SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
aipac
Progressive Caucus Leader Urges 'Yes' Vote on Amendment to End US Military Aid to Israel
"The American people are crying out for an end to US tax dollars subsidizing Israel's military."
Jul 14, 2026
After House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blew what one organizer called “a real opportunity... to show he’s listening” to the Democratic Party’s base by opposing an amendment to end US military aid to Israel, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Tuesday urged colleagues to support the measure.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, Jeffries (D-NY) announced in a "dear colleague" letter that he would oppose Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-Ky.) amendment to a national security spending bill that would eliminate the $3.3 billion in annual foreign military financing provided to Israel’s military under a memorandum of understanding signed by then-President Barack Obama in 2016.
The US has also given billions of dollars in additional armed aid to Israel since it began waging its US-backed war on Gaza after the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
The minority leader called the amendment "overly broad" and said it would limit the US' ability to "confront Hamas."
Jeffries' letter came "just weeks after his fundraising committee received the largest earmarked disbursement in the history of AIPAC's political action committee," Sludge's Donald Shaw reported Tuesday, referring to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the congressman's single-largest campaign donor.
Massie's effort comes just weeks after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives blocked a separate amendment introduced by the Kentucky Republican and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to remove a provision of the proposed $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2027 that would establish a formal “United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative," which critics argue deepens military integration between the two allies under the guise of reducing aid.
Responding to Jeffries' letter, Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) sent one of his own, contending that "the American people are crying out for an end to US tax dollars subsidizing Israel’s military."
"At a time when millions are struggling to make ends meet, we are sending billions of dollars to a military that has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, destabilized the region, and helped lead us into war with Iran," Casar noted.
"Over the weekend, the Israeli military detained a member of Congress attempting to conduct oversight in the West Bank," his letter continues, referencing a recent incident involving Khanna. "We cannot continue to subsidize this."
Israel's war on Gaza alone has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded (including people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble) and around 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, while the International Court of Justice is weighing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa and formally backed by nearly 20 nations.
United Nations experts; Israeli and international scholars, jurists, and human rights groups; and US lawmakers including Casar are among those who have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
"At its best, the Progressive Caucus’ role is to be an independent voice and lead on important issues of peace and human rights," Casar's letter asserts. "After the Israeli government has killed more than 70,000 people in Gaza and helped lead the United States into a destabilizing, deadly war with Iran, we are called to act."
"The Democratic Party needs a new approach to Israel and Palestine," Casar stressed. "When Democrats retake the majority in November, I hope the Progressive Caucus can help lead our party toward a position that secures safety, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinian and Israeli civilians alike."
Both Casar and the CPC are supporters of the Block the Bombs Act, first introduced in May 2025 by Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) and now backed by more than 60 lawmakers. The CPC has also endorsed Massie's amendment.
US public opposition to Israel has grown alongside the death toll in Gaza. More than half of Democratic voters surveyed for an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll published last week said they believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. An August 2025 Quinnipiac poll found that 60% of respondents opposed additional military aid to Israel, while just 32% supported it. Opposition was especially high among Democrats (75%) and independents (66%).
Noting these figures, the progressive grassroots group RootsAction said Tuesday that "Jeffries has turned his back on nearly 75% of Democrats who say they want military aid to Israel to be halted" and "has chosen instead to side with the Democratic Party old guard—the same dominant faction that lost twice to [President] Donald Trump."
"Jeffries’s stance is morally unconscionable and politically myopic," RootsAction added. "For nearly three years, Israel has committed genocide in Gaza in full view of the world. Polling has shown that the Democratic Party leadership’s inability to distance itself from the onslaught in Gaza cost its candidates many votes in 2024. This pattern will repeat if the party is unable to change its stance."
Later on Tuesday, US senators voted 50-46 almost entirely along party lines to block debate on the 2027 NDAA over the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran and proposed US-Israeli military integration.
Keep ReadingShow Less
2026 Democratic Primaries Prove Failings of the 2024 DNC Autopsy
The autopsy did not diagnose the cause of failure, it smothered it.
Jul 05, 2026
The Democratic National Committee's 192-page post-mortem on the 2024 election, titled "Build to Win. Build to Last," failed to build, to win, or to learn. It never answered the only question that mattered: how did a twice-impeached, multiply-indicted former president walk back into the White House with more votes than prior to his indictments?
The report, authored by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera and released in May 2026 after months of stonewalling by DNC Chair Ken Martin, reads less as a serious political reckoning than as a confirmation-bias pamphlet drafted by people determined not to upset the party's old guard. It calls for renewed focus on "Middle America," criticizes years of disinvestment in state parties, and faults poor economic messaging. It is not wrong on any of these points, but these points alone is not what cost the party so dearly.
