On March 6 of last year, two days before unidentified officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement abducted and arrested Khalil at his home, the FBI received an anonymous tip claiming that Khalil, listed incorrectly as a 22-year-old, had called for “violence on behalf of Hamas.” 

According to the heavily redacted documents, as of March 19, 2025, the FBI had closed an investigation into the tip and determined that Khalil “does not warrant further FBI investigation.” But by then, ICE had already secretly taken Khalil, now 31, thousands of miles away to a detention center in Louisiana. Despite the FBI’s decision to close the tip, the Trump administration continued to paint Khalil as a “Hamas supporter” and a threat to national security. 

It’s unclear if the FBI tip was directly related to Khalil’s ICE arrest, and the FBI did not respond to The Intercept’s question about whether the tip was shared with ICE. But Hamid Bendaas, a spokesperson at the Institute for Middle East Understanding, which has worked with Khalil since his arrest, said the timing reflects “a threat to us all.”

Though the FBI document says Khalil did not warrant further investigation, “that didn’t stop ICE from holding him in a detention center and separating him from his wife and newborn son for months,” Bendaas said. 

The document comes to light as the Trump administration has fast-tracked Khalil’s deportation case, which Khalil’s legal team argues is a form of retaliation against his protected political speech in support of Palestine. Khalil’s team received the FBI document, which has not been previously reported, via a lawsuit over a public records request and shared it exclusively with The Intercept.

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Khalil was the first of thousands of students the Trump administration targeted for deportation over First Amendment-protected speech in support of Palestine or criticizing Israel. The Trump administration exploited an obscure provision in immigration law to claim that Khalil and other students, including Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk, presented a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who ordered Khalil to be deported, has repeatedly claimed that he sympathized with terrorists, echoing claims from far-right doxing groups that had targeted Khalil in the months leading up to his arrest. Trump’s unprecedented crackdown came after years of similar attacks on pro-Palestine students that gained speed under former President Joe Biden. 

“Under Trump’s rogue presidency being led by extremists and conspiracy theorists,” Bendaas said, “any of us can be kidnapped by federal agents in the middle of the night simply for speaking against U.S. support for Israel’s genocide, no matter what the facts or Constitution says.” 

The Center for Constitutional Rights, part of Khalil’s legal team, submitted a request for public documents related to his arrest nearly a year ago, on May 29, 2025. After denials and delays, CCR filed a lawsuit on November 20 claiming that federal agencies, including the FBI, had improperly withheld the records. CCR said it has since received other documents from the Department of Justice and is expecting more from other agencies in the coming months.

“Despite the FBI closing its investigation with no findings to support the accusation, the Trump administration continued to label Mr. Khalil a supporter of Hamas in public comments,” said CCR staff attorney Samah Sisay. “This document further supports our argument that the Trump administration had no legitimate reason to target Mr. Khalil besides his free speech in support of Palestine.”

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In a statement to The Intercept, an FBI spokesperson said, “We let documents obtained through the FOIA process speak for themselves and decline to comment further.”

Reacting to the FBI file, an attorney at Palestine Legal condemned the Trump administration’s approach but called it “representative of the tactics used more broadly against Palestine activists.”

“Revelations that false reports were made against Mahmoud prior to his government sanctioned kidnapping, and that the administration continued to make false claims that Mahmoud posed a danger, even though the FBI found these claims to be unsubstantiated, are highly representative of this administration’s broader approach of acting first and making up justifications later, with no regard for truth or the findings of the administration’s own experts,” said Zoha Khalili, a senior managing attorney at Palestine Legal. “Around the world, people who demand freedom, equality, liberation, and the basic necessities of life for Palestinians have been smeared, silenced, investigated, and even imprisoned for their advocacy.”

Khalil’s team also plans to appeal the Board of Immigration Appeals order rejecting Khalil’s appeal to terminate his deportation proceedings. He is still fighting a separate federal habeas corpus case and cannot be deported while the case proceeds.

Update: May 12, 2026, 4:06 p.m. ET
This story has been updated with a comment from an attorney at Palestine Legal sent after publication.

The post FBI Quietly Closed a Probe Into Mahmoud Khalil While He Was in ICE Detention appeared first on The Intercept.

There were 279 FBI personnel working on “immigration-related matters” before Trump took office in January 2025, according to bureau records The Intercept obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. By September, that number had ballooned to more than 6,500.

In total, 9,161 people at the FBI worked on immigration between Trump’s inauguration and September 7 of last year, out of a total of 38,000 FBI employees. 

“That is a huge, huge number of people,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council who has testified before Congress on the cost of mass deportations. “This is just a somewhat shocking scale that we’re looking at.”

The flood of FBI personnel into immigration work came in the early days of the tenure of Director Kash Patel, who has shown a willingness to follow Trump’s orders without question or exception. According to David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, the redirection may have hampered the FBI’s ability to perform criminal investigative work.

“That’s a striking diversion of resources away from public safety,” Bier said. “We’re talking about the FBI diverting people away from criminal investigations and ongoing criminal activity and into civil immigration enforcement. This is showing the extent to which the resources of the FBI were put at the disposal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement contrary to the intent of Congress, and the abuse of the funds that Congress grants the FBI to accomplish its mission.”

The documents The Intercept received did not make clear if the employees assigned to immigration were part of the FBI’s total workforce or its smaller subset of 13,700 special agents. In September, the Cato Institute published a disclosure from ICE reporting that 2,840 out of 13,700 FBI special agents — 1 in 5 — were being redirected to work on ICE enforcement and removal operations.

“While the FBI does not comment on specific personnel numbers or decisions, FBI agents and staff are dedicated professionals working around the clock to defend the homeland and crush violent crime,” an FBI spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept. “The FBI continuously assesses and realigns our resources to ensure the safety of the American people, and we surge resources based on needs.”

ICE did not respond to a request for comment

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Trump has diverted thousands of agents at a number of federal agencies — including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the IRS, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — to aid in his administration’s deportation machine. 

The shift started as soon as he returned to office. By January 26, 2025, just six days after Trump’s second inauguration, the FBI had 1,390 employees working on immigration. In the first months of Trump’s second term, he ramped up arrests of immigrants around the country and authorized federal law enforcement at agencies that don’t work on immigration to help his administration carry out its deportation policies.

The FBI reassignments exploded the following month. As the Trump administration issued a directive to allow law enforcement to enter the homes of people it claimed were suspected gang members without a warrant, the number of FBI personnel working on immigration rose to 2,941. 

September’s 6,500-employee number wasn’t even the peak. The number continued increasing throughout the spring and reached over 5,700 in May, when the administration set a new quota to arrest 3,000 people a day. 

Another shocking detail, Bier said, was that the number of FBI agents being diverted to immigration work remained high even after Congress passed July’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which directed an additional $170 billion in funding for immigration and border spending. 

The law “infused tens of billions of dollars” for immigration enforcement,” Bier said, ” — “and yet there’s no let-up.”

“This is not about ‘ICE doesn’t have the money,’” Bier said. “ICE has the money, and they’re going ahead with using criminal law enforcement for mass deportation purposes.”

It’s not clear what the FBI’s “immigration-related” work entails, but the rapid expansion suggests FBI staff are working on issues unrelated to the FBI’s mandate, Reichlin-Melnick added.

“If you look at how quickly the scale of this ramped up and compare it to what we know was happening at the time, it’s very clear that a lot of this — probably the significant majority — was immigration enforcement,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

The increase coincides with an increase in FBI presence at immigration raids. On Wednesday, FBI agents were among the federal law enforcement personnel carrying out raids in Minnesota related to the right-wing allegations of fraud against the Somali immigrant community. 

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The number of FBI personnel working on immigration also raises national security concerns, Reichlin-Melnick added. The FBI had to reassign agents to work on counterterrorism, after previously diverting them to work on immigration, following the U.S. bombing of Iran last summer. 

“The national security implications of this are likely significant. In September 2025, 6,500 FBI personnel were working at least an hour of their day on immigration-related matters,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “There is no situation in which the administration has made the security of the nation better by reassigning these agents.” 

Bier agreed the diversion was potentially dangerous, pointing to the risks brought on by the current U.S. war on Iran.

“Anytime you’re involved in a war — and we certainly are — you should be careful about retaliation and monitoring those threats,” Bier said. “It makes little sense to divert people away from that during this time, especially.”

