J Street’s college group is co-sponsoring this weekend’s College Democrats of America convention that will feature far-left, antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker.

J Street U, the student organizing arm of J Street, “is proud to sponsor and participate in the College Democrats Convention,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, told Jewish Insider on Friday, hours after Piker was announced as the convention’s “surprise speaker.” 

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack on Friday promoted a new regional trade and security alignment in the Middle East centered around Iraq, Turkey and neighboring Arab states, appearing to sideline a similar regional project including Israel.

Speaking at the U.S.-Iraq Business Summit, Barrack told attendees that Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who visited with President Donald Trump at the White House this week, is considering a transformative agreement “that will make the Strait of Hormuz” — which has been effectively shut down due to the Iran war and continued hostilities — an “afterthought in two years” by shifting trade that usually passes through the waterway to overland routes.

Days after 104 members of Congress voted in favor of a measure that sought to end U.S. aid to Israel, AIPAC will no longer allow donations through its political action committee to 18 lawmakers it endorsed who voted in favor of the legislation. 

The group did not announce the change. But the endorsement page on AIPAC’s political giving portal — where supporters can donate to candidates who have been endorsed by AIPAC — removed the option for individuals to route money to those lawmakers. 

President Donald Trump said on Friday that he has asked newly-appointed Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) to consider running in next month’s special Senate election for the full term of her late brother’s seat. 

Trump wrote on Truth Social that he had encouraged Darline Graham, who was appointed to serve out the remainder of her brother’s term following his unexpected passing last weekend, to run in the race to succeed Lindsey Graham during her visit to the White House on Thursday for their first meeting since she was sworn in. 

ASPEN, Colo. — Annalena Baerbock, the president of the United Nations General Assembly and former foreign minister of Germany, on Friday criticized the Board of Peace, the U.S.-led body responsible for managing the ceasefire in Gaza. 

The Board of Peace has “proved what I just said — that obviously it’s not so easy to build another institution, and for sure it can never ever replace the United Nations,” Baerbock said at the Aspen Security Forum, referring to claims by some in the Trump administration that the board could act as an alternative to the U.N. for a range of global conflicts. 

Keith Sonderling, the acting labor secretary nominated by President Donald Trump to officially assume the role, told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing on Thursday that the federal government must play a role in shielding workers from religious discrimination, invoking his own Jewish family history to highlight his dedication to the issue.

Responding to a question from Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) regarding the department’s responsibility to protect American workers against religious discrimination, Sonderling referenced his background and emphasized that the Department of Labor under his leadership would remain committed to rooting out bias.

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) said that he no longer wants AIPAC’s endorsement and would be “returning the funds” the group’s PAC had sent his campaign, following his vote on Wednesday, along with 102 other Democrats, to cut off all aid to Israel. The New York Democrat also said he would refund individual donors who had previously supported his campaign if they made the request.

“I expect groups like AIPAC will not support me in my future elections and frankly, I don’t want their support,” he wrote in a social media post explaining his vote, saying he would no longer back $3.3 billion in annual military aid to “a corrupt and increasingly dangerous Netanyahu regime.” 

ASPEN, Colo. — The rift growing rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates hurts U.S. interests in the region and Washington should work to bring the countries and other Gulf Cooperation Council states back together, Herro Mustafa Garg, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, argued on a panel at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday.

“This conflict, this current war with Iran, made the animosity between these two countries — and some of the other Gulf countries — at a point that is not in the U.S. national interest,” Garg said. “Also, I don’t think it helps us when we think about what we do with Iran, what we do with Iraq. We need a united GCC in order to tackle these important strategic questions.”

ASPEN, Colo. — American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch, who served as a Democratic member of Congress from 2010-2022, expressed frustration and disappointment with the decision of half of his former caucus to vote this week for an amendment to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel.

The issue, Deutch argued, is too important and too sensitive for what some supporters characterized as a show vote on an amendment, led by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), that even many of its supporters saw as deeply flawed.

Left-wing candidates, including several members of the Democratic Socialists of America, rode a wave of anti-Israel sentiment — and donor cash — to victory in primaries in New York and New Jersey in June.

The latest fundraising filing period highlighted the diverse donor bases backing some of the most outspoken critics of Israel and capitalism, with candidates raking in hundreds of thousands from executives and entrepreneurs in tech, medicine and finance:

ASPEN, Colo. — Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) argued on a panel at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday that the war with Iran had irreparably damaged the U.S.’ reputation and capacity in the Middle East, and that Gulf states would now need to take the lead and negotiate with Iran over the region’s future.

The U.S. has been “effectively eliminated as a security guarantor for our allies” because of what he described as a failed military campaign against Iran, Murphy argued.

Several House Republicans sent a letter on Thursday to the Department of Justice calling for an investigation into whether New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his international affairs commissioner, Ana María Archila, violated the Logan Act by scheduling a meeting with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations.  

Archila, who heads the New York City Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, had previously scheduled a July 7 meeting with Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s U.N. ambassador, before the State Department intervened and the meeting was canceled. 

ASPEN, Colo. — Akif Çağatay Kılıç, a top foreign policy and security advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, downplayed the threat posed to the region by Iran’s nuclear program at the Aspen Security Forum, while also repeatedly sidestepping questions about the status of Turkey’s Russian S-400 missile defense system and efforts to acquire F-35 fighter jets.

