feel like I am ready to help the city meet the moment,” he told JI.
The economy is his expertise, and his main focus. He wants to “help our small businesses get back on their feet and get ready to help get our economy back in order, and then help to make the economy more inclusive, make those who are participating in the growth of our city more diverse,” he said. He also wants to prioritize creating Black-owned and women-owned businesses, and to “create opportunities for us to bridge the wealth divide gap in Boston.” He added that Boston faces many of the same challenges now as when he ran for mayor in 2013 — pandemic aside — but one major change is “the urgency is now different when you talk about transit and climate justice. It wasn’t part of the conversation back then.”
Barros’s political resume highlights his time as a community organizer, but he is also a small business owner himself. The son of immigrants from Cape Verde, in Western Africa, he owns a Cape Verdean restaurant called Restaurante Cesaria in Dorchester. “During the pandemic, we knew firsthand what it meant to try to survive as a small business and keep families employed. It was really difficult,” he said. “We had to make some tough cuts. The management left some paychecks on the table to make the right decision and try to keep the team in place.”
In that role, Barros had to navigate thorny ethical issues. “One of the toughest things for the restaurant is, I was able to manage the direct relief program from city government to small businesses, but because obviously I was a part owner of that business, [the restaurant wasn’t] able to receive any assistance,” he said. He praised that program and the resilience of Boston’s restaurants: “Restaurants and other places provide meeting space, networking space, places for people to connect, and they are really an important backbone to our community building,” he noted.
His parents came to the U.S. to build a life with better educational opportunities for their children, and he took their lessons to heart, becoming a community organizer at age 14. “I became a community organizer in my neighborhood, and started to do work in improving my neighborhood and improving the city,” he explained, later doing the work full-time and helping create urban parks and agricultural spaces. “I can’t say I’ve always wanted to be mayor. It is not true. I never thought I could be. I felt that government wasn’t for me, it was for someone else,” he said.
Barros has also expressed support for reallocating funding from the police, but he told JI he believes police must be partners in reform. “I think I can work with police to get those reforms. I started working with police on police reform matters as part of the Walsh administration,” he said. “It’s work that you do by bringing police to the table and having the hard conversations about what needs to change, and that’s the only way it can happen. Because the police, like everyone else, have bargaining units, have contracts.”
Barros highlighted his opposition to antisemitism and a commitment to fighting hate crimes in the city. “The Jewish community has seen an increase in crime, and we have to stand up against that and be firm in a zero-tolerance policy,” he explained. “It is a threat to all communities if we don’t stand up for the hate crimes being perpetrated to other communities.”
The controversial Iowa congressman is facing a formidable opponent in State Senator Randy Feenstra
In 2018, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) narrowly defeated his Democratic rival, J.D. Scholten, by roughly 10,000 votes. Two years later, bruised by a series of controversies and repudiated by his party’s leadership, King is limping towards his ninth re-election bid. Four candidates are challenging the embattled congressman in Tuesday’s GOP primary to represent Iowa’s 4th congressional district — and one, State Senator Randy Feenstra, may be within striking range of ending King’s tenure in Washington.
King has not run a single television ad over the course of his latest campaign, and entered the final phase of the primary with a little over $30,000 cash on hand. He has been outraised 2-1 by Feenstra, according to the most recent FEC filings. Two recent polls have shown mixed results: A poll conducted by The Iowa Standard shows King with a 13-point lead over Feenstra, while a poll sponsored by the American Future Fund organization showed Feenstra with a two-point lead. Others in the race include businessmen Bret Richards and Steve Reeder and Woodbury County Supervisor Jeremy Taylor.
Feenstra, 51, has represented Iowa’s 2nd district in the State Senate since 2009, where he serves as assistant majority leader in the GOP-controlled legislature. Previously, he worked in local government for nearly a decade. Feenstra graduated from Dort College and got his master’s degree at Iowa State University. In the private sector, he was head of the sales department at Foreign Candy Company, a large candy manufacturer best known for its Black Forest-flavored gummy bears.
King has a history of making bigoted comments against a variety of minority groups, and has faced criticism for his association with far-right political parties in Europe. In 2006, the nine-term congressman called the deaths of Americans at the hands of undocumented immigrants “a slow-motion Holocaust.” Last year, House Republican leaders voted to remove King from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees following comments that appeared to defend white nationalists and white supremacists. Earlier this month, King claimed he had reached an agreement with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to return to his committee slots. The statement was immediately denied by the GOP leader.
