Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) upped the ante on his recent rhetoric targeting right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson, telling a gathering of Jewish leaders in Washington that calling out antisemitism from Carlson and his Republican allies is necessary to defend American values. He said America faces an “existential crisis” if the rising antisemitism on the American right is not addressed.

“I do not want to wake up in five years and find that the Republican Party has become like the Democrat Party,” Cruz said on Tuesday at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, which brought together 2,000 philanthropists, activists and Jewish communal professionals. “I do not want to wake up in five years and find that both major parties in America have embraced hatred of Israel and have tolerated, if not embraced, antisemitism.”

The conservative movement has faced internal division and tensions since Carlson hosted neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes on his podcast last month. 

By digging in on his campaign against Carlson, Cruz further separated himself from President Donald Trump, who on Sunday night offered praise for the former Fox News host when he was asked about Carlson’s decision to do a friendly interview with Fuentes. 

“He said good things about me over the years. I think he’s good,” Trump said. “You can’t tell him who to interview.” 

Cruz, meanwhile, has gone after Carlson in increasingly sharp messages, after having his own heated interview with the podcaster in June — including at the recent Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas, then at a Federalist Society conference in Washington and now at the GA. 

In his latest speech, he did more than calling out Carlson and his Republican enablers. He made the case that countering Carlson’s influence is necessary for the future of America.

“That is a poison that not only does damage to Israel. That is a poison that does damage to America,” Cruz said. “And if we’re going to stop it, we’re going to stop it because we stand up and say, ‘No, this is not who we are. This is not what we believe. This is not what the Constitution and the Declaration [of Independence] were all about. This is not what America was all about.’”

At the GA, Cruz was addressing a friendly audience who had spent two days immersed in programming about antisemitism in America. But he warned that many people are not fully grasping the scope of the problem. He described a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this year where, he said, Netanyahu tried to push back on the idea that right-wing antisemitism was a threat. 

“I’ll tell you, he actually was a little dismissive of that. He said, ‘No, no, no, that’s Qatar, that’s Iran, that’s bots,’” Cruz said. “My response: ‘Mr. Prime Minister, yes, but no. Yes, that’s happening. Yes, there are millions of dollars being spent to spread this poison. Yes, that’s happening online. But it is real and organic.’”

The misunderstanding, Cruz said, also exists in the Christian world.

“My message to the Christians is, this poison is spreading. There are pastors who love Israel, who think all is fine,” Cruz said. “My message to them is, ‘Go and talk to the teenagers in your congregation. Go and talk to the 20-somethings in your congregation, because they’re picking up their phone and they’re watching Tiktok and they’re watching Instagram, and they’re hearing this message being driven, and it is resonating.’”

The answer, Cruz said, is for other public officials — Republicans in particular — to speak out. But what’s at stake, he argued, is more than just their party or the Jewish community. He made the case that they must do so for the good of America. 

“My hope is that we see other Republicans willing to stand up, willing to stand up and to be clear, willing to draw a line,” he said. “This is a fight worth fighting. Saving America is worth fighting. Bringing us back to our founding principles — that is worth fighting.” 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized Republicans who refuse to disavow prominent antisemites in the conservative movement as “cowards” after the Heritage Foundation and its president, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson and his friendly interview with neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes. 

Cruz warned during a half hour address at the opening of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas on Thursday evening that young Christians were turning away from supporting Israel, something he argued was the result of pro-Israel Christians being maligned by leading voices in the America First movement. 

The Texas Republican senator did not mention the Heritage Foundation, Roberts, Carlson or Fuentes by name, though he accused anyone who uncritically promotes Adolf Hitler of being “complicit” in spreading virulent antisemitism.

Fuentes has praised Hitler on multiple occasions; in his statement, Roberts said he “disagree[s] with” some of Fuentes’ views, “but canceling him is not the answer.” 

“The last year, we’ve seen three prominent people on the right publicly muse, ‘Gosh, maybe Hitler’s not all that bad.’ No. He is the embodiment of evil, a grotesque bigot. And if you’re confused by that, you’re an imbecile,” Cruz said on Thursday. “Too many people are scared to confront them. I want to ask you, how many elected Republicans do you see standing up and calling this out? How many do you see willing to take on the voices in the anti-Israel right?”

“More than a few of my Republican officeholders are terrified of upsetting people with really big megaphones,” he explained.

Cruz warned that antisemitic ideas are spreading among young Americans through social media and argued that rising support for isolationism and the pro-Israel community’s failure to adequately explain the benefits of the U.S.-Israel relationship accounted for the broad ideological shifts on the issue — but he noted that there “is also a theological argument” being made on the Christian right against Jews. 