“I don’t perceive that we have a nuclear threat to the level that is being talked about, but we are closely monitoring it, and we’re talking to our Iranian colleagues and friends on how they perceive to be working on their nuclear program — civil nuclear program,” Kılıç said.

ASPEN, Colo. — Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister Ayman Safadi repeatedly emphasized on Wednesday that any deal with Iran should be comprehensive and ensure an end to Iran’s support for proxy groups and confront its efforts to destabilize the region.

The position suggests concern in the Arab world that a U.S. deal with Iran would not cover the regime’s long-running regional provocations — a concern Arab partners similarly raised about former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. 

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, indicated  he voted to cut off military aid to Israel in part because of sustained personal threats against his family and his staff, part of what  he described as a violent and relentless campaign of intimidation by far-left anti-Israel activists.

Smith voted on Wednesday to support an amendment introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to strip $3.3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel from the 2027 State Department appropriations bill — a major reversal by the hawkish Democrat after he previously told Jewish Insider he planned to oppose the measure.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said on Thursday that should Democrats regain control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections, the party will adopt a “broadly inclusive” but fundamentally new approach to policy on Israel.

Jeffries’ comments follow a historic, highly divisive floor vote on Wednesday where nearly half of House Democrats broke with him to support an amendment cutting off $3.3 billion in U.S. foreign military aid to Israel. The amendment to the 2027 State Department appropriations bill, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), ultimately failed, but laid bare a continuing erosion of support for Israel within the Democratic caucus.

Most Americans say they are concerned about antisemitism in the country, yet more than half are unaware of recent major attacks targeting Jews, such as last December’s Bondi Beach terror attack in Sydney, Australia, a new survey from Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate found. 

Underscoring this lack of awareness, the number of Americans who identify as allies of the Jewish community continued to shrink, according to the anti-hate group’s semiannual survey on U.S. antisemitism. 

ASPEN, Colo. — Robert O’Brien, who served as national security advisor during President Donald Trump’s first term, said on Wednesday that the U.S. should target Iran’s oil infrastructure with the goal of choking off its economy — and predicted that the president is moving in that direction.

The former national security advisor said on a panel at the Aspen Security Forum that Trump had been “very, very generous” with Iran but he believes that Trump’s “patience” with Iran is running thin. The next steps, he predicted, would be for the U.S. to “hit them hard” and “finish the job” by targeting sites connected with Iran’s oil infrastructure, including the facilities at Kharg Island, in order to deprive Iran of its ability to produce and export oil.

The House voted 314-104 on Wednesday to reject an amendment to the 2027 State Department appropriations bill that would have cut all $3.3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Israel. However, 103 Democrats, a near-majority of the caucus, voted in favor of the measure, with 98 others voting no and 10 voting present.

The record number of Democrats voting in favor of cutting off U.S. aid to Israel highlights the extent to which Democratic support for the Jewish state has eroded, and comes months after a vote in which 40 Senate Democrats backed blocking some weapons sales to Israel. 

Vice President JD Vance told podcaster Joe Rogan on Wednesday that he is worried American politicians are being swayed by Israeli “influence campaigns.” 

In the three-hour interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Vance warned of a “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign” to derail negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. 

Three senior U.S. officials connected to the Board of Peace, the Trump-led body created to resolve the conflict in Gaza, have been meeting with congressional offices this week to request $200 million for a peacekeeping force, according to two people with knowledge of the meetings. The meetings mark the first time that Board of Peace representatives have approached Congress with a funding request. 

Jasper Jeffers, an American military officer serving as commander of the International Stabilization Force, the United Nations-mandated peacekeeping force created in last year’s ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas; Board of Peace senior advisor Josh Gruenbaum; and retired Gen. Mark Schwartz, a former U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority who is now the Board of Peace’s security lead, spoke at the Capitol Hill meetings. 

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), the No. 2 House Democrat, said she plans to vote for an amendment by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to cut off U.S. aid to Israel next year — breaking with other members of Democratic leadership on the issue.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Tuesday that he plans to vote against the amendment but said Democratic leadership will not be whipping the vote, set for Wednesday afternoon. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), the No. 3 House Democrat, is also opposing the amendment.

The late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) understood the value of staying in President Donald Trump’s good graces — both to advance his top legislative priorities and to shield himself from challenges on his right flank.

In the wake of Graham’s sudden death, the candidates vying to succeed him have absorbed a central lesson of his career: the most decisive factor in the Republican primary will almost certainly be who wins Trump’s endorsement.

Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC), who ousted a sitting GOP lawmaker with Trump’s endorsement in 2022, is emerging as one of the leading contenders and someone who has an inside track to receive the president’s blessing. Fry’s defeat of former Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC), who was one of the few Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment in 2021, allowed him to build early relationships with Trump’s political circle. 

As Maine Democrats pick up the pieces of Graham Platner’s failed Senate campaign and quickly try to find a replacement for the scandal-tarred candidate on the ballot, moderate Democrats in Michigan, where a primary is fast approaching, are in a race against time to prevent another far-left Senate candidate from capturing a valuable nomination.  

The final three weeks of the Michigan primary will be 2026’s most consequential test yet for the power the party establishment still holds, particularly in a pivotal swing state. After socialist candidates scored a number of surprise victories in heavily blue districts in New York City, Philadelphia and Denver, party leaders are fighting with renewed vigor to rally behind Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in the primary against her left-wing challenger, Abdul El-Sayed.