King’s original journey to Washington was not a smooth one. In 2002, he ran for the open seat in the 5th congressional district after Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA), who had previously represented the district, ran in the newly redrawn 4th district. King received 30% of the vote in a four-way Republican primary, sending the race to a convention, where he narrowly edged out State House Speaker Brent Siegrist. King went on to win the general election with 62% of the vote. In 2013, his district was combined with the 4th.
But King may still come out on top next Tuesday. “Four people in the race always helps the incumbent,” Rick Bertrand, who challenged King in the 2016 primary, told The New York Times. During a TV debate on Tuesday, King was asked by his main opponent if he would commit to supporting the GOP nominee in the district in November. “I am going to be the nominee, and that’s my answer,” he replied.
Iowa State Senator Randy Feenstra (Feenstra for Congress)
Feenstra launched his campaign in January 2019 after King was stripped of his committee assignments. He immediately received the backing of former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. In a recent interview with Jewish Insider, Feenstra maintained that King being deprived of his committee responsibilities, in particular the agriculture committee, is a good enough reason for him to be replaced. “We have a big agricultural area in our 4th district, and we have lost the seat at the table,” he noted.
The case against King, Feenstra said, is simple: As an ineffective lawmaker sidelined by his colleagues, the congressman would not be able to advocate for quality-of-life issues that matter to constituents. A primary victory for King “puts the seat at risk, and we don’t need anybody else to help [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, that’s for sure,” Feenstra stressed. The winner of the primary will face Scholten in the fall.
Iowa conservative Christian leader Bob Vander Plaat, who served with King as co-chair of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) 2016 presidential campaign, is backing Feenstra, as is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which aired more than $200,000 in advertising on broadcast and cable television in the Des Moines and Ames media market, according to Advertising Analytics.
The Republican Jewish Coalition also offered its support to Feenstra. Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH), a member of the Steering Committee and former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, didn’t endorse any candidate, but told JTA that the RJC deserves praise for taking the rare step of supporting a challenger to an incumbent.
“Steve King’s comments put him clearly outside of the mainstream of the Republican Party and they certainly don’t reflect or represent what we feel to be the values of the Republican Jewish Coalition,” RJC executive director Matt Brooks told JI. “And given that we think we have a strong candidate who can win in Randy Feenstra, we felt it important to take a stand and to make a clear statement that we will do everything in our power to defeat King in the primary and to elect somebody who is better representative of our values.”
Feenstra has never been to Israel, but says that as a deeply religious person, he’s committed to supporting the Jewish state. “I’ve read the Old Testament many, many times,” he told JI, noting that “actually, right now” he’s reading the book of Exodus. “It’s just very intriguing to me. I just love what Israel stands for. Israel is so important for us as a nation to have as a great ally in the Middle East, and we have to be their protectors,” he added.
As a supporter of the president, Feenstra praised Trump for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. He also backs the president’s Mideast peace plan, but stated, “I don’t believe Israel has to give up ground. We have to create a demarcation line and say, ‘This is Israel’s land and let’s be done with it.’” Feenstra took pride in being part of the effort to pass anti-BDS legislation in Iowa in 2016 that prevents state pension funds from directly investing in companies that boycott Israel.
In Congress, King has been a hawkish supporter of Israel. In 2017, he introduced a resolution “rejecting” the two-state solution. During a debate on an AIPAC-backed bipartisan House resolution (H. R 11) that rebuked the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution condemning Israel, King said, “I would like to have a debate on the one-state solution versus the two-state solution because I believe that the two-state solution has run its course and we need to pack up our tools and ship those off to the side and start all over again with a new look.”
RJC’s Brooks pushed back against criticism that his organization has abandoned a strong supporter of Israel. “Because somebody stands with us on Israel, which we appreciate, that does not give them a pass to support white nationalism and embrace white nationalist candidates,” Brooks said. “Our endorsement and our support transcends that — Randy Feenstra is going to be a great friend and outspoken supporter of Israel.”
Brooks noted that the action taken against King by the House Republican Caucus “stands in stark contrast to the lack of action by any of the leaders on the Democratic side with regard to the blatant antisemitism of [Rep.] Ilhan Omar and the offensive and troubling comments by Omar and [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib.” He added, “Republicans have shown that there are clear red lines and act when people within our party cross those lines.”
If successful in his mission to oust the controversial incumbent, Feenstra wants the national newspapers to move on from its focus on his district. “I’m going to Washington to be an effective conservative leader,” he said. “Voters want an effective leader who can stand up and push the conservative agenda of reducing taxes, protecting lives and protecting our constitutional freedoms. That’s the bottom line.”