“We are seeing young Christians and young evangelicals turning against Israel, and they are being pitched lies,” Cruz said. “One particular lie is something called replacement theology, and replacement theology is a twisted view that the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people, that the promises in the Old Testament no longer apply and that Christians have replaced Jews. Now in my Bible, I believe every word of it is true, and I believe every promise that God made to the people of Israel remains a promise that is made to the chosen people.”

After noting that he was “proud to be a Christian Zionist,” Cruz noted Carlson’s recent comments expressing his disdain for people who identify as such while appearing to note his protected status in the Trump administration. Carlson attacked Cruz and other pro-Israel conservatives, including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, by name in his podcast conversation with Fuentes, where Carlson claimed that those who identify as Christian Zionists have been infected by a “brain virus.”

“There are some people who are embraced at the highest level of government who said there is no one they hate more than Christian Zionists,” Cruz said. “Well, I’ll tell you what, there’s no one I hate more than communists and jihadists who want to murder us. Now is the time for choosing. Now is the time for courage.”

“If you sit there and nod adoringly while someone tells you that Winston Churchill was the villain of World War II, if you sit there and nod while someone says, ‘Well, there’s a very good argument that America should have intervened on behalf of Nazi Germany in World War II.’ If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” he added.

Omri Ceren, Cruz’s legislative director and longtime advisor, criticized Heritage directly in a post on X on Friday morning, writing that: “I mean, if Republican Jews don’t have a place at @Heritage that’s a choice its current leadership is institutionally empowered to make, but it sits uncomfortably with the organization’s history.”

Cruz’s comments were met with praise from Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s special antisemitism envoy during the Biden administration, who posted a message on X commending the Texas Republican.

Right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson, who has hosted Holocaust deniers and antisemitic influencers on his podcast, used his address at the memorial for conservative influencer Charlie Kirk in Arizona on Sunday to compare Kirk’s assassination to the killing of Jesus. 

The former Fox News host began his remarks to the more than 70,000 people in attendance at State Farm Stadium in Glendale by noting that the political engagement brought on by Kirk’s killing “actually reminds me of my favorite story ever,” before offering an account of how Jesus was killed in Jerusalem. While he never brought up the Jewish people by name, he made references to Jewish culture to suggest that he was referring to the antisemitic trope that Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus. 

“It’s about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem and Jesus shows up, and he starts talking about the people in power, and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do: just telling the truth about people, and they hate it, and they just go bonkers. They hate it, and they become obsessed with making him stop. ‘This guy’s got to stop talking. We’ve got to shut this guy up,’” Carlson said.

“I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about, ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking.’ There’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Let me just kill him. That’ll shut him up, that’ll fix the problem.’ It doesn’t work that way,” he continued.

Carlson, who spoke for just under six minutes, then quoted the beatitude from Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” He connected the passage to Kirk’s political message, making the argument that the slain conservative activist “was bringing the gospel to the country. He was doing the thing that the people in charge hate most, which is calling for them to repent.”

“How is Charlie’s message different? Charlie was a political person who was deeply interested in coalition building and getting the right people in office, because he knew that vast improvements are possible politically, but he also knew that politics is not the final answer. It can’t answer the deepest questions, actually, that the only real solution is Jesus,” Carlson said. “Politics at its core is a process of critiquing other people and getting them to change. Christianity, the gospel message, the message of Jesus, begins with repentance.”

Carlson went on to praise Kirk for not having “hate in his heart” and being able to “forgive other people” by following “a call to change our hearts from Jesus,” before acknowledging his own shortcomings.

“Charlie was fearless at all times, truly fearless. To his last moment, he was unafraid. He was not defensive, and there was no hate in his heart. I know that because I’ve got a little hate compartment in my heart, and I would often express that surely about various people,” Carlson said. “He would always say, ‘That’s a sad person, that’s a broken person, that’s a person who needs help, that’s a person who needs Jesus’. He said that in private, because he meant it.” 

A new poll commissioned by a left-wing advocacy group is raising hopes among progressive activists eager to enlist a challenger to take on Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), a pro-Israel Democrat whose House district leans heavily to the left, in next year’s June primary election.

The poll, released this week by Demand Progress Action, shows Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, leading by 19 points in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Goldman, who wins just 33% of the vote. Lander, who served as a longtime city councilman in the district, claims 52% among likely Democratic primary voters, while also boasting a higher favorability rating, according to the poll.