Nickolay Mladenov and Aryeh Lightstone, respectively the high representative for the Board of Peace and the body’s senior advisor, met in Brussels earlier this week with rabbis representing Jewish communities across the Islamic world, Jewish Insider has learned. 

Mladenov and Lightstone met with the executive board of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States at the group’s annual two-day board meeting. On Monday, the two also attended the second convening of the EU-backed Palestine Donor Group, as the collective of some 65 delegations launched a billion-dollar initiative to begin the economic recovery of the Gaza Strip. Jared Kushner joined the donor conference by video.

In a bipartisan vote pushed in part by President Donald Trump, the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act, making daylight saving time permanent, a situation that raises concerns for Orthodox Jewish groups that have long warned that such a move would have negative impacts for Jewish morning prayer and potentially raise dangers for school children who have to travel to school before daybreak.

The bill passed the House by a 308-117 vote, with 95 Democrats and 22 Republicans voting no. The issue has been a priority for Trump, and lawmakers have also included the same legislation in a must-pass transportation bill, with near unanimous support in committee.

ASPEN, Colo. — Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday opposed any nuclear deal with Iran, arguing at the Aspen Security Forum that the U.S. should continue pressure on Iran’s economy and “see what happens.”

Meanwhile, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper speaking alongside Rice on a panel, suggested that the U.S. had potentially overestimated its capabilities in the war, agreeing that continued economic pressure and a renewed blockade would be the best strategies going forward.

Citing concerns about the Iran war and the administration’s elevated defense funding request, Senate Democrats voted in lockstep on Tuesday evening to block a procedural motion to open debate on the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, despite the bill passing out of the Armed Services Committee with bipartisan support.

The decision to block the start of debate on the NDAA — an annual must-pass bill that typically garners strong bipartisan support — is a rare step by Democrats signaling significant frustrations with the Trump administration’s ongoing war against Iran.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), fresh off a trip to the West Bank where he alleges he was unjustly detained by Israeli settlers and Israeli military forces, faced a barrage of criticism in a Drop Site News interview on Tuesday for refusing to endorse Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Khanna, in spite of his condemnations of Israel over the incident — which the Israeli government claims he has misrepresented — and demands for consequences for those involved, has faced pressure and condemnation from the far-left flank of the Democratic Party during his media tour following his return to the U.S. 

President Donald Trump on Tuesday walked back his announcement, made the previous day, that the U.S. would institute a 20% fee on cargo transiting the Strait of Hormuz, saying the toll would be replaced by trade deals with Gulf states. 

Trump, having hosted Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi at the White House Tuesday morning, wrote on Truth Social that his change of heart was “based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership,” and that the deals “will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a “Dear Colleague” letter on Tuesday that he opposes an effort to strip all U.S. aid to Israel out of the 2027 State Department appropriations bill, but also argued for “urgent change” to the U.S.-Israel relationship, including changes to U.S. aid going forward.

Addressing the amendment led by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Jeffries cited concerns raised by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Greg Meeks (D-NY), respectively the ranking members of the Appropriations and Foreign Affairs Committees, as well as J Street, calling the amendment “overly broad” and suggesting that it would impact nonmilitary aid and U.S. Embassy operations.

Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) introduced a bill on Tuesday that directs the State Department to work with U.S. allies to dismantle and replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

The “Replace UNRWA with Real Humanitarian Assistance Act” would give the secretary of state 180 days to submit a “comprehensive strategy, coordinated with international partners and allies,” to dismantle UNRWA, including a detailed timeline for the wind-down, identification of governmental or non-governmental entities responsible for taking over UNRWA’s portfolio, a funding plan and a transition plan.

Democrats on Monday slammed President Donald Trump’s resumption of hostilities against Iran, as well as the notion, implicit in Trump’s notification, that the operations mark a new conflict and therefore reset the 60-day window for military operations launched by the executive branch without congressional approval.

In a letter to congressional leaders on Friday notifying them that the war had resumed, Trump said that Iran repeatedly violated the memorandum of understanding by attacking commercial vessels on July 6 and 7, and that the U.S. had, as of July 7, commenced “defensive strikes against targets within Iran including missile launch sites, air defenses, military maritime assets, military support infrastructure, and command and control capabilities.”

William Lawrence, a virulent Israel critic gaining momentum among progressives in Michigan’s battleground 7th Congressional District, is facing a wave of criticism over past comments denigrating Black political leadership, attacking former Vice President Kamala Harris.

As a result, Lawrence is now facing the opposition of an outside group aiming to block  him from winning the Democratic nomination.

Airstrikes on Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport on Monday were intended to stop Iran and the Houthis from breaking a decades-long air blockade and opening an uncontrolled air link between Tehran and its Yemeni proxy, regional analysts said — a corridor they warn could let Iran resupply the Houthis directly with weapons for future campaigns against Saudi Arabia and Israel. 

The Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out the strikes and vowed to retaliate, with a spokesperson claiming the period of “de-escalation” between Riyadh and the terror group was over. Later Monday, the group said it had fired on Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport. 

Iran netted nearly $5 billion in the 22 days after Washington and Tehran signed their memorandum of understanding on June 17, according to a new report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

The findings come as President Donald Trump announced on Monday that the U.S. would reimpose its naval blockade on Iranian ports effective July 14 at 4 p.m. ET, with an added 20% U.S. toll on all shipping through the strait. 