Low turnout predicted with fewer parties, greater apathy and an uncertain future
Oded Balilty/AP
People walk by election campaign billboards showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside the Blue and White party leaders in Tel Aviv in April.
It will have been just 161 days — five months, one week and one day — between Israel’s last national election and the one slated for Tuesday. For the first time in the country’s history, nobody was able to form a government after April’s vote, and a redo election was called. What has changed over the past five months and what remains the same? What are the likely outcomes of this week’s election — and could a third round be a possibility?
It’s unlikely that many Israelis have changed their political views over the past five months. Indeed, polls show that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White are once again running neck-and-neck to become the largest party in the next Knesset. In April, they each garnered 35 seats, and the final polls published before the redo election showed them each poised to receive between 30-33 seats.
The overall party landscape is relatively similar as well, though there have been a few changes. Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu merged with Likud. Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked’s New Right Party — which didn’t pass the 3.25% electoral threshold in April — has joined back up with Jewish Home to form Yamina, this time excluding the far-right Jewish Power Party. Amir Peretz replaced Avi Gabbay as Labor head and merged with Orly Levy’s Gesher, which also missed the threshold earlier this year. The Arab parties reformed their merged Joint List, and Moshe Feiglin’s failed Zehut dropped out after cutting a deal with Netanyahu. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak reentered politics and joined up with Meretz and renegade Labor MK Stav Shaffir to form the Democratic Union.
And while in April, a record 47 parties registered for the election, this time just 31 will be on the ballot. More than 350,000 votes — 8.4% of all ballots — were thrown out earlier this year after being cast for parties that fell beneath the threshold. With the number of competing parties dropping, that figure is likely to fall as well.
But perhaps the biggest change between the two elections is voter apathy. Israelis are largely sick and tired of the politicking, the campaigning and the money wasted in restaging the election. Anecdotally, many Israelis have indicated they will stay home from the polls come Tuesday, and voter turnout is predicted to drop significantly from April’s 68%. That drop in turnout is expected to strengthen the haredi parties, whose constituents tend to vote out of a sense of religious obligation — so much so that Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Lieberman has been pushing for mandatory voting legislation to help counter the ultra-Orthodox voting edge.
In a twist of irony, while Lieberman is largely responsible for the redo election, and the do-over vote is unpopular, the former defense minister himself appears poised to benefit. In the April vote Yisrael Beytenu received 5 seats, but the latest polls show it getting 8-11 in next week’s election.
Lieberman heads one of the few parties that has not promised to join either Likud or Blue and White in a governing coalition. Instead, he has vowed to join the two parties together in a unity government that includes Yisrael Beytenu and leaves the haredi parties in the opposition.
By 10 p.m. on Tuesday evening, Israelis will have completed voting in their second national election of 2019. Exit polls will be published immediately, but official results will only begin trickling in overnight. Counting of the “double envelope” votes — from soldiers, prisoners and hospital patients — likely won’t be complete until Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.
Once the seats alloted to each party are finalized, party leaders will begin to meet with President Reuven Rivlin and recommend someone who will be tasked with forming a coalition. That person gets 28 days — plus a potential extension — to fashion a 61-seat majority government.
What are the likely outcomes?
The final polls published before the election show that both Netanyahu and Gantz are likely to struggle to build a coalition. Unless the right-wing and haredi parties vastly outperform the polls, Netanyahu will likely try once again to convince Lieberman to join a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties, which is exactly what he refused to do in April.
And unless the left-wing parties and Blue and White significantly surpass polling expectations, Gantz won’t be able to form a government either. Even with the support of the Arab parties — something Blue and White has dismissed and many of the Joint List members have derided — Gantz will be unable to form a coalition without Lieberman, who will never sit with the Arab factions.
Lieberman — who former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren dubbed the potential kingmaker and the kingslayer in The Atlantic last month — appears to hold all the cards. And he has vowed to push Likud and Blue and White to sit together in a unity government. Likud has vociferously sworn against such a move, and Blue and White leaders have said they will never sit with Netanyahu. Speculation has also run rampant that somehow Netanyahu will be forced out of the Likud leadership, and a new party leader will agree to a unity coalition. That rumor spurred Netanyahu to force 40 members of the party to swear a loyalty pledge to him last month.
No matter the outcome, the normally quiet news period in Israel over the High Holidays will instead be dominated by headlines over coalition engineering. The only thing that appears clear ahead of the vote is that some — if not all — of the parties will be breaking their campaign promises.
And if no government is able to be built at all once more? That’s right — a third election.
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