The report boasts of conducting more than 1,200 interviews to assess the health of state parties in every state, district, and territory. While it seems to be an impressive number, it remains questionable if the interviews were of local party leaders, or general democratic voters? Did it include micro-level analysis of competitive districts? Did it account for 6.8 million voters who supported Biden in 2020 but refused to support Harris in 2024? Where did they go and why?
There was no breakdown of Harris's collapse by age. No independent examination of what drove young voters away, particularly in university towns where Gaza protests defined the political atmosphere of 2024. How many of the 6.8 million were from Generation Z? And not a word on the Zionist bubble around Biden and how that funded and shielded Israel as it carried out a live-streamed genocide in Gaza.
This was not a methodological oversight. This is how the autopsy was engineered. University towns and young voter precincts were precisely where the Democratic coalition was visibly disintegrating. Most likely the reason they lost states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Students who watched ‘Genocide Joe’ enable the starvation of children in Gaza, did not stay home out of apathy. They made a calculated judgment: that on the question of war crimes, there was no daylight between the two candidates. The autopsy never acknowledged that this question even existed.
Instead, it retreated into campaign mechanics: Harris "was not well prepared"; Democrats assumed Trump was unacceptable, and the party deluded itself that undecided voters would hold their noses and choose the lesser of two evils. Observations about messaging and strategy, carefully constructed to avoid touching the one issue that led the Arab-American vote in Michigan to split evenly between Harris and Trump when it favored Biden by a large margin in 2020.
The autopsy's authors, like much of the Democratic establishment, prefer to frame the party's youth problem as a generational disconnect, a cultural or communication failure that better social media spending might fix. That framing is both disingenuous and lazy. There is no generational disconnect. There is a massive divide between the old guard and the young generation—and the base at large—when it comes to Israel.
Recent primary results could not be clearer exposing the failure of the DNC autopsy. More than 80% of Democratic voters hold a negative view of Israel. That is not a fringe position within the party. That is the party. More than four out of five of the Democratic voters’ regard the long-held ‘sacred cow’ unfavorably, and the post-election study does not contain a single mention. That is dismissive of 80% of the party. The analysis is not seeking lessons learned, it is a whitewash.
The Gaza omission was not an oversight. It was a cover-up. The IMEU Policy Project’s executive director was blunt, demanding the release of findings that the autopsy’s own author had reportedly acknowledged in private: DNC officials’ internal data showed Biden’s support for Israel was a net negative for Democrats in 2024. That finding never appeared in the report. It was buried. Former DNC Vice Chair David Hogg said publicly that he told Rivera directly, “We need to acknowledge the role that Gaza played in us losing younger voters.”
This is not an outlier critique. It is coming from people who participated in the process and are now openly saying its central finding was suppressed. When the contributors to an autopsy publicly declare that the finding is edited out, the document becomes a cover-up.
The autopsy's Gaza omission collapses entirely when measured against what Democratic primaries have screamed in 2026. Candidates running on explicitly anti-Israeli-policy platforms have toppled incumbents and dethroned members of Congress backed by Democratic leadership and bankrolled by AIPAC. These are not noble protest campaigns falling short. They are winning Democratic voters, in Democratic primaries, on an explicitly pro-Palestine platform and making AIPAC a radioactive word and political liability.
The autopsy did not diagnose the cause of failure, it smothered it. Fifty-thousand words telling Democrats to organize better, message harder, and court the working-class voters they lost. Sound advice, and entirely beside the point, as long as the party establishment continues to dismiss the verdict of 80% of its rank and file.
Without an honest accounting of the party's failures in 2024, and without acknowledging the winning streak for anti-genocide democratic candidates in 2026, there can be no realistic path forward. The DNC must root out AIPAC funding in Democratic primaries and recognize the views of the party’s majority on Israel. It must confront the political cost of a foreign policy that millions of Americans now see not only as wrong, but as criminal.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Thank You, New York Voters, for Weakening AIPAC's Hold on US Politics
The defeat of two prominent pro-Israel members of Congress by challengers who were critical of Israeli policies and supporters of justice for Palestinians represents a turning point.
Jun 29, 2026
For the past half century, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, largely held sway in elections in both political parties. They threatened and intimidated those who opposed them and, when a critic of Israel was defeated, they boasted of victory, holding it up for others as a lesson. Last week’s Democratic primary elections in New York City, in which three insurgent critics of Israeli policies defeated AIPAC-endorsed candidates, point to what may be the end of an era for the pro-Israel lobby.
AIPAC’s approach to politics and elections was smart. Formed by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, they were connected from the outset to an impressive national network of American Jewish leaders, activists, and, more importantly, donors—all of whom they used effectively to influence members of Congress and Senators to embrace pro-Israel positions.