Darline Graham Nordone, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), was appointed by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster on Monday to serve out the remainder of her older brother’s Senate term through January 2027.

McMaster, a Republican, announced his decision to appoint Graham’s sister to fill the vacancy caused by his sudden passing over the weekend at a press conference from the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C., alongside Nordone and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), a close ally of both Graham and President Donald Trump. 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani vowed on Monday to maintain ties with a controversial political operative behind the imploded campaign of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, whom a former romantic partner accused of rape, leading him to drop out of the race.

Morris Katz and his consulting firm Fight Agency gained a reputation as political wonder-workers after assisting in Mamdani’s 2025 campaign and then in the socialist sweep of New York’s congressional primaries last month. But following the high-profile collapse of Platner’s candidacy, members of the Democratic Socialists of America began circulating a petition calling for a boycott of Katz’s services.

The Trump administration plans to launch a major diplomatic offensive against the International Criminal Court, furthering the White House’s long-running battle against the international organization, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Monday. The ICC poses a threat not just to American sovereignty, but to the American way of life, Rubio said, as he pledged to deploy American diplomatic power to sanction and target the body. 

“For 250 years, Americans have governed ourselves as a free and sovereign people,” Rubio said in a video, which was accompanied by an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. He described America’s legal system as “the essential and indispensable feature of our form of government,” but cautioned that “powerful people in far away places want to take that away from us.” He warned of shadowy “unelected globalist bureaucrats who claim their power is almost unlimited,” unless the U.S. acts quickly. 

President Donald Trump declared on Monday that the U.S. will take control of the Strait of Hormuz and said Washington will institute a 20% fee on all cargo passing through the waterway “for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”

“The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped.”

James Fishback, the GOP candidate for Florida governor whom critics call “openly racist” and “openly antisemitic,” ostensibly sits at the opposite end of the political spectrum from the likes of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

But the far-right and far-left politicians share more than just an aversion to Israel — they also overlap in donors, Jewish Insider has found. 

For some Jewish voters in Georgia, this year’s Senate race offers no comfortable choice. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-GA) votes to block weapons shipments to Israel have alienated some longtime supporters, while Republican nominee Rep. Mike Collins’ (R-GA) history of inflammatory rhetoric and controversial staffing choices has made him a nonstarter for others. 

It’s “hard for me to support either one,” Norman Radow, a major Democratic donor in Georgia and a prominent figure in Atlanta’s Jewish community, told Jewish Insider, and called the November election in the key swing state a “tough choice for a lot of Jewish people.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on Sunday called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch an investigation after the lawmaker said he was harassed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank last week, an incident Netanyahu attributed to a small group of “vigilantes.”

During his first known trip to Israel and the West Bank since October 2024, Khanna said that his delegation’s van had been surrounded, stopped and taunted last Wednesday by Israeli settlers armed with U.S.-made M4 rifles during a tour of the southern West Bank, an incident that a New York Times photographer traveling in a different vehicle said he witnessed. 

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan running in the race’s far-left lane, on Sunday described Israel as a “rogue state” that has committed genocide and apartheid. El-Sayed made the comments in an interview with Manu Raju on CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday.”

Asked whether he thought the Israeli government should be considered by the U.S. to be a foreign terrorist organization, El-Sayed answered, “It’s certainly a rogue state.” 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who represented South Carolina in the Senate for more than two decades and was a stalwart supporter of Israel during his time in office, died on Saturday, his office announced. He was 71.

Graham, who served in the House of Representatives for more than a decade before being elected to the Senate in 2002, had recently returned from Ukraine, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Prior to Ukraine, he had been part of a bipartisan U.S. delegation in Ankara, Turkey, for the NATO summit.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told reporters on Friday that he had been unaware that top officials in his administration planned to meet with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations earlier this month — calling the decision “an error” on the part of one of his most prominent and politically active commissioners.

Speaking after an unrelated event, the mayor maintained he only learned from a request for comment from City Journal that International Affairs Commissioner Ana Maria Archila and what the publication described as “two other senior officials” working under her had planned to sit down on Tuesday with Amir-Saeid Iravani of the Iranian Mission to the U.N. City Journal, affiliated with the right-of-center Manhattan Institute, reported that the State Department stepped in to preempt the meeting. 

A group of House Democrats wrote to President Donald Trump on Friday to express “strong opposition” to the administration’s plans to lift sanctions on Turkey and sell the country F-35 fighter jets, and suggested that the decisions may be driven by Trump’s or his family members’ financial interests.

The letter requests that Trump, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. preserve records relating to their relationships with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Turkish government, stating that, “In the coming months and years, Congress will continue to exercise our constitutional oversight authorities and thoroughly scrutinize this matter to ensure the interests of the American people and their security is protected” — suggesting a potential House investigation if Democrats retake the chamber in November.

As Maine Democrats jump at the chance to replace Graham Platner on the ballot against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), one of the issues where candidates are staking their claim early is U.S. foreign policy — and Israel and Gaza in particular. 

Jordan Wood, a former chief of staff to Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), shared his views on the U.S.-Israel relationship with Jewish Insider on Thursday. He entered the race after placing third in last month’s congressional primary to replace retiring Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME). 

Jared Kushner, United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett participated in an off-the-record discussion on Thursday morning at Allen & Company’s annual Sun Valley conference, Puck News reported.