While the survey was meant to coax Lander into entering the primary, it remains unclear if he has the appetite to compete in what would likely be a bitter race for the seat covering Lower Manhattan and a swath of Brooklyn, including such progressive enclaves as Park Slope.

Lander, a well-known progressive who has not explicitly ruled out a congressional bid after losing in the New York City mayoral primary, is more widely expected to accept a senior role in a potential administration of Zohran Mamdani, the far-left Democratic nominee for mayor whose upset in June lent renewed energy to progressive activists who have eyed challenges to several mainstream House Democrats in New York City.

Still, Lander had been looking at Goldman’s seat since before the primary concluded, according to a political consultant familiar with the situation, who suggested the city comptroller could be “serious” about a campaign.

Lander’s team, several members of which have joined Mamdani’s campaign, has also reportedly clashed with the nominee’s aides, fueling speculation about his prospects for securing a position in a potential future administration. A person familiar with some of the internal tensions said broadly that they stem in part from a lingering Brooklyn political dispute involving Lander and grudgingly recalled by some close aides to Mamdani.

“I think that Lander can beat Goldman, but I thought that even before the poll came out,” said a political consultant who worked to elect Goldman during his first primary in 2022, when the former Trump impeachment prosecutor beat a crowded field of progressives to clinch the nomination with a plurality of the vote.

A spokesperson for Lander did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider on his plans for a challenge. His team has otherwise said that “there is no drama between Brad and Zohran or their ‘camps.’”

If Lander chooses to run for the seat held by Goldman, a two-term Jewish Democrat whose strong support for Israel and refusal to endorse Mamdani have sparked backlash among left-wing voters, he would be a formidable candidate, experts say, citing his widespread popularity in a district he has long called home.

“I think that Lander can beat Goldman, but I thought that even before the poll came out,” said a political consultant who worked to elect Goldman during his first primary in 2022, when the former Trump impeachment prosecutor beat a crowded field of progressives to clinch the nomination with a plurality of the vote.

The potential matchup would also set up a unique primary between two Jewish Democrats who both identify as Zionists but have differing approaches to what that label means, particularly in the aftermath of Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Goldman, for his part, has continued to back U.S. military aid to Israel, even as he recently said the “crisis in Gaza shocks the conscience” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “personal and political interests are guiding Israel’s actions, rather than what is best for” the Jewish state.

The 49-year-old lawmaker has also withheld an endorsement of Mamdani until he takes “concrete steps” to address concerns raised by Jewish voters over his anti-Israel rhetoric, including his refusal to explicitly condemn calls to “globalize the intifada,” a phrase many Jews view as antisemitic. Mamdani has said he does not use the slogan and that he will discourage its usage.

Goldman’s largely left-leaning House seat “is probably one of the biggest changes in terms of pro-Israel to not pro-Israel districts in the city,” said Chris Coffey, a veteran Democratic strategist who lives in the district and helped advise former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral bid during the primary.

Lander, who has long identified as a progressive Zionist, is a vocal critic of Israel’s war in Gaza and has called for pulling aid to Israel. The 56-year-old comptroller has faced criticism from the organized Jewish community for divesting from Israel bonds while in office, though he has said the decision was not political. Lander was a key Jewish validator for Mamdani in the primary, cross-endorsing with the 33-year-old democratic socialist and assemblyman from Queens. Mamdani won Goldman’s district in June.

Speaking at a Jews for Racial and Economic Justice event earlier this week, Lander said he had not done enough “to speak out against Israel’s war crimes, against ethnic cleansing, against forced starvation of Palestinians.”

Chris Coffey, a veteran Democratic strategist who lives in the district and helped advise former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral bid during the primary, said that Goldman is not likely to find himself in a vulnerable position unless Lander chooses to run, an outcome he does not anticipate with Mamdani well poised to win the general election.

Still, Goldman is now in a “precarious place,” Coffey told JI, “where he’s a pro-Israel Democrat in a time when it’s been harder to be a pro-Israel Democrat.”

Goldman’s largely left-leaning House seat “is probably one of the biggest changes in terms of pro-Israel to not pro-Israel districts in the city,” he added, noting the shift had occurred in recent years amid growing Democratic divisions over Israel and Gaza.

Some observers recently speculated that Goldman could switch districts and run for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s (D-NY) seat further north in Manhattan, where he would likely face a more friendly electorate. But his team has dismissed that idea as unfounded and said Goldman had no plans to run for another seat.   