Update: May 1, 2026, 12:32 p.m. ET
This story has been updated with a comment from the FBI sent after publication.

The post FBI Redirected a Quarter of Staff to Target Immigrants Under Trump’s Deportation Push appeared first on The Intercept.

Mills’s exit less than six weeks before the June primary clears the path for populist candidate Graham Platner, now the presumed nominee, to face off against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the November general election after the party worked to subdue Platner’s campaign. The Democratic Party’s decision to wade into the primary at all had reignited a criticism that the Democratic establishment would stop at nothing to keep progressives out of Congress.

“The Democratic establishment — and especially calcified Senate leadership — is learning in real time that they are wildly out of touch with what Democratic primary voters want,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits young progressive candidates for office. “The establishment simply doesn’t have the juice (or the trust) anymore.”

By the time Mills, 78, ended her campaign on Thursday, party leaders had changed their tune on Platner. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who backed Mills early in the race, released a statement with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the chair of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, saying that Collins “has never been more vulnerable” and that they would work with Platner to beat her. The DSCC had financially backed Mills’s campaign, forming a joint fundraising committee with her in October. And they stuck by Mills even as her campaign appeared to languish. 

Platner, once considered a long-shot candidate marred by controversy, has surged this year in fundraising and polling. In a statement in January, Gillibrand said she was “very optimistic” about Mills’s race. In February, when polling numbers came out showing Platner beating Mills with 64 percent support to her 26, Schumer remained in her corner. 

The upset marks “a massive embarrassment for Chuck Schumer and DSCC operatives,” a Democratic strategist told The Intercept, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal. “This was their star recruit and she couldn’t even make it to the election. No longer can they be the gatekeepers.” 

Platner has faced a slew of controversies since launching his campaign last year, including revelations that he had a Nazi tattoo and had posted a series of regrettable comments on Reddit. Those pitfalls led many of Platner’s critics to compare him to another populist Democratic darling who took a hard turn to the right after entering Congress: Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.

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On Thursday, Fetterman made clear that he would not welcome the comparison. While other members of his party prepared to embrace Platner, Fetterman told reporters: “Democrats really, really like Platner in Maine, but the Republicans fucking love him. If Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him.”

In a statement on Thursday, Platner said he looked forward to working with Mills to defeat Collins in November. “This race has never been about me or about any one person. It’s about a movement of working Mainers who are fed up with being robbed by billionaires and the politicians they own, and who are taking back their power.” 

The day before she dropped out of the race, The Associated Press published an article about Mills campaigning as an underdog in the race despite having the resume for the job. On Thursday, Mills’s campaign was over.

The post Democratic Leaders Wanted to Control the Maine Senate Race. Their Pick Just Dropped Out. appeared first on The Intercept.

Tom Steyer, a hedge-fund billionaire and philanthropist, won the group’s endorsement on Monday. Our Revolution said its decision to back Steyer was driven in part by the shakeup over Rep. Eric Swalwell’s exit and fear that if progressives fail to consolidate around a candidate, they’ll hand the gubernatorial seat to a Republican.

“While yes, he is a billionaire, and that’s a real and important concern, it’s equally important to recognize how he’s used his wealth and power,” said Our Revolution Executive Director Joseph Geevarghese.

Steyer, he said, is the candidate most ideologically aligned with his group’s pledge to fight corporate power in politics — and the most likely to win.

“The worst thing that could happen is a Republican winning,” Geevarghese said. “Strategically, Steyer and his campaign is best positioned to make sure that does not happen.”

When California voters cast their ballots in the June 2 primary, the two leading candidates will advance to the general election — no matter their party affiliation. Since January, polling has shown two Republicans candidates — former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — in the lead. President Donald Trump endorsed Hilton earlier this month. 

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Left-leaning voters remain split across a wide Democratic field, with Swalwell and Steyer as frontrunners until last week. Swalwell pulled ahead in some polls in March, before dropping out of the race and resigning from Congress last week amid a series of allegations of sexual assault and harassment. 

Since Swalwell’s exit, Steyer has risen in polls, along with former Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif. But with Republicans still leading, progressives are now grappling with how best to achieve their policy priorities in a pool of candidates from which a clear favorite has yet to emerge. 

Geevarghese said that Steyer aggressively sought Our Revolution’s endorsement throughout the race. Porter also sought the endorsement, but hasn’t pulled ahead or demonstrated a clear path to victory, Geevarghese said. 

Porter, a progressive who flipped a Republican seat in Orange County campaigning on fighting corporate power, faced backlash last year after videos surfaced of her yelling at a staffer during a television interview. While she has the longest progressive record in office of the Democratic candidates in the field, left voters haven’t necessarily been convinced by her campaign. Porter has been endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., former New York Rep. Mondaire Jones, Emily’s List, End Citizens United, and several California unions, but has hovered behind behind Hilton, Bianco, Swalwell, and Steyer in recent polling. 

“We do have a concern about whether she would be the stronger candidate in the field to consolidate for progressives,” Geevarghese said. He added that even before the implosion of Swalwell’s campaign, Our Revolution would not have supported Swalwell.

After previously having coalesced around Swalwell, some allies of Gov. Gavin Newsom are now considering backing another more moderate Democrat, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra. Becerra has also risen in polling since Swalwell’s exit. 

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Steyer has spent $120 million of his own money on ads for himself, more than any other campaign in the country this cycle, Politico reported. While he’s been mostly known in politics for his advocacy on climate change and a failed 2020 presidential bid that cost him more than $300 million, Steyer has leaned heavily into economic populism during his gubernatorial bid. He says he will support a wealth tax and has called for billionaires and corporations to pay more in taxes. He has also focused much of his criticism on Trump. 

One policy shift since his failed presidential campaign is Steyer’s position on single-payer health care. 

“In 2019, I didn’t think we needed single-payer health care,” Steyer said in a campaign video earlier this month. “Boy was I wrong, and boy was Bernie right. I’ve looked at the data. We don’t have a choice. For us to provide health care to everybody who needs it, we’ve got to go to single-payer. And there’s no other way.”

Geevarghese said Our Revolution, which counts the most members in California after New York, sees the race as an opportunity to elect someone who will both push back on Trump while advancing an aggressive progressive policy agenda at the state level. The group is also backing a Sanders 2020 campaign alum to run California’s insurance system, and working to pass a proposed state tax on billionaires via ballot measure. Steyer is the candidate most aligned with those priorities, Geevarghese said. 

“He’s been a partner in the movement,” Geevarghese said. “Most billionaires have used their wealth and privilege to lock in the status quo. And Tom has done the opposite, right? He is actively using his position to upset the system.” 

Steyer has given millions of dollars to philanthropic ventures over the years, including funding research on sustainable energy and launching a PAC to help elect candidates running on fighting climate change. Steyer has also faced criticism for benefiting from policies meant to help billionaires pay lower taxes and having an investment firm with money in the Cayman Islands, a known tax haven. 

Our Revolution is Steyer’s first major endorsement from a national progressive group. He’s also been endorsed by the California Teachers Association, another progressive advocacy organization called Courage California, and four Democratic state assembly members. 

“We stand a risk of giving California to the Republicans. And that would be the worst outcome possible,” Geevarghese said. “Democrats could do themselves in here and be their worst enemy.” 

The post Progressive Group Founded by Bernie Sanders Endorses Billionaire for California Governor appeared first on The Intercept.

The race to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez in New York’s 7th Congressional District has put major progressive organizations and figures at odds. Hoping to capitalize on growing national frustration with conservative Democrats and lingering momentum from Mamdani’s win in November, national progressives and their counterparts in New York are fighting to succeed Velázquez with an ally in Congress.

They just haven’t agreed on who it should be. 

Sanders, the Vermont independent, is giving a boost to the socialist wing behind Valdez’s campaign, which includes Mamdani and the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the campaign shared with The Intercept.

“Claire Valdez is a union organizer who worked minimum-wage fast food jobs and understands firsthand how this economy fails working people,” Sanders said in a statement to The Intercept. “In my view, Congress needs more voices who come from America’s working class. Claire has the experience and vision we need to take on the oligarchy and fight for unions, Medicare for All, and affordable housing. I’m proud to endorse her campaign for Congress.”