The closed-door conversation, held before the conference’s invite-only audience of business, media and technology leaders, took place months after Israel assisted the UAE during the war with Iran, sending an Iron Dome battery and operators to the Gulf state, which faced more rocket, missile and drone attacks from Iran than another country in the region.

The mad dash to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine is coming together so quickly and haphazardly that one potential replacement, Nirav Shah, is taking stickers from his failed gubernatorial campaign and cutting off the “for governor” line below his name before handing them to supporters. 

Much is still in flux about the process to replace Platner, who dropped out of the race on Wednesday two days after being accused of rape by a former romantic partner. His potential successors aren’t jockeying for the public’s approval — they’re angling for the support of the Maine Democratic Party, which voted on Wednesday, before Platner even announced his resignation, to hold a statewide nominating convention to tap his replacement. The MDP said it would share more in the days to come about the process, which according to state law would have to be completed by July 27. 

A bipartisan group of 58 House members urged the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday to extend the deadline for 2026 Nonprofit Security Grant Program applications, arguing that the current timeline gives states and institutions “insufficient time to complete the application process” and fulfill the program’s goals.

Applications for the program were announced on June 24 and are due to the federal government from state emergency management agencies by July 24. Those state agencies must set their own earlier deadlines for individual institutions to submit applications.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) traveled to Israel and the West Bank this week while Congress is in recess, according to two individuals with knowledge of the trip. 

Khanna has not posted publicly about his trip, which is scheduled to conclude Thursday night. His office did not respond to requests for comment from JI.

Allies of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) are launching a new political organization aimed at countering antisemitism within the Republican Party, Jewish Insider has learned, led by Arielle F. Klepach, a former assistant U.S. attorney and senior counsel for the National Jewish Advocacy Center.

The Front Line (TFL) will operate as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, meaning the group will not have to disclose its donors and can spend unlimited sums toward political activity, provided campaign finance is not its primary purpose and it does not contribute directly to campaigns. 

Rep. Ed Case (D-HI), a longtime pro-Israel moderate in the House, is facing his first serious primary challenge in years from state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, arguing — as other insurgent Democrats around the country have — that the district needs a new generation of leadership.

Case, 73, has long been a political institution in Hawaii. He has represented the 1st Congressional District in the heart of Honolulu since 2019, after previously serving the state’s 2nd District — which covers all areas outside of Honolulu — from 2002 to 2007, following several years in the Statehouse. He ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate before making his return to the House.

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.

With summer break offering teachers a chance to level up their skills for the year ahead, Illinois educators will be able to spend three days in Chicago this month learning about “the dangers of the ADL’s influence in our schools” — and earn credit toward the professional development needed to renew their teaching licenses. 

In a description for the six-hour course — held over three days — titled “Why We Need to #DropTheADL From Schools,” the Anti-Defamation League is described as a “right-wing and white supremacist organization” that perpetrates “academic repression, and the punishment of educators teaching the truth about the genocide in Palestine and Lebanon.” 

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued progressive insurgent, announced on Wednesday evening that he plans to drop out of the race amid intense pressure, two days after a former romantic partner accused him of rape.

Even as he announced his withdrawal, Platner remained defiant, claiming that the allegations against him were a conspiracy aimed at forcing him out of the race.

In a change of tone, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on Wednesday that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa deserves a chance to rebuild the war-torn country, arguing that his efforts to curb Iran’s influence in Syria should prompt Israel to reassess its approach to the new government. 

Graham, who has long been skeptical of Syria’s new government, released a statement at the conclusion of his visit to Ankara, Turkey, this week for the NATO summit, where he took part in several bipartisan meetings between U.S. lawmakers and world leaders including al-Sharaa. 

Major Jewish organizations expressed “reason for optimism” that the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, is taking meaningful steps to address rising antisemitism following its annual Representative Assembly, which concluded in Denver on Tuesday.

The organizations credited NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus (JAC) with pushing through three amendments to the NEA Constitution and a resolution on Jewish education at this year’s RA. 

More than 300 of the world’s most powerful executives have trickled into Idaho for Allen & Co’s invite-only, closed-door Sun Valley conference, where media moguls, tech titans and financiers gather every year. 

Dina Powell McCormick, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Joshua Kushner, Karlie Kloss, Robert Kraft, Sam Altman, Alex Karp, Bari Weiss, Sheryl Sandberg, David Zaslav, Bob Iger, Michael Eisner, Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Evan Spiegel, Josh Silverman, Marne Levine, Brian Grazer, Reid Hoffman, Adam Silver, Mitch Rales, Andy Jassy and Bobby Kotick were among those seen in Sun Valley on Tuesday and Wednesday.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday reiterated his threat to “finish the job” in Iran and said the current ceasefire is “over” while denying that renewed U.S. strikes in the country mark a return to war. 

Trump told reporters during a press conference at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday that he was no longer sure if he was interested in a peace deal with Iran and was questioning if the country’s leadership was rational enough to work with. 

Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, speaking in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, criticized the “moral bankruptcy” of “those that paraded, celebrated and cheered” in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

Emanuel, who served as White House chief of staff from 2009 to 2010 in the Obama administration, made the comments as part of a broader address on his vision for the future of U.S.-Israel relations as he mulls a potential presidential bid.

Major AI chatbots consistently fail to reject antisemitic inquiries in Persian as effectively as they do in English, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League. The group argues the safety flaw has broad implications as millions rely on these platforms to understand conflicts such as the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. 