“Dan Goldman isn’t a moderate, he’s definitely left of center,” said the political consultant close to Goldman, who is now working on a super PAC to oppose Mamdani. “Brad may win because of his name ID and reputation but any other opponent would likely lose.”

The poll released on Wednesday underscored that view, showing that Goldman would win with 41% of the vote against an unnamed Democratic candidate. His lead evaporated after the poll had, among other things, linked him to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, which had quietly funded a local super PAC three years ago to help boost his first primary bid.

AIPAC, whose political arm endorsed Goldman in February, did not return a request for comment on a potential primary.

“Dan is laser-focused on rooting out government corruption, defending our democracy from Donald Trump and leveling the playing field for all New Yorkers.” Simone Kanter, a senior advisor to Goldman, told JI. “Anyone who would like to throw their hat in the ring is more than welcome to.”

David Greenfield, a former city councilman who leads the Jewish anti-poverty group Met Council, said the results of the poll were unsurprising, even as he dismissed the survey for posing a “misleading” question. “Everyone knows Brad is not running for Congress,” he told JI, “because he’s slated to join a Zohran Mamdani administration.”

It was unclear if the poll had surveyed respondents about other potential candidates. Demand Progress Action did not return requests for comment, nor did Data for Progress, a progressive firm that conducted the poll.

Simone Kanter, a senior advisor to Goldman, told JI the congressman’s team is “not paying any attention to agenda-driven push polls.”

“Dan is laser-focused on rooting out government corruption, defending our democracy from Donald Trump and leveling the playing field for all New Yorkers.” Kanter said on Thursday. “Anyone who would like to throw their hat in the ring is more than welcome to.”

While a competitive primary would likely attract spending from outside groups, Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune whose estimated net worth is up to $250 million, could also self-fund his bid as he did in 2022 — when he prevailed with 26% of the vote in a crowded field of well-known politicians. 

Yuh-Line Niou, a former state assemblywoman who came in second in 2022 with 24%, has said privately she plans to run again and has been making calls to feel out support, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Niou, an outspoken progressive who faced backlash in the last race for backing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, declined to comment on the record when reached this week by JI. 

Goldman is also likely to face a repeat challenger from his 2024 primary, Evan Hutchison, who won 24% of the vote last cycle and has recently sent out fundraising texts saying that the incumbent “won’t condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” But strategists said they do not see his campaign as a serious threat to Goldman, who claimed 66% in his last primary.

President Donald Trump came into office with a promise to make tackling antisemitism a priority of his second term. So far, the focus of that effort has been almost exclusively on addressing left-wing and Islamist antisemitism, primarily tied to anti-Israel extremism — while leaving out antisemitism emerging from the political right. 

Now, a group of staunch Trump allies from within the evangelical Christian community is urging Republicans to also focus on countering what they describe as a growing threat of antisemitism from within their own camp. They see prominent MAGA-aligned figures such as podcast hosts Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens platforming overtly antisemitic views, and worry that those voices — with massive social media followings — could play a role in shaping the direction of the Republican Party.

Last month, an organization called the Conference of Christian Presidents for Israel hosted a meeting to discuss the topic at the Family Research Council, a powerful Christian advocacy group. Billed as a “private roundtable for key Christian leaders,” according to the event invitation, it identified right-wing antisemitism as a high-stakes challenge: “It is vital that Christian leaders counter the forces on the right who are demonizing the state of Israel, its leadership and the Jewish people,” stated the invitation, which was obtained by Jewish Insider. 

“We’ve been very concerned about the progressive leftist [antisemitism],” Mario Bramnick, a pastor in South Florida who is the president of the Latino Coalition for Israel, told JI on Tuesday. He is also the founder of the Christian Conference, and he organized last month’s event with Luke Moon, the executive director of the Philos Project. “But some of the statements coming out on the right, to me, are possibly more brazen and more troubling and clearly, clearly, do not represent President Trump or his administration,” added Bramnick. 

The meeting was attended by Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s nominee to serve as the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, as well as Mark Walker, a former congressman from North Carolina who is Trump’s pick to serve as ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. Yair Netanyahu, the eldest son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed the group virtually.

“Antisemitism is a bipartisan issue and needs to be condemned anytime, anyplace,” Kaploun told JI. “It is imperative that all parties educate their members about  the  dangers of antisemitism.”

The Christian group is concerned about a small but growing anti-Israel faction within the Republican Party. In a press release on Tuesday, Bramnick called out Carlson and Owens, as well as two figures who remain close to Trump: Steve Bannon and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). A Trump administration spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

“It’s almost like we have more of an onus to handle this, because it’s our own camp, our own family. Imagine something goes wrong with someone in your family, you feel more of an obligation,” Bramnick told JI. “Who better than us to be able to handle it?”

Bramnick met last week with Justice Department senior counsel Leo Terrell, the chair of the federal government’s antisemitism task force, to raise the issue of antisemitism on the right. 

“They are clearly on this and following it, from my understanding, and wanting to work with us,” Bramnick said. A spokesperson for Terrell did not respond to a request for comment.

The Conference of Christian Presidents has ties to influential conservative groups in Washington. Hours after the meeting at the Family Research Council, the Conference co-hosted an event on the Trump administration’s policies in the Middle East with the Heritage Foundation. The event featured video remarks from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and a keynote speech by evangelical leader Rev. Johnnie Moore, executive chair of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. 

Last year, the Heritage Foundation released a policy document focused on antisemitism, called Project Esther, which identified left-wing antisemitism as the main form of antisemitism in the U.S., without mentioning any issues on the right. An inquiry to the authors of the Project Esther report did not garner a response. 

Christians United for Israel, the largest Christian pro-Israel group with more than 10 million members, is not part of the Conference of Christian Presidents for Israel. But Sandra Hagee Parker, chair of the CUFI Action Fund, told JI that the organization agrees with the need to combat antisemitism on the right.

“One cannot be a Christian and antisemitic. The two are mutually exclusive,” Parker said in a statement. “Just as liberals must condemn those who use human rights as cover for their Jew-hatred, conservatives must call out those who drape themselves in the flag or the banner of the cross while bastardizing the former and defiling the latter.”  

Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks said antisemitism is “percolating out there at the extreme ends of the far right, well outside of the mainstream of the Republican Party.” 

“I don’t know that it’s growing. It’s gotten a little louder,” he told JI. “Our challenge and our effort going forward is to ensure that it doesn’t take hold in the Republican Party as it did in the Democratic Party.”

Based on the latest wave of Democratic primary results, it’s looking more likely that the hard-left “resistance” faction of the Democratic Party, which was muted in the aftermath of the 2024 election, is reasserting itself in a consequential way — especially in the deep-blue cities that make up much of the party’s voting base. 

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s come-from-behind victory in the New York City mayor’s primary was a major wake-up-call for party leadership. His success came after a surge of progressive discontent with the Democratic establishment, a sentiment fueled by the Trump administration’s aggressive (and at times, unlawful) deportation push, the imposition of tariffs and the general sense that party leaders in Washington weren’t doing everything they could to oppose President Donald Trump’s polarizing policies.

The reason the Democratic Party brand is polling at historic lows is because a sizable share of younger, progressive voters are expressing their discontent with their own party leadership — even as most still plan to vote Democratic in a general election. We’re seeing the growth of the left-wing faction within the party, in real time. 

The fact that Mamdani’s radical views on the economy, crime and antisemitism did little to dissuade a critical mass of rank-and-file Democrats is a sign of the changing mood of the party. 

That same dynamic that drove New York City Democrats was apparent in the first round of results in Seattle’s local primaries Tuesday night. 

In the early returns from the city’s all-party primary, moderate incumbents — serving as mayor, city attorney and council president — were all trailing left-wing challengers. The moderate city officials were elected in 2021, largely as a backlash to the crime, homelessness and disorder in the city under progressive leaders. 

In the most high-profile race, Mayor Bruce Harrell is trailing progressive activist Katie Wilson, 46-45%. “Wilson’s campaign generated new excitement when Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, won the mayoral primary in New York City in June,” Seattle’s NPR affiliate reported. 

In Washington, the primary results aren’t determinative; the top two vote-getters compete against each other in the general election. But they suggest moderates will be facing an uphill battle against left-wing insurgents.

The same dynamic is at play in Minneapolis, where conventionally liberal Mayor Jacob Frey decisively lost the Democratic Party endorsement to a democratic socialist state senator, Omar Fateh. 

Frey still can win reelection in November, when all candidates appear on the general election ballot regardless of party, but the rebuke from the Democratic delegates is another sign that the party is facing a revolt from its left-wing activists.

Right now, this looks more like the party of Bernie Sanders, Mamdani and AOC. Those are the candidates that are energizing the grassroots and driving social media engagement— especially when it comes to the party’s urban voters. 

These results send a strong signal that the Democratic Party vibes have shifted. In the first few months of Trump’s second term, party leaders were desperately trying to distance themselves from the ideological baggage of the left. More recently, they’re coming to terms with the possibility that the left is taking over the party.