Velázquez has endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Valdez’s main competitor. Reynoso also has backing from leading progressive officials and groups in New York City like Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and the New York Working Families Party. 

Already facing losses this cycle in races where competing progressive candidates did not consolidate their support, national progressives like Sanders are picking sides in the battle to define the future of the electoral left under Mamdani.

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Velázquez endorsed Reynoso shortly after Valdez launched her campaign in January standing alongside Mamdani and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain. Some local observers saw Velázquez’s move as a rebuke of the mayor and a harbinger of a fight between factions of New York City’s left, endangering a relationship Mamdani and Velázquez had built since she became the first member of Congress to back his mayoral campaign.

Velázquez left little room to speculate on that question in comments she made to the New York Times in January, when she said Mamdani had opened up conflict between groups in his coalition by involving himself in primaries; that she was unfamiliar with Valdez, who is originally from Texas; and that she was skeptical of newcomers to the city who think they know who should represent New Yorkers in office.

In a statement to The Intercept, Valdez named Sanders as a key inspiration for her political beliefs and career.

“Three things made me a democratic socialist: shitty jobs, the labor movement, and Bernie Sanders’ runs for president,” Valdez said. “His political revolution changed my life — and showed millions of Americans what’s possible when working people organize. I’m grateful for this endorsement and ready to join the fight in Congress against the oligarchs and for economic democracy.”

On Wednesday, the Valdez campaign announced that it had raised $750,000 from 11,200 donors in the filing period that just ended, though the Federal Election Commission has not yet processed and verified the figures. Reynoso had raised just over $317,500 by the end of 2025, before Valdez launched her campaign, according to available FEC data. His campaign has not yet announced its most recent fundraising figures and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Valdez’s endorsements include PAL PAC, the new pro-Palestine group opposing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; Justice Democrats; Leaders We Deserve PAC; Jewish Voice for Peace Action; attorney and political advocate Zephyr Teachout; Democratic New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport; and several members of the New York State Assembly.

Reynoso’s backers include Make the Road Action; New York Communities for Change; several powerful local unions including 32BJ SEIU and DC-37; Attorney General Letitia James; New York Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler and Pat Ryan; and several New York City Council members. 

The post Bernie Sanders Backs Claire Valdez in NYC House Race Dividing Left and Progressives appeared first on The Intercept.

But for the top of the ticket in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, more than two dozen donors to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are quietly backing Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, The Intercept has found. 

At least 27 AIPAC donors have given to Stratton’s campaign to replace retiring Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., according to an analysis of federal campaign data. A former AIPAC president, Lee Rosenberg, is on her finance committee.

While public opinion sours on AIPAC’s brand, the group is backing a multimillion-dollar ad campaign run through other committees with palatable names like “Elect Chicago Women” in at least four Democratic House primaries. Its donors, meanwhile, have been funneling money to its preferred Illinois House candidates. The group has kept an even lower profile in the Senate race, where it’s been less clear how, if at all, the pro-Israel lobby is engaging.

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Neither of the top contenders for the safe Democratic seat have suggested they would champion the Palestinian cause if elected to the Senate. Both Stratton and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, her leading opponent, have declined to call Israel’s destruction in Gaza a genocide or commit to stopping U.S. weapons transfers to Israel, and at least one of Stratton’s pro-Israel donors also gave to Krishnamoorthi’s campaign. AIPAC endorsed Krishnamoorthi, who has received more than $250,000 from the pro-Israel lobby during his decade in Congress, for his 2024 reelection.

Both are running to the right of Rep. Robin Kelly, a relatively progressive Illinois congresswoman currently in a distant third, but even she staked out a more critical position on Israel upon entering the race and has taken some pro-Israel money while in office, much of it from the centrist group J Street.

AIPAC donors have given more than $70,000 to Stratton’s campaign since August, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission — out of just over $4 million she’s raised in total. The 27 donors have collectively given just under $5 million to AIPAC, its super PAC United Democracy Project, and the group Democratic Majority for Israel, which has close ties to AIPAC. Only two of them live in Illinois.

Rosenberg, the former AIPAC president on Stratton’s finance committee, is a leading Democratic strategist in Illinois, longtime adviser to Gov. JB Pritzker, and former adviser to Barack Obama.

In response to questions from The Intercept, a Stratton campaign spokesperson said that AIPAC had not endorsed the lieutenant governor and was not spending in the Senate race. The spokesperson said Stratton has more than 28,000 individual donors and supports a two-state solution for peace between Israel and Palestine.

In the final days ahead of Tuesday’s primary, Stratton has begun to catch up in the polls to Krishnamoorthi, who has largely outperformed his Democratic opponents in fundraising and public opinion surveys. The two candidates’ allies and critics have pointed fingers over fundraising, accusing the other of drawing support from corporate donors.

Krishnamoorthi’s $30 million fundraising haul is supplied in part by a crypto PAC, donors to President Donald Trump, and Palantir’s chief technology officer, among others, the Chicago Tribune reported on Tuesday. Stratton, meanwhile, has said she’s not taking corporate PAC money and hit Krishnamoorthi’s campaign for accepting support from a “MAGA-backed crypto PAC,” but her opponents have also criticized her Senate campaign for still benefiting from corporate donors that fund PACs backing her.

Democrats in Illinois have criticized AIPAC’s efforts to elect pro-Israel Democrats in deep-blue seats in and around Chicago. Pritzker, one of Stratton’s top surrogates and funders (and her boss), is a former AIPAC donor who cut ties with the group and has since denounced it as a “pro-Trump organization” and “significantly MAGA-influenced.”

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Pro-Israel spending “is a moral issue,” said former Rep. Marie Newman, an Illinois Democrat who was ousted from Congress in 2022 after pro-Israel groups spent against her. “AIPAC must be stopped if you believe in democracy.” 

Stratton, who took a trip to Israel in 2019 to meet with an opposition leader, as Politico reported, has been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s destruction in Gaza. She has not said whether she would support legislation blocking U.S. weapons to Israel. 

Criticizing Netanyahu is at odds with taking support from AIPAC and its donors, Newman said.

“AIPAC vigorously supports Netanyahu, a right-wing dictator, best friend to Trump and his authoritarian inhumane government,” Newman told The Intercept. “Israel’s right-wing government has dragged us into multiple unnecessary wars, helped ruin the US’ reputation in the world and is committing genocide.”

While Krishnamoorthi holds the advantage in polling and fundraising, it’s not clear who will win on Tuesday as dueling PACs fight it out in the final days of the race. Another group that has run ads in support of Krishnamoorthi recently launched ads backing Kelly in an apparent effort to peel votes away from Stratton. Kelly, who has raised $3 million, has struggled to keep pace in the polls with Krishnamoorthi and Stratton, and their backers have labeled her a spoiler.

Kelly’s campaign argues that she’s the most principled of the three candidates, particularly on Israel and Gaza.

“Robin pledged not to accept contributions from AIPAC after deciding to sign onto the Block the Bombs bill and meeting with doctors who volunteered on the front lines in Gaza,” her campaign spokesperson Joe Bowen told The Intercept. “She is the only candidate who has pledged not to take their money, the only candidate to support Block the Bombs and the only candidate to call the genocide in Gaza what it is.”

Kelly, who has hit both Krishnamoorthi and Stratton for stopping short of calling Israel’s destruction in Gaza a genocide, adopted that stance shortly before she launched her Senate campaign. Previously endorsed by J Street, she received $14,000 from AIPAC in 2025 and took an AIPAC trip to Israel in 2016. Kelly, now the only major candidate in the race to reject AIPAC support, has said the contributions were from individual donors who gave through AIPAC’s portal. 

The post AIPAC Is Staying Out of Illinois Senate Race — But Its Donors Back Juliana Stratton appeared first on The Intercept.

The latest ad buy by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project is one of the largest investments by a pro-Palestine group so far in a cycle that’s seen progressives ramp up attacks on the pro-Israel lobby and its widespread support among members of Congress. Now, IMEU Policy Project hopes to take advantage of what it calls a growing vulnerability for Republicans while the consequences of their support for Israel have been laid bare in the form of President Donald Trump’s latest act of war on Iran.

The war has aggravated long-standing Republican fault lines on foreign policy and resurfaced questions about where the party that calls itself “America First” actually stands on embroiling the U.S. in fighting overseas. Those rifts were on full display this week, when Trump appeared to walk back comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio blaming Israel for dragging the U.S. into the war.

“The perception that President Trump launched this war against Iran for Israel’s benefit is dividing his base and will benefit Democrats in 2026,” said IMEU Policy Project spokesperson Hamid Bendaas, “if Democrats choose to take advantage.” 

So far, the party’s leadership has declined. Despite reportedly concluding in an internal autopsy that Kamala Harris lost voters over Gaza in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats have not incorporated those findings into their midterm strategy, Bendaas said. The party is on track to repeat those forced errors and whiff an opportunity to make significant gains in upcoming midterms if they continue to ignore the evidence around them, he added. 

“Democrats made the costly mistake of ignoring the deep unpopularity of support for Israel — and its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza — among their own voters in 2024,” Bendaas said. “They could miss another opportunity if Democratic leadership and candidates in swing districts continue to take money from AIPAC and refuse to capitalize on one of their strongest attack lines against Republicans going into November.”

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Democratic results in the midterms’ first round of primaries on Tuesday offered some evidence that voters are interested in changing the status quo on Israel. In Texas, Frederick Haynes III, a reverend who has been outspoken in calling for justice for Palestinians and labeling Israel an apartheid state, won a landslide victory to replace Rep. Jasmine Crockett when she vacates her seat. Crockett, who has largely followed the party line on Israel and Palestine, meanwhile lost the Senate primary to state Rep. James Talarico, who is not a known advocate for Palestine but who local organizers see as potentially more amenable to the cause. In North Carolina, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, who ran explicitly against pro-Israel interests, came within 1 percentage point of incumbent Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee, who the pro-Israel lobby helped elect in 2022. (Their race was too close to call as of early Wednesday afternoon, and Allam plans to request a recount.)

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, IMEU Policy Project relayed concerns to Harris’s campaign that Gaza would cost her votes. After the election, it was one of several groups that met with the Democratic National Committee over concerns about Israel policy. IMEU Policy Project had concluded the issue was a liability in its own polling — and in the meeting, the DNC acknowledged it had found the same.

In January, the group sent a letter to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, obtained by The Intercept, warning the congressional Democrats’ campaign arm about the DNC’s findings and its own, and advising DCCC about the group’s plans to run ads against vulnerable Republicans. IMEU Policy Project sent the letter to DCCC prior to reporting from Axios that verified the DNC’s Gaza autopsy findings. 

“We are confident in saying that internal DNC data corroborated our conclusion that Biden’s support for Israel cost Democrats votes in 2024, and have concerns that the DNC’s suppression of this report is motivated, at least in part, by their finding that support for Israel is an electoral liability for the party,” reads the letter. “We look forward to engaging with you to ensure that the pivotal lessons from the 2024 election are not repeated, and instead incorporated into the Democratic Party’s strategy in the months ahead and before the pivotal midterm general elections.” DCCC did not respond to the letter and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

IMEU Policy Project launched its latest round of ads last week against Republicans in toss-up districts in Arizona and Iowa. The new ads target Reps. Juan Ciscomani and Marianette Miller-Meeks for voting to send billions of dollars to Israel while supporting cuts to health care. 

“Israelis enjoy universal health care, while Americans go bankrupt from medical bills. Miller-Meeks’ reward? Giant campaign donations from AIPAC and the pro-Netanyahu lobby,” the ad says. 

IMEU Policy Project spent $25,000 on its first round of ads in January targeting Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican running in a tight reelection contest in New York, for voting to send billions of dollars to Israel while supporting cuts to Medicaid services at home. 

Democrats have shown little sign that they’ll take the prospect of parting ways with the pro-Israel lobby seriously, even as they watch the U.S. and Israel unleash destruction in Iran. While several progressives have vocally opposed the war, the party has largely been caught flatfooted on Iran, with Democratic leaders reportedly slow-walking a vote on the Iran war powers resolution, opening the door for Trump to attack Iran before Congress reconvened on Monday. The Senate is expected to vote on an Iran war powers resolution on Wednesday, followed by a House vote on Thursday.

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Democratic Leaders Avoid Criticizing Trump’s Iran War. Now Voters Will Have a Say.

Several Democratic candidates running in midterm elections linked U.S. support for Israel to Trump’s war in Iran this week. Allam released the first ad of the cycle touching on Iran just ahead of Tuesday’s primary. “I have opposed these forever wars my entire career,” said the North Carolina candidate, “and I hope to earn your vote to be your proudly uncompromised pro-peace leader in Washington.” In Maine, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner said the war was “un-American” and being pushed by Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

Some sitting members of Congress made the same connection. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas both criticized Rubio and the Trump administration for allowing Israel to endanger U.S. interests.

“Secretary Rubio’s remarks indicate that Israel put U.S. forces in harm’s way by insisting on attacking Iran. And the administration was complicit — joining their war instead of talking them down,” Castro wrote in a post on X Monday. “This is unacceptable of the President, and unacceptable of a country that calls itself our ally.”

“So Netanyahu now decides when we go to war?” Gallego wrote the same day. “So much for America First.”

The post Trump’s Iran War Is Dividing Republicans. Pro-Palestine Groups Want Democrats to Exploit the Rifts. appeared first on The Intercept.

The bitter race was framed as a referendum on the style of Democrat Texas voters want, with Talarico known for bridging divides and Crockett for inflaming them. While the avowed Christian Talarico drew praise from pundits for assailing billionaires and describing wealth redistribution as a righteous cause, more voters perceived him as the moderate in the race, according to a Texas Public Opinion Research poll. Organizers in Texas said they saw his openness as an opportunity to push him left, too.

Groups active in Palestinian rights work “feel like there’s movement and space to move Talarico,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, a labor organizer who ran against the Democratic Party’s pick in Texas’s Senate primary, even though currently “he’s not where they want him to be.”

As Talarico gears up for the November election against either incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn or Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who are set to compete in a runoff in May, local progressive organizers are “very much going to push” him, Ramirez said. They’ll need to, she and other organizers pointed out — while Talarico and Crockett diverge in tone, local activists said that on key issues, including immigrants’ rights and accountability for Israel, they offered little difference in substance.

“Their policies on Gaza are pretty much the same,” said Azra Siddiqi, a community activist who met with both campaigns as part of a coalition of over a dozen Muslim organizing groups. Before the primary, she said her group couldn’t “really recommend one over the other.”

Voters were able to scrutinize Crockett’s federal record, which included voting to send weapons to Israel, whereas they couldn’t do the same with Talarico, a state legislator. Siddiqi said she came away from the meetings feeling like Talarico didn’t necessarily understand where her community was coming from on Gaza.

After the meetings, Siddiqi said, organizers were frustrated by what she described as Talarico’s refusal to call Israel’s destruction of Gaza a genocide pending an official international designation, or his attempt to delineate between his support for defensive weapons for Israel rather than offensive ones. Talarico has accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza and said the destruction was a “moral disaster” and one of many reasons Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election. He stopped short of describing Israel’s violence in Gaza as a genocide during a September interview with HuffPost. Siddiqi and other activists also pressed him on accepting campaign contributions in the Texas state house from a pro-casino PAC bankrolled by pro-Israel Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson. 

Sameeha Rizvi, the Texas policy and advocacy coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action, said refusing to describe the war as a genocide could turn away voters in Texas’ Muslim community. And while Rizvi, who also met with the coalition, has heard the sentiment that Palestine is an unwinnable issue in a red state, she pointed to growing voter frustration with Israel on both the left and right over the genocide in Gaza and the U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran, connecting that outrage to the economic issues that powered Talarico’s campaign.

“Ending the genocide and standing with the Palestinian people essentially does benefit this country, because we wouldn’t be sending billions of our taxpayer dollars over to a foreign entity for them to commit genocide. We look back at our state at home and we can barely afford the cost of living, and health care is like inaccessible to half the population,” Rizvi said. 

In a mid-February email shared with The Intercept, organizers told Talarico they could not formally endorse him because he had not addressed their concerns on Israel and Gaza. They described being brushed off by the campaign and “feeling disregarded in this process.”

“I want to be candid,” wrote organizer Hatem Natsheh, “if Talarico wins the primary, success in the general election will require broad coalition support, including ours. We sincerely hope it will not be too late to rebuild communication and trust should the campaign wish to re-engage in a meaningful way.” 

Several days later, Talarico’s campaign sent Natsheh a backgrounder saying he would support legislation to end offensive weapons to Israel, would push to make sure defensive weapons weren’t used to harm civilians, and would “not take campaign contributions from any PACs on any side of this conflict — because I want people to know that my position is driven by my values, not any outside influence.”

Organizers also requested a similar statement from Crockett’s campaign, Siddiqi said, but they did not hear back. 

The Border to Minneapolis

Beyond Israel and Palestine, immigration policy may feel closer to home for many Texas voters. Texas border towns have long been the front line for the militarization of immigration enforcement, and local immigration activists told The Intercept they hope the Democratic nominee will be more aggressive in halting violence from federal immigration agents than their party leadership. 

“If anybody has a standpoint that is not abolish ICE, then I think they can do more,” said Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-founder and co-director of Frontera Foundation, who said that applied to both Talarico and Crockett.

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Garcia Grewal is based in the border city of Eagle Pass, which Gov. Greg Abbott has made ground zero for his immigration crackdown, known as Operation Lone Star. Since 2021, the Republican governor has constructed dangerous barriers along the Rio Grande to deter crossings, seized city property to house National Guard soldiers, and sent hundreds of troops and military vehicles to police the streets in what has been described as a military occupation of the city. Under the Biden administration, the city was touted by congressional Republicans as a success story of border security.

Now, Garcia Grewal sees the violence from federal agents who fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as a continuation of a war on immigrants that has been raging in Texas for years. She criticized Texas Democrats who were quiet on defending Eagle Pass from Republican attacks as laying the groundwork for increased militarization of immigration enforcement elsewhere.

“What happened on the border didn’t stay on the border,” Garcia Grewal said. “The rest of the country is waking up to what we’ve been experiencing here for years.” She pointed out that Immigration and Customs agents killed another American citizen, Ruben Ray Martinez, in the coastal Texas town of South Padre Island nearly a year ago — which went largely unnoticed and was not linked to ICE until last month. 

Talarico has decried the killings of Americans by federal agents, calling for the prosecution of ICE agents who have broken laws, but has stopped short of saying he would abolish ICE. Instead, he has stuck closer to the route of party leadership, which emphasizes “reining in” ICE and Customs and Border Protection with reforms and more accountability around use of force. He has also advocated for at least partially defunding the agency’s budget in favor of social services, such as healthcare. 

Aspects of Talarico’s border security policies would continue militarized immigration enforcement. Talarico has likened the border to a front porch that “should have a welcome mat out front and lock on the door.”

While the welcome mat is for refugees, asylum-seekers, or anyone who wants to contribute to the economy, according to his campaign platform, Talarico’s lock shows up in his calls for continued investment in border security. His policy says the border should keep out people “who mean to do us harm,” listing cartels and gang members, and that ports of entry should be modernized “to better detect threats before they come.”

“Democrats are missing the opportunity to really show the way and how to fix what’s going on with immigration,” said José Palma, the Houston-based coordinator of the National Temporary Protected Status Alliance. The party’s dominant strategies, he added, represent “a very, very low ask.”

For both Palma and Garcia Grewal, violent immigration enforcement is the product of a failed immigration system that has not offered people viable paths to citizenship. Even people with status through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals are being deported, Palma pointed out, and poor conditions persist at detention centers, where 32 people died in ICE custody last year. At least eight more have died in the agency’s hands this year so far. 

Palma said he was frustrated with the Democrats’ long history of promising to fight for immigrants in campaigns but failing to deliver legislation once in power. He worried as a similar dynamic was playing out amid the outcry against ICE and called on Democrats like Talarico to lay out clear objectives to protect immigrant communities. 

“The harassment and the abuse is something to denounce,” he said, “But at the same time, undocumented immigrants are getting detained in every other opportunity they have and they are getting deported. At the same time we need to highlight abuses, we have to talk about harm reduction, but also, what is the solution?”

In a celebratory speech on primary night, Talarico pledged to serve “a people-powered movement to take on this broken political system,” saying he ran “truly a campaign of, by, and for the people.” As he prepares to face a Republican in the months to come, Texans will have to determine which people his movement includes.

The post Will James Talarico Really Fight for Justice in Texas? appeared first on The Intercept.

Street is walking a fine line on Israel policy, articulating views that range from moderate to evasive. That has rankled some of Philadelphia’s progressive Muslim organizers, but it may well reflect an effort to appease the city’s diverse voting blocs. Philadelphia’s large Muslim and Jewish populations don’t fall neatly on either side of issues related to Israel and Gaza. If elected, Street would be the first Muslim congressman from Pennsylvania, but his supporters and detractors alike argue that they don’t want identity politics to overshadow substantive policy debates.

Many Muslim Philadelphians “may like Street personally,” said Yusuf Abdul Hameed, a supporter of the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “but they’re upset because of his lack of courage to really condemn Israel for what clearly was a genocide.” Hameed counted himself among those who like Street, but he said he’s backing his opponent, Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, a progressive who has carved out a lane on the left by being openly critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

Their competition now stands to turn Philadelphia into a testing ground, where voters have a chance to signal how much Israel and Palestine still matter to them as the Trump administration’s barrage of constant scandals, crackdowns, and excesses dominates the midterms cycle.

Street doesn’t have Israel policies on his campaign website. His stance on the issue has largely come to light through public statements he made in his former role as chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party after the October 7, 2023, attacks and over the course of the campaign. His current vagueness has raised questions about whether he would accept campaign funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or other factions of the pro-Israel lobby.

“I recognize that there won’t be peace for the state of Israel without peace for the Palestinian people, but there won’t be peace for the Palestinian people unless there’s peace for the state of Israel at some point,” Street told the Philadelphia Inquirer last month.

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Street supporter Salima Suswell, an organizer in Philadelphia’s Black Muslim community, said Street had been a leader for Muslims in the city and in the district and also spoke out on Gaza. She said Street and other Black Muslim officials can face a greater pressure to choose sides between Israel and Gaza but that she was confident in Street’s ability to listen to and act on the needs of residents in the district. 

“That said, the Black Muslim community stands in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Gaza. I fully trust that Senator Street will be a force for good in Congress, and he will fight for our communities both domestically and abroad,” she said. 

Home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the country, Philadelphia has a sizable community of Black residents who converted to Islam in the 1960s, during the rise of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. The city is also home to many Jewish voters, including younger ones who are more likely to be critical of Israel than the older generation, as well as moderate, pro-Israel Jewish Democrats who make up a large portion of the voting bloc.  

The political complexities of Philadelphia’s religious electorate could make things difficult for AIPAC, which has been searching for ways to shape midterm races this cycle without drawing too much negative attention to itself. 

AIPAC has not publicly endorsed in the 3rd Congressional District race. But Street was the beneficiary of a short-lived, secret fundraising page hosted by a little-known pro-Israel group — one that AIPAC has used to direct donors to at least one other candidate this cycle. 

The fundraising page, hosted by the Pro-Israel Network, urged donors to contribute to Street’s campaign. The page was live until late last year, when it came to the attention of Philadelphia’s progressive circles and suddenly vanished. The Pro-Israel Network is not officially affiliated with AIPAC. But as AIPAC has adopted a quieter role in elections this cycle, the Pro-Israel Network is one of several proxies the more prominent group has used to highlight preferred candidates for its donors. 

Street’s campaign said in a statement to The Intercept that they weren’t aware of the page until it was brought to their attention and that they didn’t seek the group’s endorsement or receive any campaign contributions through the page. 

“Sharif is not seeking AIPAC’s endorsement, and we weren’t aware of the Pro-Israel Network page until folks showed it to us. We didn’t coordinate with that group and haven’t received any funding from it,” Street’s campaign spokesperson Anthony Campisi said. 

Beth Miller, the political director for Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said she hopes the Street campaign will keep it that way.

“Pro-genocide groups like AIPAC are directly at odds with what Democratic voters want. The overwhelming majority of Democratic voters have made it clear that they want the U.S. to stop funding Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians,” Miller said. “No Democratic candidate should be taking a dollar — or any other kind of support — from groups that are so at odds with the party’s own base.”

According to Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu, the executive director of CAIR-Philadelphia, many in the Philadelphia community view the issue of Israel and Palestine as a window into broader debates, and they see reason to be wary of politicians who waver from moral stances. 

“The Israel–Palestine issue is not only important as a foreign policy matter, but also as an issue that intersects with rights, with freedoms, with how we stand up for oppressed people in our own communities in the U.S.,” Tekelioglu said. He said Philadelphians “are now asking for more, and are coming closer to an accountability politics point of view.”

As a nonprofit, CAIR-Philadelphia cannot endorse a candidate, but Tekelioglu said he’s volunteering for Rabb in his personal capacity. The national political arm, CAIR Action, plans to endorse in the race but has not yet announced its pick.

Hameed, who has been a member of the Nation of Islam since the 1980s, said it would be nice to have a Muslim representative in Congress, but sharing race or religion with a candidate wasn’t enough to earn his vote. He criticized attempts to make excuses for Black Democrats who have taken support from AIPAC, like Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Ritchie Torres of New York and Glenn Ivey of Maryland. 

“These people support Israel, and they’re getting money from AIPAC, and they’re complicit with genocide,” Hameed said. “They would turn on them in a dime.”

During a candidate forum in December, Street was asked whether he would support legislation to block arms sales to Israel. He said peace and security relied on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza and rebuilding, but that his allotted response time wasn’t enough to answer the question or address such a complicated issue. 

“If we’re gonna do this topic justice, talking about peace in the Middle East is not really a one-minute answer,” Street said. “Catchy soundbites sound good, but they don’t save lives.” 

While several candidates criticized Israel’s destruction in Gaza, Rabb was the only one of the five candidates present to state specifically that he would support such legislation. During another forum in January, Rabb was also clear on his stance on the leading pro-Israel lobbying group, saying, “Fuck AIPAC.” 

Street and Rabb are running in a crowded field of more than 10 candidates vying to replace Evans in the May 19 primary. Among them are state Rep. Morgan Cephas, Dr. David Oxman, Dr. Ala Stanford, climate adviser under former President Joe Biden Pablo McConnie-Saad, and real estate developer and nonprofit leader Isaiah Martin. Street is leading the pack in fundraising, with more than $700,000 raised so far. Oxman has raised $497,000 — including $175,000 he gave to his own campaign. Stanford has raised $467,000, and Rabb has raised $384,000, ahead of Cephas, who’s raised $241,000. 

Muslims United PAC, a national political action committee that has endorsed candidates including Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Summer Lee, endorsed Rabb over Street, mainly because of Rabb’s explicit criticism of the genocide in Gaza. The group declined to comment on the race.

In a statement to The Intercept, Rabb said he couldn’t speculate on who was backing his opponents but that he would never take money from AIPAC. “I have not nor would I even consider meeting with AIPAC because I view them as a racist, extremist organization,” Rabb said. 

“Israel and Gaza — and Palestine, more broadly — deserve the opportunity to engage in peaceful self-determination without U.S. military domination preempting that fundamental right. I support a permanent and immediate ceasefire including release of hostages, recognition that a genocide has occurred in Gaza, and oppose export or use of U.S. weapons in ways that violate U.S. or international law,” he said. Rabb is also running on rejecting corporate PAC money, fighting the influence of billionaires in politics, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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The Pro-Israel network funding page, a sign that the lobby has its eyes on the race, is a point of contention among critics who say AIPAC shouldn’t be getting involved in races at all, let alone one in a district which Democrats are largely to the group’s left on policy toward Israel and Gaza. 

“AIPAC is a red line,” said Saleem Holbrook, executive director of Straight Ahead, an abolitionist activist group in Philadelphia. The group’s affiliated public interest law firm, the Abolitionist Law Center, advocates for criminal justice reform has worked with Street on state reform efforts in Pennsylvania and cannot endorse in the race due to its nonprofit status. 

“There’s no way that our organization or many progressive organizations are going to back any candidate that takes AIPAC support,” Holbrook said. “Because when you look at AIPAC’s track record, all AIPAC has done has taken out Black progressive politicians or candidates that had the interest of the Black community in their heart.”

Suswell, the Street supporter, agreed that the race should be about policies that support the community, pointing to affordable housing, quality education, and public safety. “This should not be about identity politics,” she said. “This is about track record. Senator Street has an impeccable track record in his district and across the Muslim community.”

Progressive groups have been slowly endorsing Rabb, and two sources with knowledge of the race said it’s only a matter of time before they consolidate behind him. Rabb has been endorsed by Philadelphia’s chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, Sunrise Movement’s national and Philadelphia chapters, One PA, and Mt. Airy Democrats.

Both Street and Rabb are actively seeking the endorsement from the Working Families Party, which is planning to announce its pick in the next few weeks. So are CAIR Action and A New Policy.

While Street may not have the backing of leading progressive groups in Pennsylvania, he does have good relationships with their members. That dynamic is one reason progressive groups have taken their time to make endorsements in a race pitting their allies against one another, according to one source close to the race.

Street is endorsed by the Philadelphia Democratic Party, the Muslim League of Voters of the Delaware Valley, and several of Philadelphia’s powerful labor unions including Philadelphia’s powerful Building and Construction Trades Council, which encompasses several local shops. He’s also backed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal, advocates for gun violence prevention and several prominent leaders for LGBTQ rights.

Street’s campaign pointed to his work advancing religious rights for Muslims in the district, helping to expand healthcare for Pennsylvanians, leading the fight to legalize recreational cannabis and reform the criminal justice system, and protect voting rights. “He’s going to bring that same drive to Washington, where he will be relentlessly focused on lowering costs, expanding health care access, reforming our criminal justice system, and holding Trump accountable,” said Campisi, his spokesperson. 

Update: February 18, 2026, 11:54 a.m. ET

This story has been updated to note that as a nonprofit, the Abolitionist Law Center cannot endorse in the race.

The post Philadelphia Could Elect Its First Muslim Congressman. He’s Not Sure Where He Stands on Israel. appeared first on The Intercept.

“In this Senate race I have not taken any corporate PAC money,” Crockett told the Texas journalist Tashara Parker last month. “People don’t know that because my report hasn’t come out yet. But they will.”

But according to her most recent campaign filings, Crockett has a loophole that lets her use corporate PAC money to help fuel her Senate run — by transferring it from her House campaign. 

Crockett’s latest filings with the Federal Election Commission show that she transferred at least $26,500 in donations from corporate PACs — including those representing CVS, Home Depot, AT&T, and Wells Fargo — from her House campaign to her Senate campaign on December 19.

“It relies on technicality that you can say ‘I’m not accepting contributions to my Senate campaign from corporate PACs,’” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at the government transparency group OpenSecrets. “But they can’t say that there’s no corporate money flowing through her Senate campaign, because it’s obviously not true.” 

Throughout her time in office, Crockett’s stance on corporate PAC money has shifted. She was the beneficiary of millions of dollars in spending by cryptocurrency PACs in her 2022 congressional campaign, and she’s taken more than $315,000 from corporate PACs affiliated with the crypto, defense, insurance, pharmaceutical, and banking industries since 2023. She’s sworn off that cash while running against state Rep. James Talarico in Texas’s Democratic Senate primary, now less than three weeks away, in a cycle that’s being largely defined by battles over outside spending. Early voting in the race begins on Tuesday.

“As I understand it, it looks like Rep. Crockett didn’t have a hard and fast personal policy about rejecting corporate PAC money for her House campaigns. Now, as she runs for Senate, she’s drawing a different line,” said Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform at Issue One, a nonprofit that works on campaign finance reform.

“Even if they’ve benefited from dark money or corporate PAC money in the past, lawmakers who stand up to a broken campaign finance system should be cheered,” Beckel said. “That said, if politicians say they are taking steps to fight the broken campaign finance system, voters want them to walk the walk.”

Crockett’s campaign did not provide a comment by time of publication.

Speaking to Parker, Crockett suggested that questions about her corporate PAC support that have been raised since she launched her Senate campaign were a distraction from the party’s goal to elect a Democratic senator from Texas. Crockett also criticized her opponent, Talarico, who has also said he’s rejecting corporate PAC money but whose last campaign was largely funded by a casino PAC bankrolled by Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson.

“At the end of the day, taking money on behalf of a corporation is taking money on behalf of a corporation, no matter whose name is on it,” Crockett said.

Both Crockett and Talarico also have super PACs working on their behalf.

Crockett’s House campaign received the corporate PAC contributions in question between March and November and cashed several of the checks months after they were received, four of them after she launched her Senate campaign on December 8. (FEC rules require committees to cash any checks within ten days of their receipt.) Crockett then transferred all of the corporate PAC contributions in question to her Senate campaign on December 19. 

A spokesperson for the FEC said the agency could not comment on the activities of specific candidates.

It’s not unusual for some time to pass between when a campaign donor mails a check or makes an electronic transfer and when a committee marks that money as received, Glavin said. “But when we’re talking about months, that’s different.” 

According to Beckel, “There are frequently disparities between when a corporate PAC reports issuing a check and when a candidate reports cashing it, but lengthy disparities raise questions.” He pointed to recent reporting indicating that Crockett has not named a campaign manager, and said “the delayed deposits of campaign contributions raise questions about who she has hired to do her campaign finance compliance.” 

When she first ran for the Texas State House in 2020, Crockett campaigned hard against corporate PAC money. In a Twitter post four days before her Democratic primary that July, Crockett hit her opponent for being funded by corporate PACs and special interests, noting that she had taken zero dollars from either. 

That was no longer true by the following month. Crockett’s state campaign started accepting corporate PAC money after she won her primary and advanced to the general election, where she ran unopposed. She took $11,500 from corporate PACs and companies throughout that campaign, including PACs for AT&T, Atmos Energy, Centene, and Comcast. 

By the time she ran for Congress in 2022, Crockett was the beneficiary of the second largest amount spent by special interest groups on House candidates that cycle, Axios reported. The bulk of the funding came in the form of more than $2.7 million from two crypto PACs, including Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-defunct Protect Our Future PAC. Another Bankman-Fried–funded super PAC aligned with Democrats spent a little over $7,800 supporting Crockett. She also received just over $93,400 in support from PACs for the progressive groups Texas Organizing Project and the Working Families Party. 

Since Crockett entered Congress in 2023, she’s taken more than $315,000 from corporate PACs. Among them are PACs for Comcast, Blackrock, DoorDash, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Cigna, and Home Depot. 

Crockett has said she wants people working at large corporations, many of which have offices in her district, like Goldman Sachs, to feel like they can support her campaign. Last year, she raised concerns that new House maps in Texas might cut large companies out of her district. “This means that I don’t have Southwest Airlines, or JSX Airlines, or Dallas Love Airport or Downtown or AT&T or Goldman Sachs,” she said, “and the list goes on, of amazing companies and corporations that I’m typically bringing in to make sure that we can talk about economic opportunities for the people that live in my district.”

She’s also said her receipt of corporate PAC money has never affected her vote on policy issues. 

“No one’s ever questioned whether or not my record was tied to any money,” Crockett told Parker. “At the end of the day, I’ve always had relationships. Especially with me representing downtown, because I’ve got to look out for people and make sure they got jobs, make sure that I’m pushing them to the limit when I’m looking at their diversity or lack thereof.” 

Several of the companies whose PACs have supported Crockett have been linked to Trump, including several which rolled back diversity policies under his administration, like Home Depot, Walmart, and Target. One of the crypto firms that contributed to Crockett’s congressional campaign gave $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inauguration committee. 

In 2023, as Crockett sought a seat on the Financial Services Committee, her colleagues in the House raised concerns about having members on the committee who’d received support from the crypto industry. She’s also taken votes that benefit the companies in the crypto, banking, and defense industries after taking money from their PACs. 

After taking money from crypto PACs and several executives at crypto firms, Crockett voted for both the GENIUS Act and the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, both of which the majority of her party — including most of her fellow Texas Democrats — opposed. The crypto industry supported both bills, and President Donald Trump widely praised the GENIUS Act. 

Crockett was joined by four other Texas Democrats, including Reps. Henry Cuellar and Marc Veasey, in voting to pass the GENIUS Act last year. Seven Texas Democrats voted against the measure, which also split the broader party, with 110 Democrats voting against it and 102 voting for it. (More than 200 Republicans voted in favor.) Critics have said that the measure would help Trump further enrich himself. 

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The year prior, Crockett broke with 133 Democrats to support the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, joining the minority of 71 Democrats who voted for the measure along with 208 Republicans. She was again one of five Texas Democrats to support the bill, while seven opposed it. 

Crockett has also taken votes that benefit her campaign supporters in the defense industry. 

In January, she voted with the majority of Democrats for a national security appropriations bill that would send additional weapons to Israel. Fifty-seven Democrats voted against the measure. 

Crockett has received more than $20,000 in contributions from corporate PACs representing weapons manufacturers supplying Israel with weapons it’s using to carry out the genocide in Gaza, including Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Raytheon. 

Crockett’s campaign did not respond to questions about how she would approach policies related to cryptocurrency regulation or U.S. military support for Israel if elected to the Senate.

The post Jasmine Crockett Swears Off Corporate Cash — But Transferred Thousands From Her House Campaign appeared first on The Intercept.

The national progressive outfit Justice Democrats and the Peace, Accountability, and Leadership PAC, a new group that launched Wednesday to support candidates advocating for Palestine in the upcoming midterms, are endorsing activist Kat Abughazaleh for Congress in Illinois’s 9th District. 

The endorsement comes as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has made its biggest investment so far this cycle in electing pro-Israel Democrats in and around deep-blue Chicago, which is home to one of the nation’s largest populations of Palestinian residents. 

Abughazaleh is one of over a dozen candidates running in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Also running are state Sen. Laura Fine, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, local school board member and activist Bushra Amiwala, former hostage negotiator and agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation Phil Andrew, and state Rep. Hoan Huynh. 

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Schakowsky was a longtime recipient of support from J Street, a moderate pro-Israel group, and AIPAC appears to view the race as an opportunity to replace her with a more hardline supporter of Israel. The pro-Israel lobby has already taken one opportunity to go after a centrist who strayed from its party line, when it ran attack ads against former New Jersey Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski — a strategy that appeared to backfire and ultimately help get the progressive in the race elected.

Now, pro-Palestine groups see an opening in Chicago amid mounting public criticism of the pro-Israel lobby.

Both groups said the endorsement was a reflection of a historic level of public support for Palestinian human rights and cutting U.S. funding to Israel. Abughazaleh is the 12th candidate Justice Democrats has endorsed this cycle as it looks to more aggressively counter the pro-Israel lobby and come back from major losses in 2024.

Abughazaleh told The Intercept she’s running to hold Democrats to a higher standard.

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“There’s been this idea of ‘vote blue no matter who’ for a long time that has gotten us to the moment that we’re in, because we haven’t held our party accountable,” she said. She added that she was the first candidate to launch her campaign in the race before Schakowsky announced her retirement. 

“I didn’t wait in line or ask for permission,” Abughazaleh said. “I think a big part of that is because I felt a sense of urgency that many establishment politicians just don’t because they’re not facing the consequences that we are.”

“Kat has spent her career doing what so many voters are desperate to see the Democratic Party do right now: fight back against Republican extremism and fight for everyday people,” Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi said in a statement to The Intercept. “At a time when so many career politicians in the Party have to be convinced to condemn genocide, we are proud to support a first-time candidate with the moral clarity to oppose bottomless budgets for Israel’s ethnic cleansing, abolish ICE and fight for every person to afford the life they deserve.”

While AIPAC hasn’t officially endorsed in the race, its donors have made their pick clear. AIPAC donors have flooded Fine’s campaign and sent fundraising emails on her behalf. AIPAC is also reportedly behind just under half a million dollars in ads launched last week for Fine by the Super PAC Elect Chicago Women. Fine has distanced herself from AIPAC and said she isn’t seeking its support — despite fundraising with AIPAC’s board president.

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Abughazaleh, a Palestinian American activist, has made her criticism of the genocide in Gaza and U.S. military support for Israel a central piece of her campaign. She’s also facing a federal indictment on felony conspiracy charges stemming from protest actions against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She turned her congressional office into a mutual aid hub and is running on Medicare for All, fixing the affordable housing crisis, and fighting authoritarianism. 

“AIPAC is so toxic that they have been doing everything they can to pretend that they are not in our race when they very clearly are,” Abughazaleh said. She said voters “understand the stakes, and they’re sick of their tax dollars being used to commit crimes against humanity.”