They didn’t just go to elected officials in Washington asking them to endorse particular pieces of legislation; they had local leaders in a congressperson’s district make the pitch. When new candidates were running, they’d have local representatives offer to help write their Middle East policy positions. Implicit in the visit and the offers were both the promise of support if the elected official or candidates did what was asked of them and the threat of opposition if they did not.
To back up their efforts, AIPAC spawned a network of PACs—political action committees—that would raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to distribute for or against candidates depending on their positions on Israel. AIPAC claimed they didn’t coordinate the work of the PACs (which would be a violation of election laws). But, as most of these PACs were headed by AIPAC board members or their families and their pattern of contributions were too obvious to have not been coordinated, it was clear that they were.
In this new era a real debate over US Middle East policy will take place.
AIPAC was also strategic in the their operations. Not everyone benefited from their largesse. Chairs of important congressional committees and very supportive members of Congress who faced tough reelections received bundled contributions. When elected officials repeatedly stepped out of line, their opponents would be the beneficiaries of large amounts of PAC monies and bundled contributions from individual pro-Israel donors with ties to AIPAC.
Overall, the amounts were not overwhelming but sufficient to send a message. Four decades ago, we found total amounts given by AIPAC’s PACs and their individual donors amounted to about $4 million in each election, with a handful of candidates receiving the bulk of this. When a few elected officials who’d been critical of Israel were defeated by opponents who’d been backed by AIPAC, the lobby would crow about their victory, whether or not their support had been a factor. Their goal was to spread the message to other electeds: “Fear us, or you too can be defeated.”
With the end of federal regulations limiting the oversight of independent expenditures in election campaigns, AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups took advantage by creating “super-PACs” that could raise and spend tens of millions of dollars in each election. Instead of the cumbersome job of stealthily coordinating dozens of federally regulated PACs limited in the amounts they could receive from individual donors and give to each candidate, these unregulated super-PACs could receive seven figure contributions from individuals and spend that same amount to help or hurt the candidates of their choosing. In 2022 and 2024 they effectively targeted a handful of candidates who were critical of Israel and spent millions to defeat each of them.
In the aftermath of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, we’ve witnessed a dramatic collapse of support for Israel in public opinion—especially among Democrats. In this new environment AIPAC can no longer pick and choose a few candidates to make examples. They now face new challenges weekly. Over 110 US representatives and senators have supported stopping military assistance to Israel because of its violations of Palestinian rights. Dozens of electeds have charged Israel with genocide and hundreds of congressmembers and candidates have pledged that their campaigns will reject any support from AIPAC. In fact, AIPAC has become so toxic that they’ve been forced to create new entities or rely on alternates as repositories for the funds they raise to distribute to candidates.
Despite these adjustments, the hurdles being confronted by pro-Israel forces are proving to be too much. Israel’s behaviors continue to alienate more voters. The more money AIPAC spends, the more toxic its brand has become—even when they win, they lose support for their heavy-handed tactics. Which brings us to last week’s New York primaries.
The defeat of two prominent pro-Israel members of Congress by challengers who were critical of Israeli policies and supporters of justice for Palestinians and the victory in an open race of a candidate who’d been a leader of pro-Palestinian campus protests in New York represents a turning point in US politics. It wasn’t just that AIPAC and its allies spent millions in these failed efforts—these elections were upfront about Israeli policies and Palestinian rights.
What had been the hallmark of pro-Israel groups’ past involvement in campaigns was the lengths to which they’d go to not make support for Israel a public issue. They would raise money from their supporters based on Israel, but that would not be the topic of their expenditures. They would spend money on ads criticizing a candidate’s age, their “radical agenda,” or some of their youthful improprieties. But they’d never mention that their involvement was because of the candidate’s position on Israel. This was the case in these New York contests. Many issues were important to voters, especially frustration with the tired failed policies of the Democratic Party establishment. But they were also about Israel, and voters knew it.
The reactions from the pro-Israel side have been predictable. Some have accused the targeting of AIPAC’s money and influence as unfair or even antisemitic—as if for decades AIPAC hadn’t boasted of its money and influence as the source of its power. Others have claimed that as a result of this election, “Jews no longer feel safe in New York,” ignoring the fact that in the most prominent of the three contests in which a pro-Israel Jewish member of Congress was defeated, the victor was also Jewish and a self-proclaimed progressive Zionist who strongly opposed Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. There’s also a bizarre effort to accuse pro-Palestinian candidates and voters of fracturing the Democratic Party when for decades AIPAC did its best to fracture the party and country by forcing politicians to toe the line or face defeat. Finally, there is the desperate effort to dismiss the entire election as being just about New York and having nothing to do with the rest of the US, ignoring the fact that the national political landscape has changed with these same types of contests taking place everywhere.
The bottom line is that after a half century AIPAC’s hold over politics has been weakened. It won’t go away anytime soon, but in this new era a real debate over US Middle East policy will take place. Thank you, New York voters.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular