“The Squad,” Part 3: The Last Gaza War

More than 18,600 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s latest wave of attacks began just over two months ago, following the October 7 Hamas attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis. While the Biden administration continues to support Israel in its devastation, politicians and heads of state around the world are calling for a ceasefire. The last extended war on Gaza, in 2021, would reshape the Democratic Party’s posture toward Israel and Palestine.

On this episode of Deconstructed, Ryan Grim brings us another audio documentary, adapted from an excerpt of his new book, “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.” In this episode, Grim revisits the 2021 Gaza war. When members of the Squad and their allies began speaking out about the U.S. government’s support for Israel, the debates in Washington grew extremely messy. The Squad’s opposition led to a political showdown, with special interest groups and other politicians applying pressure on those critical of Israel’s attacks. It threatened a government shutdown and further pushed the conversation on the U.S.’s unconditional support for the Israeli military, setting the stage for the widespread opposition seen today, as well as the highly organized and well-funded reaction from supporters of Israel.

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Ryan Grim.

The Gaza War the world is watching unfold in horrific fashion may be the most devastating assault launched on the small strip of Palestinian land, but it is one of many that has been launched by the Israeli defense forces over the years. The last major war was just two and a half years ago, and it had followed a similar pattern, but one key thing was different: the largest ever bloc of Democrats in the House of Representatives took to the House floor to denounce the assault in dramatic fashion.

The narrative around the attack was far more balanced than it had been in years past, and it led to President Joe Biden calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ordering a halt to the operation, an order Netanyahu grudgingly complied with.

Today’s episode is part three of our adaptation series of the audio version of my new book, “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution,” excerpted here with thanks to McMillan Audio. A huge thank you to everyone who has bought the book so far. And, if you haven’t, there’s a link where you can get it from an independent bookstore in the show notes.

And now onto the final installment in our miniseries.

[Audio of clashes in Sheikh Jarrah.]

In May 2021, the Israeli government began pushing ahead with evictions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Reporter, Al Jazeera: Four Palestinian families facing eviction have rejected a proposal from an Israeli court for them to reach an agreement with settlers who are trying to take over their homes. Israeli police have been attacking Palestinians protesting against the evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem.

RG: It was one more creeping step forward in an occupation and annexation process that had been underway for decades, but what was new this time was the reaction of Hamas, the government in Gaza.

Reporter, Al Jazeera: The commander of Hamas’s military wing has warned Israel that it will pay a heavy price if it doesn’t stop the evictions.

RG: If the Palestinian Authority wouldn’t stand up for the homeowners in Sheikh Jarrah, Hamas announced, they would do it themselves if Israel didn’t back off its plan to evict the families.

The Israeli government did not back off — as was to be expected — and Hamas responded by launching rocket attacks into Israel, attacks that were intercepted by the U.S.-built Iron Dome air defense system, or that otherwise crashed the earth. Israel launched an assault on Gaza, and what became known as the Gaza War of 2021 broke out.

Reporter, CBS News: In the late afternoon, a barrage of Hamas rockets streaked out of Gaza toward Jerusalem. They appeared to do minimal damage, but Israel responded immediately with airstrikes, which the Palestinians say injured and killed civilians, including nine children.

RG: In Gaza wars past, the Washington ritual had always been repeated.

Ned Price: We also recognize Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself, to defend its people and its territory.

RG: Israel had a, quote, “right to defend itself,” each statement began, even if the support for that right was occasionally caveated with a hope that Israel might decide to respect human rights and, perhaps, if it saw fit, limit civilian casualties. This war was different.

In the United States, the tenor of the coverage was far less sympathetic than it had been, with images of Israeli police attacking protesters in East Jerusalem, and reports of widespread casualties from the Israeli strikes.

Reporter, NPR: Today saw a rise in violence between Israelis and Palestinians violence, which both sides threaten could get worse, still.

Reporter, CBS News: Serious violence broke out on Friday around Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. Palestinians furious with Israeli curbs on gatherings during Ramadan hurled rocks at police, who fired stun grenades, some landing inside the mosque itself.

Reporter, CNN: There has been increasing levels of concern, condemnation, and statements from the international community — from the European Union, from the U.S. State Department, and from several members of Congress — specifically about those possible evictions of those Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

RG: Mark Pocan, the Madison, Wisconsin congressman who’d previously co-chaired the CPC, reserved an hour of time on the House floor on May 13th, and Democrats paraded through to denounce the assault.

Mark Pocan: Today’s special order hour is not just about the violence that has occurred in the last week in Israel and Palestine. It’s not about the activities of the last month, including the displacement of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah that have been largely overlooked in this region. But, in many ways, it’s about what’s happened over the last year, the last decade, the last several decades, that has dehumanized and violated the human rights of too many people in this important region.

RG: It was like nothing the U.S. Congress had ever seen. Omar, standing in the well of the house, bluntly, but not inaccurately, called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an ethnonationalist.

Ilhan Omar: The Israeli government, under far-right ethnonationalist leader Benjamin Netanyahu, has legally raised Palestinian ancestral homes, leveled entire neighborhoods, and violently suppressed any resistance. This is all to make way for illegal Israeli settlement outposts designed to displace Palestinians from their homes and prevent a future Palestinian state.

RG: Tlaib added…

Rashida Tlaib: I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist. That we are human, that we are allowed to dream. We are mothers, daughters, granddaughters. We are justice-seekers unapologetically about our fight against oppressions of all forms.

RG: Omar recalled her own experience as an eight-year-old huddled under a bed in Somalia, hoping the incoming bombs wouldn’t hit her home next.

Ilhan Omar: As a child, I lived through a violent civil war that destroyed my home, ripped my family apart from each other, and killed many of my family and friends. I can still remember being just eight years old, hiding under the bed, hearing bombs go off outside my window, and wondering if we were going to be hit next. It is trauma I will never… I will live with for the rest of my life.

So, I understand, on a deeply human level, the pain and the anguish families are feeling in Palestine and Israel at the moment.

RG: Pressley, the elder of The Squad, and the least inclined to challenge the status quo on Israel Palestine, spoke directly to the political guardrails put up around members of the House of Representatives, and then ran right through those guardrails.

Ayanna Pressley: We cannot remain silent when our government sends 3.8 billion [dollars] of military aid to Israel that is used to demolish Palestinian homes, imprison Palestinian children, and displace Palestinian families. A budget is a reflection of our values. I’m committed to ensuring that our government does not fund state violence in any form anywhere.

Many say that “conditioning aid” is not a phrase that I should utter here, but let me be clear: no matter the context, American government dollars always come with conditions. The question at hand is should our taxpayer dollars create conditions for justice, healing and repair, or should those dollars create conditions for oppression and apartheid?

RG: Ocasio-Cortez hit hard too.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: When I first got here in 2019, the Israeli government refused to admit two members of the United States Congress — Rashida Tlaib and Representative Ilhan Omar — into the country. Banned members of this very body because of who they were. Said it was a sign of weakness.

RG: Do Palestinians have a right to survive? Do we believe that, she asked, reminding the House that Israel had barred Omar and Tlaib from traveling to the country.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: We have to have the courage to name our contributions. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder if the reason we don’t do that, if we’re scared to stand up to the incarceration of children in Palestine, it’s because maybe it’ll force us to confront the incarceration of children here on our border.

RG: The clerk of the house addressed Cori Bush. For what purpose does the gentlelady from Missouri rise? “St. Louis and I today rise in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” Bush responded.

Cori Bush: If this body is looking for something productive to do with $3 million instead of funding a military that polices and kills Palestinians, I have some communities in St. Louis City and in St. Louis County where that money can go. Where we desperately need investment. Where we are hurting, where we need help. Let us prioritize funding there. Prioritize funding life, not destruction.

RG: The Squad was not alone. Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota rose to slam the assault on Gaza, as did Representatives André Carson of Indiana, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, and Joaquin Castro of Texas.

Betty McCollum: Tonight, I’m here to condemn violence. I’m here to speak out in support of human rights, political rights, and peace.

André Carson: I rise today in solidarity with the Palestinian people, as they face grave injustices, violence, and certainly abuse.

Chuy Garcia: Israeli and Palestinian families want to raise their children in safety and in peace, and we’ve got to take firm diplomatic steps to support those goals.

Joaquin Castro: These airstrikes, which have already resulted in the deaths of civilians, and at least 38 women and children, must stop. We need a ceasefire now, and the United States must help bring one about.

RG: As chair of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, McCollum had influence over U.S. foreign military aid.

Betty McCollum: The unrestricted, unconditioned $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid enables. It gives a green light to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, because there is no accountability, and there is no oversight by Congress. This must change. Not one dollar of U.S. aid to Israel should go towards the military detention of Palestinian children, the annexation of Palestinian lands, or the destruction of Palestinian homes.

RG: Castro thanked Tlaib for her presence, agreeing with her statement, “My mere existence has disrupted the status quo.” He seemed to address Israeli leaders directly when he said:

Joaquin Castro: The status quo of occupation and creeping de facto annexation is unjust and not sustainable.

RG: “The forced eviction of families in Jerusalem is wrong,” Castro said from the floor, “offering what would have been an uncontroversial assertion most anywhere else, but that was a foreign one to the House floor.”

The hour of speeches critical of Israel’s bombing of Gaza was a sloshing together of watery metaphors, a high-water mark and also a watershed moment, one that unleashed a flood of money that would erode the foundation on which The Squad had built its power to date.

After the success of Sanders, Democratic politicians began to recognize that voters were in a progressive mood. This early recognition had saved Ed Markey’s Senate seat, and produced the environment in which progressive Democrats and groups like the Sunrise Movement had so much influence over legislation.

If Sanders had led a self-described political revolution, the Gaza speech has galvanized the counterrevolution, and brought tens of millions of dollars off the sidelines and into democratic primaries, with the express purpose of blunting the progressive wave.

Howard Korr, head of AIPAC, told the Washington Post in a rare interview, “We’re seeing much more vocal detractors of the U.S.-Israel relationship who are having an impact on the discussion, and we need to respond.”

Throughout the 2020 cycle, AIPAC had been content to let DMFI run the big money operation in democratic primaries. To encourage support for it, AIPAC donors were even allowed to count money given to DMFI as credit toward their AIPAC contributions, which then won them higher-tier perks at conferences and other events.

But the unprecedented display of progressive democratic support for Palestinians amid the Gaza war, as seen on the House floor, was triggering. The problem, Korr said, was, quote, “The rise of a very vocal minority on the far left of the Democratic Party that is anti-Israel and seeks to weaken and diminish the relationship. Our view is that support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is both good policy and good politics; we wanted to defend our friends and to send a message to detractors that there’s a group of individuals that will oppose them.”

In September 2021, Congress prepared to cut Israel a fresh check. It was considering its latest bill to both avoid a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, a legislative maneuver needed to avert both default on the debt and a global financial crisis. And Pelosi decided at the last minute to add a billion dollars in new money to the bill to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome, which had been depleted by the Gaza War.

Nancy Pelosi: Iron Dome is a purely defensive system designed to safeguard all civilians living in Israel. This system was co-developed by the United States and Israel and has saved thousands of lives.

RG: The round number had a symbolic, slapped-together feel, and was well out of whack with what the United States had previously provided, representing 60% of the total funding given to the Iron Dome over the entire last decade. Senator Pat Leahy — who chaired the Appropriations Committee, which doles out the money — told reporters the request wasn’t remotely an urgent one. “The Israelis haven’t even taken the money that we’ve already appropriated,” he said. Democrats, though, were making a billion-dollar point, whether the money was needed or not … But so was The Squad.

Jayapal — backed up by the now six members of The Squad,  and by Minnesota’s Betty McCollum and Illinois’s Marie Newman — threatened to take the bill down if the money were included. Pelosi relented, and pulled the bill from the floor on a Tuesday.

Chad Pergram, Fox News: Progressives threaten to shut down the government if Democrats left the Iron Dome provision in. The revolt underscores the chasm between Democrats over Israel, and how the Democratic leadership kowtows to liberals.

RG: The Washington insider outlet Axios described the stunning development for its readers: “Why it matters: There has never been a situation where military aid for Israel was held up because of objections from members of Congress.”

Mark Mellman’s client — Yair Lapid, not yet prime minister — was serving at the time as Israel’s foreign minister. According to a readout later provided by the Israeli government, Lapid called Steny Hoyer to demand to know what had happened. Hoyer assured him that it was a technical glitch, and that the House would get Israel its money quickly.

Making good on his promise, Hoyer moved to schedule a new vote, suspending the House rules so the bill could hit the floor on Thursday of that week.

Chad Pergram, Fox News: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says Iron Dome funding comes in a standalone bill later this week.

RG: Omar spoke with him the night before and pleaded for a delay, arguing that a spending increase that large needed to at least be discussed and that there were other ways to move the legislation. Why use this moment, Omar asked him, to force a fiery debate on the House floor? “Doing it this way would put a target on the backs of the opponents,” she said, with part of her aware that this was the precise purpose of hurrying with the vote. “Israel wants a standalone vote to show the overwhelming support for Iron Dome,” Hoyer told Omar.

Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez both lobbied Hoyer for a delay, or for a different legislative vehicle, but both were told the same thing: the vote was going ahead.

In a floor speech, Representative Ted Deutch charged Tlaib with antisemitism for accurately referring to Israel’s government as engaged in apartheid.

Ted Deutch: I cannot allow one of my colleagues to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and label the Jewish democratic state of Israel an apartheid state. I reject it. Today, this caucus, this body, the House of Representatives, will overwhelmingly stand with our ally, the State of Israel, in replenishing this defensive system.

RG: Pelosi made an unexpected appearance to claim that the proposed money was part of a deal President Obama had cut with Israel to fund Iron Dome.

Nancy Pelosi: Additional financial support for Iron Dome was part of the memorandum of understanding negotiated by President Obama in 2016. The funding being appropriated today simply continues and strengthens this support.

RG: Voting against the funding, speaker after speaker said, would be tantamount to killing innocent Israeli civilians.

“All of this framing,” Ocasio-Cortez texted from the Capitol, trying to lay out her frame of mind, “starts to cross a new line, that we are now removing and defunding existing defense, when the bill is actually just shoveling on more.”

“Meanwhile,” she continued, “the vitriol started to really heat up. AIPAC has escalated to very explicit, racist targeting of us that very much translates to safety issues. This is creating a tinderbox of incitement, with the cherry on top being that Haaretz caricature of me holding and shooting a Hamas rocket into Jerusalem with Rashida and Ilhan cheering on.”

“Back at home in New York,” she said, “Rabbis from City Island, who are typically progressive and on her side, were sending out mass emails warning that her vote would put people’s lives at risk.” She had even been banned from attending high holidays in her district.

Ocasio-Cortez walked onto the House floor and voted against the Iron Dome funding. She and Bowman, in the neighboring district, had gotten a barrage of calls and emails to their offices urging them to support the funding, but almost nothing at all from constituents telling them to vote it down. “Those on the ‘yes’ side were very clear,” Bowman told me, “and very loud, and very consistent with why they believed the vote needed to be yes. And that’s why I’m saying there needs to be much more organizing on the left around this issue, and others.”

But, back in the cloakroom, Ocasio-Cortez was shaken. For the first time in her life, she had been trailed that week by her own private security detail, the Capitol Police having refused to offer protection, even as the FBI was investigating four credible threats on her life, one of them a still-active kidnapping plot.

The other three members of the original squad — Pressley, Omar, and Tlaib — had all cast “no” votes. The two newest additions, though, were split, with Cori Bush voting no, but Bowman voting to approve the funding.

In the cloakroom, AOC began to tear up while telling Omar and Tlaib that she felt she had to go out there and change her vote. “Alex, it’s fine,” Omar said, embracing her. “Just don’t go out there and cry.” Omar was a big believer in the mantra that you couldn’t let them see they’d hurt you. Talib cut in: “Ilhan, stop telling people not to cry!” They all laughed, knowing Rashida’s penchant for letting her emotions flow freely down her cheeks.

It may have been good advice from Omar, but Ocasio-Cortez didn’t put it into practice. On the floor, she saw Pelosi, who knew AOC was angry at being forced to vote on the funding. Pelosi approached her, telling her she hadn’t wanted the standalone vote, that it was Hoyer who controlled the floor schedule, who had forced it. “Vote your heart,” she told Ocasio-Cortez.

AOC broke down, this time on the floor, with tears flowing in full view of the press and her colleagues, some of whom gave a shoulder of compassion, others giving awkward back pats as they slid past. She switched her vote to “present.”

Reporter, Fox News: Meanwhile, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets emotional as the House passes $1 billion in funding to Israel’s Iron Dome.

Reporter, Fox News: But, ironically, the Squad member didn’t even vote “no.” Changing her vote to “present” as the measure passed overwhelmingly.

RG: Speculation about the tactical designs behind the vote quickly shot through the press. Did this nod toward the pro-Israel camp mean AOC was angling for a New York State Senate bid? Was she worried that redistricting would bring heavily Jewish New York suburbs into her territory? Or was all of it just becoming too much?

Her present vote was the epitome of Ocasio-Cortez’s effort to be the consensus builder and the radical all at once. Voting her heart, she felt, would have permanently undermined her ability to serve as a peacemaker on the issue.

“While I wanted to vote ‘no,’ the dynamics back home were devolving so fast, that I felt voting ‘present’ was the only way I could maintain some degree of peace at home, enough to bring folks together to the table, because all this whipped things up to an all-out war,” she said. Omar and Tlaib held firm, though.

Rashida Tlaib: I rise in opposition to this supplemental. I will not support an effort to enable and support war crimes, human rights abuses, and violence. We cannot be talking only about Israelis’ need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system, and are dying from what Human Rights Watch has said are war crimes.

We should also be talking about Palestinian need for security from Israeli attacks. We must be consistent in our commitment to human life, period. Everyone deserves to be safe there.

RG: And the threats of violence ratcheted up. “For Muslim members of Congress, it’s a level no one understands,” Omar messaged me when speaking about the death threats the next day. “The anti-American rhetoric is a violent beast, and our vote yesterday makes it ten times worse.”

The next day, Ocasio-Cortez sent a long note of apology to her constituents. She wrote, “The reckless decision by House leadership to rush this controversial vote within a matter of hours and without true consideration created a tinderbox of vitriol, disingenuous framing, deeply racist accusations and depictions. To those I have disappointed: I am deeply sorry. To those who believe this reasoning is insufficient or cowardice: I understand.”

Reporter, ABC News: The 2022 campaign season heating up today, with a decision by former State Senator Nina Turner to enter the race for Congress. Turner launched a primary challenge of Congresswoman Shontel Brown, who defeated Turner last August in a special primary election.

RG: Turner soon announced that she’d be seeking a rematch against Brown in the spring of 2022.

Nina Turner: I do firmly believe that the people of Greater Cleveland need and deserve a champion.

RG: That’s when DMFI’s reinforcements arrived, in the form not just of AIPAC, but also of crypto and Silicon Valley money, which flowed in.

AIPAC finally stepped into the super PAC game in April, 2022, funding what it called the United Democracy Project.

Ayman Mohyeldin, MSNBC: All right. So, primary season is now in full swing, with less than six months until the midterm elections, and political super PACs are already spending millions. Some dark money groups — including AIPAC’s Super PAC, United Democracy Project — have dropped millions on boosting endorsed candidates and attacking progressives in those primaries.

RG: It would go on to spend $30 million, with its first broadside being launched against Turner.

A third group joined in called Mainstream Democrats PAC, funded by LinkedIn billionaire Reed Hoffman. Mainstream Dems and DMFI were effectively the same organization, operating out of the same office and employing the same consultants, though mainstream Democrats claimed a broader mission.

Strategic and targeting decisions for both were made by pollster Mark Mellman, according to Dimitri Mehlhorn, a Silicon Valley executive who serves as the political advisor to LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman.

Dmitri Mehlhorn: The thing that I believe is that everybody from AOC to Liz Cheney needs to be a part of the coalition to prevent Mr. Trump from taking office again. And so, if AOC is spending all of her time and energy attacking Mr. Trump, then she’s on my team.

RG: DMFI also funneled at least $500,000 to Mainstream Democrats PAC. Together, Mehlhorn and Mellman controlled the kind of money that could reshape any race they targeted.

Dmitri Mehlhorn: The reason we invested in groups like the mainstream Democrats who elevated Shontel Brown over Nina Turner is, we believe that Nina Turner was actually training her fire on somebody other than Mr. Trump; specifically, Mr. Biden, who was actually the center of our team.

RG: “Our money is going to the Mainstream Democrats coalition, which we trust to identify the candidates who are most likely to convey to Americans broadly an image of Democrats that is then electable,” Mehlhorn told me, saying he relied on the consultants linked to DMFI to make those choices.

The constellation of super PACs and dark money groups around No Labels — the political vehicle for Josh Gottheimer and Joe Manchin — kicked into gear, targeting progressives and primaries around the country. And then came the crypto.

Tom Brady, FTX Commercial: Not a trade-trade; I’m trading crypto.

Actor, FTX Commercial: You’re getting into crypto.

Actor, FTX Commercial: With FTX. You in?

Actor, FTX Commercial: You’re getting into crypto? With FTX? Steph and Tom are in? Oh, I’m in, bro.

RG: Hoffman’s super PAC spent heavily, while crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried — his Ponzi scheme having yet to collapse — chipped in a million dollars against Turner. SBF, as he became known, seeded his Protect Our Future PAC with nearly $30 million, and began spending huge sums.

Mehlhorn, Hoffman’s right-hand man, was explicit about his purpose. Nina Turner’s district is a classic case study, where the vast majority of voters in that district are Marcia Fudge voters. They’re pretty happy with the Democratic Party. “And Nina Turner’s record on the Democratic Party is that she’s a strong critic,” he told me.

And so, this group put in money to make sure that voters knew what she felt about the Democratic Party. “And from my perspective, that just makes it easier for me to try to do things like give Tim Ryan a chance of winning a U.S. Senate seat in a state like Ohio. Not a big chance, but at least a chance. And he’s not having to deal with the latest bomb thrown by Nina. So anyway, that’s the theory behind our support for Mainstream Democrats.”

Mellman, in an interview with HuffPost, acknowledged that his goals extended beyond the politics of Israel and Palestine. “The anti-Biden folks and the anti-Israel folks look to Turner as a leader,” Mellman said. “So she really is a threat to both of our goals.”

His remark was itself a case study in the strength of Washington narratives to withstand reality. The party’s right flank — led by Manchin, Sinema, and Gottheimer — was actively undermining Biden’s agenda, while Turner’s allies in Congress were the ones fighting for it.

In response to DMFI’s spending in 2020, the group J Street — a rival of AIPAC that takes a more progressive line on Palestinian rights — launched its own Super PAC to compete. Its leaders guessed DMFI would spend somewhere between $5 and $10 million. “If the advocacy group could cobble together two million,” said J Street’s Logan Bayroff, “that would at least be something of a fight, given that AIPAC and DMFI had to overcome the fact that what they were advocating for — unchecked, limitless support for the Israeli government, regardless of its abuses — was unpopular in Democratic primaries.”

“We’re always going to expect the right to have more money, given that they’re operating off of the bases of big donors. But that’s a little bit more of a fair fight,” he said of the disparity between J Street and DMFI. “But now you add to what DMFI is doing, $30 million from AIPAC, that’s just in a whole other realm,” he said. “It’s been a radical transformation in the politics of Israel-Palestine, and the politics of democratic primaries.”

Going into 2022, Turner was joined by the biggest number of boldly progressive candidates running viable campaigns in open seats since the Sanders wing had become a national force.

Gregorio Casar: In this city, we have stopped all prosecutions for personal marijuana. That’s what we did.

Reporter: Austin city council member Greg Casar announced he is running for Congress.

Delia Ramirez ad: Delia banned politicians from becoming lobbyists. In Congress, she’ll ban shady money too.

Maxwell Alejandro Frost: I’m Maxwell Alejandro Frost, and I’ve been making sure they hear from us for ten years.

Becca Balint Promotional Ad Voiceover: Vermont’s Becca Ballard, a leader who brings Vermonters together.

RG: There was Gregorio Casar in Austin, Delia Ramirez in Chicago, Maxwell Alejandro Frost in Orlando, Becca Balint in Vermont, Summer Lee in Pittsburgh, Nida Allam and Erica Smith in North Carolina, Donna Edwards in Maryland, Andrea Salinas in Oregon, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington State, and John Fetterman and Mandela Barnes running for Senate in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; both, coincidentally, their respective states’ lieutenant governors.

Also in Oregon, Jamie McLeod-Skinner was challenging incumbent Kurt Schrader, one of the most conservative Democrats left in Congress, who had made it his personal mission to block the Build Back Better Act and to stop Medicare from negotiating drug prices.

Jamie McLeod-Skinner Campaign Ad Voiceover: He’s taken 650,000 from Big Pharma and voted against letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices. Schrader voted with Republicans against raising the minimum wage and against COVID relief. So, it’s no surprise that just days after January 6th, Schrader joined Republicans again to oppose holding Donald Trump accountable, stating that impeaching Trump would be akin to, quote, “a lynching.”

Luckily, there is a real Democrat in this race who will take a stand to address the crises we’re facing. I’m Jamie McLeod Skinner. I’ve never taken a corporate dime, and I’m running for Congress to fight for working families.

RG: On January 31st, kickstarting the primary season, Jewish Insider published a list of 15 DMFI House endorsements, nearly all of them squaring off against progressive challengers.

The constellation of progressive groups that played in Democratic primaries scrambled to respond. Their loose coalition consisted of J Street, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, the Working Families Party, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, and Way to Win. Because Justice Democrats had been unable to form a collaborative relationship with The Squad, it hadn’t been able to raise the kind of small dollars that AOC or the Sanders campaign could.

This meant it was increasingly relying on the small number of left-wing wealthy people who wanted to be involved in electoral politics and were OK angering the democratic establishment. This left the organization without many donors, but with enough to stay relevant.

Collectively, the groups would be lucky to cobble together $10 million, up against well more than $50 million in outside spending, and that’s before counting the money that corporate friendly candidates could raise themselves. Remarkably, The Squad and Bernie Sanders were conspicuously absent from this organized effort to expand their progressive numbers.

In the summer of 2020, facing down their most intense opposition from within the party, the four members had created a PAC called the Squad Victory Fund. But, in the 2022 cycle, it raised just $1.9 million, and a close look at the finances shows that it spent nearly a million dollars to raise that money, renting email lists to hit with fundraising requests, advertising on Facebook, and so on. The remaining million was doled out mostly to the members of The Squad.

Had The Squad worked collaboratively with the Coalition of Organizations — lending their name, attending fundraising events and the like — several million dollars could have been raised. If Sanders had turned on his firehose, the resources available to the left would have been considerable.

As it was, the left had to find a way to even the playing field and, to a handful of progressive operatives, Sam Bankman-Fried seemed like the only path left.

Reporter, CBS News: Now, to the latest on the stunning downfall of one of the biggest names in cryptocurrency. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is in a Bahamas jail cell this morning on charges he misused billions of dollars from customers for his own personal gain.

Investigator, Interviewed, CBS News: This is one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.

Scott MacFarlane, CBS News: Federal prosecutors also allege Bankman-Fried violated campaign finance law, directing millions of dollars in campaign contributions to both parties; some of it, they say, with stolen customer money. Gayle?

Gayle King, CBS News: Boy, Scott, the more you hear, the worse it is. Thank you very much.

RG: After SBF was arrested, he texted with a reporter at Vox, saying his effective altruism, evangelism, and woke politics was all a cover. He said, in a series of direct messages the reporter published, “It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those who get fucked by it, by this dumb game we woke Westerners play, where we say all the right shibboleths, and so, everyone likes us.”

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Our lead producer is José Olivares. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is the Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief. And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

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