The report, “Lost in Translation: How AI Chatbots Fail Persian Speakers on Antisemitism,” looked at responses by the most widely-used chatbots — OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and xAI’s Grok — over several weeks in March, amid the Iran war.

President Donald Trump, speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday, said that the memorandum of understanding with Iran that was inked last month was “over,” following overnight Iranian attacks targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain and Kuwait. 

“To me, I think it’s over,” Trump said. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore.”

A federal judge in Illinois has scheduled a Feb. 8, 2027, trial to determine whether the American Muslims for Palestine group can be held legally responsible for the 1996 murder of American teenager David Boim, according to a court document obtained by Jewish Insider. The landmark case could establish whether U.S. organizations are liable for funding Hamas terror operations.

In May 1996, 17-year-old David Boim, an American studying abroad at a yeshiva in Israel, was shot and killed by two Hamas terrorists at a bus stop. Boim was one of the first Americans killed by Hamas, which the U.S. later designated as a foreign terrorist organization. His murder sparked a decades-long legal battle as his parents, Stanley and Joyce Boim, have sought to hold the perpetrators and their alleged financial backers accountable through the American court system. 

The Maine Democratic Party accused Senate candidate Graham Platner on Tuesday of attempting to “put his thumb on the scale” to influence whom the party chooses to replace him on the ticket, as a growing wave of Democrats in the state position themselves to run for the seat.

The charge by party officials comes a day after a former romantic partner accused Platner of sexual assault and as many of his key supporters urge him to suspend his campaign.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) continued a war of words with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as she faced a barrage of attacks from her primary opponent, former public health official Abdul El-Sayed, at a debate on Tuesday in Michigan.

Netanyahu, in a CNN interview earlier on Tuesday, criticized Stevens for saying that his actions and government had made the Jewish community less safe and placed Jews in an “uncomfortable position.”

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.

A brief window of U.S. sanctions relief for Tehran closed on Tuesday as the Trump administration revoked a waiver that allowed the sale of Iranian oil in response to continued Iranian attacks on shipping vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Last month, the Treasury Department lifted sanctions on Iranian oil sales by issuing a 60-day license, a decision experts told Jewish Insider risked providing Tehran with significant revenue for malign activity. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said the temporary license was issued due to Iran’s commitments under the memorandum of understanding, including guaranteeing safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz and inviting international nuclear inspectors back into the country — a claim that Iran swiftly denied. The license allowed Iran to produce, deliver and sell oil, including to U.S. importers, through Aug. 21.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday joined the swelling chorus of Democratic voices demanding the party’s nominee for Senate in Maine, Graham Platner, abandon his campaign in the aftermath of a rape allegation revealed in a Politico report on Monday — a campaign the mayor’s own top political advisor helped start and steer.

Mamdani’s remarks came shortly after an unrelated event at City Hall, a day after a former romantic partner of Platner’s accused him of drunkenly entering her home and sexually assaulting her in 2021. The mayor’s nearest political aide, Morris Katz, was one of the architects of Platner’s Senate run and one of his fiercest public defenders amid prior allegations of personal misconduct and the discovery that the candidate had a tattoo of a Nazi symbol.

As the heated Democratic Senate primary in Michigan enters its final stretch, far-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed told CNN this week that he does not believe that a politician’s support for Israel could be about anything other than money.

“Not if you’re a Democrat and you believe in human rights,” El-Sayed told CNN when asked about such a distinction. 

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration was preparing to lift congressionally mandated sanctions on Turkey as he weighs moving forward with the sale of coveted F-35 fighter jets to Ankara.

“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off,” Trump said alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, referring to lifting the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). 

Two leading psychologists are launching an initiative to help future clinicians better care for Jewish patients, Jewish Insider has learned, amid a surge of antisemitism in the mental health field that has left Jewish therapists and clients facing isolation and discrimination. 

Created by Miri Bar-Halpern, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, and Dean McKay, a professor of psychology at Fordham University, the pilot program, announced on Tuesday, will roll out in doctoral psychology programs at universities across New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts through faculty workshops and curriculum development. The Academic Engagement Network, a network of faculty and staff countering antisemitism on campus, is supporting the effort.

The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait — both of which came under heavy Iranian fire during the recent war — skipped the funeral proceedings for late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while representatives from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, India, China and Turkey traveled to the Islamic Republic to attend the ceremonies for Khamenei, who was killed in Tehran at the outset of the war at the end of February.

The event began on Friday and spans five cities across Iran and Iraq, ending in the Iranian city of Mashhad, where he will be buried Thursday.

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.

Democratic leaders coalesced around calls for Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner to withdraw from the race on Monday following a Politico report in which an ex-girlfriend of Platner’s accused the Democrat of sexual assault, an account the outlet backed up with her correspondence and other interviews.

Platner denied the allegation outright but said in a video statement that he’s “mindful of the political reality it will inflict” and would be “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.” If Platner voluntarily drops out by July 13, the Maine Democratic Party would have until July 27 to pick a replacement to appear on the ballot. 

Jerusalem and Beirut see their trilateral agreement signed with the U.S. last month as “superseding” the memorandum of understanding signed between the U.S. and Iran, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said on Monday.

“Whether the United States does, you’ll have to ask the administration spokesman,” he added, speaking at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. 

American and Israeli officials expressed skepticism on Monday that Hamas would follow through with its pledge to dissolve its governing body that has ruled Gaza for over two decades.

Hamas announced the dissolution of the “Emergency Committee,” the terrorist organization’s governing body, and the resignation of Mohammed al-Farra as the committee’s chief on Monday. The terrorist group said that it was prepared to transfer authority to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the technocratic committee established under President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan and overseen by the Trump administration’s Board of Peace. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced opposition to the Trump administration’s sale of jet engines and potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey on Monday, saying on “Fox & Friends” that such moves “will upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority” and “America’s posture” in the region. 

Netanyahu’s remarks came hours before President Donald Trump’s departure for a NATO summit in Turkey, on the sidelines of which Trump is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

The number of Israelis who believe President Donald Trump views Israel’s security as a central consideration has continued to fall to record lows after Washington signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran, according to a new survey from the Israel Democracy Institute.

The June 2026 Israeli Voice Index, conducted between June 28 and July 1, found that 28% of respondents — including 26% of Jewish Israelis and 36% of Arab Israelis — believe Israel’s security is a key consideration for Trump. 

In a bid to protect Jewish children from rampant antisemitism on the internet, the Jewish Federations of North America is pushing lawmakers to support the KIDS Act, a major bipartisan package of legislation focused on children’s safety online that passed the House late last month by a 267-117 vote.

Omer Yarden-Oppenheim, director of government relations at JFNA, told Jewish Insider that online antisemitism has been a major conversation and challenge for Jewish families, especially since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. He said the group identified four bills in the House’s online safety push that it felt could play a role in addressing online antisemitism, which were ultimately packaged into the KIDS Act.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, predicted Democrats will soon face a “battle” over the rising influence of socialists in the party and distanced himself from such far-left candidates.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash that aired Sunday, Shapiro cited “profound differences” with Darializa Avila Chevalier, a socialist New York City congressional candidate who won her primary last month against incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) and was endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Avila Chevalier has a history of incendiary online rhetoric, including railing against Democratic leaders and praising communism, and defended attending an anti-Israel rally the day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.  

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate on Sunday, without offering her support to either of her opponents in the hotly contested race.

“Here’s what we do next. Every day through November 3rd. We win this Senate seat and send Mike Rogers back to Florida for good,” McMorrow wrote in her announcement on X, referring to the expected GOP nominee.

A group of House Democrats introduced a resolution last week that aims to block the sale of advanced jet engines to Turkey, as the Trump administration pushes ahead with the sale despite legal restrictions on U.S. military sales to the country.

The resolution is led by Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), a vocal critic of Ankara, and co-sponsored by Reps. Chris Pappas (D-NH), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Mike Quigley (D-IL), Jim Costa (D-CA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), George Latimer (D-NY) and Brad Sherman (D-CA).

Following last year’s contentious assembly mired in allegations of antisemitism, the National Education Association — the nation’s largest teachers’ union — adopted new policies for its upcoming Denver convention aimed at preventing the same chaos, the NEA confirmed to Jewish Insider. 

“Leading up to this year’s Representative Assembly, we are taking significant steps to ensure all of our members are respected and supported at the event based on extensive feedback and consultation with the Jewish Affairs Caucus, Jewish members, and partners in the Jewish community,” an NEA spokesperson told JI.

Dozens of LGBTQ Jews and allies gathered Tuesday evening at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington for a Pride event hosted by the Israeli Embassy, with speakers honoring the legacy of slain embassy staffer Sarah Milgrim and reflecting on the challenges she faced in progressive spaces, despite being an ally of the community. 

The event, held as Pride celebrations concluded at the end of June, paid tribute to Milgrim, who helped lead the embassy’s outreach to LGBTQ communities before she and her partner, Yaron Lischinsky, were killed in a shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in May 2025.

New polling data shows that a sizable majority of Jewish voters disapprove of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s job performance and fear he is pushing the Democratic Party too far to the left, in contrast with non-Jewish voters who hold a largely favorable view of the outspoken democratic socialist.

The gap between Jewish and non-Jewish survey respondents underscores the degree to which Jewish Democrats in New York and across the country increasingly feel out of place in their party amid a rise in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on the far left, which has gained traction in recent state and congressional elections.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee for governor, criticized his party’s socialist congressional nominee Melat Kiros for her refusal to describe the deadly firebombing of a Boulder, Colo., hostage awareness march last year as an act of antisemitism.

Kiros, speaking last week to 9News, a local channel, declined to call the attack antisemitic, because “I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator. … I don’t know what his intentions were.”

The AIPAC-linked United Democracy Project is launching its first negative ad in the Michigan Senate race, targeting Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, just over a month before the state’s primary elections.

According to FEC filings, the group spent more than $2 million in the initial ad buy targeting El-Sayed.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers wrote to President Donald Trump on Thursday to “express deep concern about any effort to sell F-35s to Turkey.”

The letter comes after Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly discussed plans to push the sale ahead at the White House last week, in spite of continued legal restrictions prohibiting such a sale, and ahead of a NATO summit in Ankara next week.

When Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) narrowly prevailed in the Democratic primary for an open House seat in Phoenix in 2024, winning by just 39 votes in a deep-blue district, the Arizona lawmaker could attribute her success, in part, to strong backing from the local Jewish community as well as a surge of outside spending from a prominent pro-Israel group.

Many Jewish and pro-Israel leaders in the state and beyond were encouraged that Ansari, who identifies as a progressive, staked out what seemed at the time like a moderate approach to Middle East policy issues amid rising Democratic hostility toward Israel over the war in Gaza — particularly in the party’s far-left wing.

Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) is facing a serious primary threat from state Rep. Donavan McKinney, a left-wing challenger backed by several anti-Israel groups including Justice Democrats and TrackAIPAC.

Those groups are riding high, coming off of a recent wave of congressional primary victories in New York City and, most recently, Colorado, which they say point to a desire for a leftward shift in the Democratic Party and, in particular, rejection of support for Israel and pro-Israel groups among the Democratic base. Thanedar is one of their next top targets.

The human rights nonprofit sector has systematically ignored or suppressed employee complaints of antisemitism for years, according to a new report published on Wednesday by EiGHT, an organization based in Israel that was created after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks to provide oversight of humanitarian NGOs. 

The 63-page report was submitted to Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, which was formed after the Bondi Beach terror attack last December, as well as several United Nations bodies. It draws on interviews with more than 70 current and former employees of organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and Greenpeace. It alleges that the organizations’ biased treatment of Israel contributed to a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli employees.

Francesca Hong, a Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated candidate for governor of Wisconsin, appeared on Tuesday on the Twitch stream of Mike Beyer, known by his online handle “Mike From PA,” a fringe far-left influencer who has espoused open antisemitism.

Beyer was suspended from Twitch last year for comments in which he said that “Jewish is not an ethnicity” and Jewish identity is “a constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity, wholly invented.” He subsequently apologized, claiming he had intended to refer to Zionists, rather than Jews.

As the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary this weekend, a new study by Combat Antisemitism Movement reveals a stark reality for American Jews: 57% reported experiencing antisemitism — frequently manifesting online — in the past year. 

Conducted by Ira Sheskin, director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami and administered by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, the survey — which polled 1,060 Jewish American adults over three weeks in May — found that antisemitism is causing them to actively alter everyday behavior. 

The director general of Israel’s Ministry of Defense, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amir Baram, urged Israelis on Wednesday to understand Washington’s perspective as the U.S. and Israel negotiate the next memorandum of understanding, cautioning against judging American policy through a purely “provincial lens.”

“What some in Israel perceive as weakness or folly, an apparent disregard for every warning sign on the ground, is viewed in Washington as cold, calculated and clear-eyed risk management in an era of shifting global attention,” he said at the annual Herzliya Conference at Reichman University. 

Top Middle East analysts — including the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sadjadpour and Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Dubowitz — offered starkly different takes on whether the United States or Iran has emerged in a stronger strategic position following the recent U.S.-Iran conflict, yet shared a deeply critical view of the preliminary memorandum of understanding brokered between Washington and Tehran.

Speaking on Monday at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado during a panel discussion moderated by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued that Tehran successfully leveraged the crisis to its advantage.

At a launch event for his book, The Arab Case for Israel, on Tuesday, writer and researcher Hussain Abdul-Hussain argued that the path to peace in the Middle East begins with Arabs reexamining long-held assumptions about Israel, drawing on his own transformation from believing anti-Israel propaganda to an advocate for the Jewish state. 

Speaking days after Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered framework agreement, Abdul-Hussain said the Lebanese people can follow in his footsteps, as the country remains divided between a faction that promotes the Iranian narrative that Israel “only understands the language of war and force,” and those seeking to reclaim the country’s sovereignty. 

Several House Democrats, including in leadership and top progressives, remain divided or notably noncommittal over whether Israel’s right to exist in safety and security should continue to be a policy position of the Democratic Party moving forward.

The official 2024 Democratic Party Platform, released by the DNC for former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris, stated that party leaders “believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States” and that the party’s  “commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself … is ironclad.” 

Bruce Pearl, the veteran Auburn University men’s basketball coach, said that Vice President JD Vance needs to “make a decision” about his continued association with far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, warning that his support of Vance’s expected 2028 presidential bid will be contingent on the vice president severing ties with the antisemitic podcaster.

The former Auburn coach, who is currently splitting his time between pro-Israel political advocacy and serving as an analyst for TNT and CBS Sports, made the comments in an interview with Jewish Insider on Monday while discussing the rise of right-wing antisemitism and the prominence of Carlson, neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and other commentators who promote antisemitic ideas within the America First right-wing movement. 

Asked about New York City congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier’s reported past comments supporting communism, House Democratic leaders suggested this week that she had changed and moderated her views.

CNN reported earlier this week that Avila Chevalier had repeatedly shared on a now-deleted Twitter account sympathetic posts about communism, Marxism and Soviet figures including revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. In an MS NOW interview on Monday, she denied being a communist and said that scrutiny of her past comments is a “distraction.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said she’ll no longer accept support from AIPAC, a major break with the pro-Israel group by one of the key power players in the House.

As the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, in line to again be the committee chair if Democrats retake the House, DeLauro has significant sway on federal funding matters, including the provision of aid to Israel.

House Democrats remain divided over a push by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to slash $3.3 billion in military aid the U.S. is set to provide Israel in the 2027 State Department funding bill, and top Democratic leaders are continuing to keep their own positions vague. 

But when that vote comes to the floor is still uncertain, as a handful of hard-line Republican rebels have pushed normal House business to a halt. Some senior House Democrats indicated that, even if they don’t support this particular effort, they still seek changes to the U.S.-Israel relationship.