Abughazaleh said she’s the only one of the top three Democratic candidates — counting herself, Fine, and Biss — who’s never met with AIPAC. Biss previously met with local AIPAC representatives, but he said he did not share the group’s “hardline views” and had never sought their support. 

Both Abughazaleh and Biss have been vocal in criticizing AIPAC’s efforts to boost their opponent, Fine. During a candidate forum last week, Biss directly criticized Fine’s support from AIPAC donors and said voters should be troubled by her support for unconditional U.S. military aid.

“That is deeply problematic,” Biss said. “That is a right-wing policy that is bad for Palestinians, Jews, Israelis, America, and the world.”

Meanwhile, United Democracy Project and AIPAC are spreading their resources around the state. UDP is also reportedly backing ads from a PAC that calls itself Affordable Chicago Now!, which is teaming up with Elect Chicago Women to back Fine, Melissa Bean in the 8th District, and Donna Miller in the 2nd District.

UDP is also planning to spend close to $3 million backing Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin in the 7th District and bought its first $500,000 in ads for her on Tuesday. The move by the pro-Israel lobby has raised talk about what AIPAC donors who originally backed another candidate, real estate mogul Jason Friedman, will do now. 

The post AIPAC Is Flooding Illinois With Cash. Pro-Palestine Groups Are Backing Kat Abughazaleh. appeared first on The Intercept.

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski conceded the race in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District on Tuesday to Analilia Mejia, former political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, after initial results showed a slim margin between the two candidates for several days.

Mejia won “despite being outspent essentially ten-to-one by not just AIPAC and outside groups but also the New Jersey political machine,” said Antoinette Miles, state director for the New Jersey Working Families Party. Mejia previously led the group, which backed her campaign and helped organize her field operation. 

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“No one would really categorize this district as being a left district,” Miles said, pointing to the race as a sign progressive candidates can connect with voters in more moderate districts. A Republican represented the district until 2019, when former Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen retired and former Rep. Mikie Sherrill was elected. 

With the deck stacked against Mejia and little public polling in the three months since Sherrill vacated the seat to take office as New Jersey governor, there was no clear front-runner in the race. Internal polling in the final weeks of the race showed Malinowski and Mejia pulling ahead and almost equally matched, with New Jersey Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way further behind in third place, according to a source with knowledge of the data. 

Rather than targeting Mejia, the pro-Israel lobby spent more than $2 million against Malinowski, likely splitting moderate voters, while known pro-Israel donors directed funding in Way’s favor. United Democracy Project, the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent on ads attacking Malinowski, and AIPAC donors flooded Way’s campaign with more than $50,000 in the final weeks of the race. The strategy, which UDP said was meant to help them elect the more pro-Israel candidate because Malinowski had previously questioned the provision of unconditional aid to Israel, appeared to backfire, as some observers predicted. 

“This election is a clear rejection of AIPAC by Democratic voters — AIPAC’s spending and support for candidates is becoming a kiss of death in Democratic primaries because of the work our movement has done to expose them,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi. The group did not endorse in the race but said Mejia’s win was a positive sign for the left as midterms progress. 

“This is a clear sign that the Democratic electorate is desperate to elect new leaders — like the dozen of working-class champions we’re supporting in primaries this cycle — that aren’t bought by AIPAC, crypto, AI, or any other corporate lobby that has created the intentionally weak and ineffective Democratic Party failing us in Congress right now,” Andrabi added.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Malinowski pointed to AIPAC’s influence in the race.

“Analilia deserves unequivocal praise and credit for running a positive campaign and for inspiring so many voters on Election Day,” Malinowski wrote. “But the outcome of this race cannot be understood without also taking into account the massive flood of dark money that AIPAC spent on dishonest ads during the last three weeks. I wish I could say today that this effort, which was meant to intimidate Democrats across the country, failed in NJ-11.”

On Friday, United Democracy Project issued a statement signaling it’s still paying close attention to the race ahead of the general election in April. 

“The outcome in NJ-11 was an anticipated possibility, and our focus remains on who will serve the next full term in Congress. UDP will be closely monitoring dozens of primary races, including the June NJ-11 primary, to help ensure pro-Israel candidates are elected to Congress,” UDP said in a statement posted on X. 

Some corners of the Democratic establishment are also reeling from the results of the race. After spending close to $2 million to back Way, the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association has not made any public statements since results started rolling in on Thursday evening. DLGA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

In an email to supporters on Thursday night, the Democratic National Committee prematurely congratulated Malinowski on winning the race. The release was later removed from the DNC website.

The Democratic establishment hasn’t recently had to run in competitive primaries in the district, Miles pointed out, while progressives had been preparing for this moment. 

“That says something about the shift that is happening in New Jersey right now,” Miles said. “This is the first race — at least at the congressional level — in which there is an open primary, the possibility for better candidates to run, the possibility for new ideas, and the machine is being tested.”

The post AIPAC Strategy Backfires as Progressive Underdog Wins Key House Race in New Jersey appeared first on The Intercept.

Cait Conley, a Special Operations combat veteran and former national security adviser under former President Joe Biden, is running in the crowded Democratic primary to challenge incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Her candidate financial disclosures show that she earned more than $80,000 between January 2024 and July 2025 from two companies, Primer and Hidden Level.

Both companies partner with far-right billionaire Peter Thiel’s surveillance tech firm Palantir to help government agencies use AI. Both are military contractors; Hidden Level holds an active contract with the Department of War, and Primer’s most recent one was paid out last year. Primer has also praised President Donald Trump’s AI policy and advertises on its website that it “helps” the Department of Homeland Security with data and intelligence work and that “Primer’s AI platforms support DHS missions,” but it does not appear to have an active deal with the department in a federal contracting database. 

“Cait believes AI can be both an opportunity and a risk to the middle class and is determined to shape AI policy so that it grows and strengthens middle-class New Yorkers, rather than being used to further enrich billionaires,” said Conley campaign manager Emily Goldson in a statement to The Intercept. “She’ll be a leader in Congress, ensuring working Americans are included in the growth created and aren’t left behind.” 

Running in a swing district north of New York City, Conley has walked a fine line on matters of immigration and the national security apparatus, blasting Trump for deploying the military to U.S. cities and criticizing immigration agents for killing protesters. On her campaign website, she pledges to “stand strong on our national security priorities,” including “defending the homeland, fighting crime, and fixing our broken immigration system.”

Conley’s close ties to companies at the intersection of AI and national security policy aren’t a surprise given her military background. But her connections to the firms raise questions about how she might approach those policy sectors in Congress, said Albert Fox Cahn, a civil rights attorney who previously led the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and is a lifelong resident of New York’s 17th District. 

“At a time when we see so many Silicon Valley companies having their technology weaponized against immigrant communities, these sorts of consulting roles raise questions about what exactly she did and what lines were drawn,” Cahn told The Intercept. 

Conley’s campaign confirmed that she still advises the companies in an email to supporters sent Monday. On Tuesday, Politico reported that she would not leave her job at Primer.

It’s unclear what exactly Conley does at the companies, according to her candidate disclosure filed with the House Clerk. She started consulting for Primer at some point after January 2024, when she left her previous job as an adviser for the Department of Homeland Security under Biden. In the period ending in July 2025, she earned $12,500 for her consulting work for that company.  

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Touting the candidate’s military service, Goldson said that Conley “has worked with a range of private and public sector entities, either through her work at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) or as a consultant, to help keep American families and American infrastructure, like stadiums and other public spaces and our energy grid, safe from terrorist attacks.”

Between January 2024 and July 2025, Conley earned $68,000 from Hidden Level, which works in radio-frequency sensing and airspace security, including monitoring unauthorized drone activity. Hidden Level’s data is used in Palantir’s Maven platform, which Trump’s Pentagon awarded a $480 million contract in May. When Trump announced his plan to build a “golden dome” missile defense system — described by one critic as “more of a political marketing scheme than a carefully thought-out defense program” — Hidden Level released a statement applauding his plan and saying it “stands ready to support this mission today.” Of a White House directive to cut waste in commercial technology in April, the company said the “policy shift doesn’t just validate the model Hidden Level was built on, it demands it.”

Both companies have received lucrative contracts from the federal government under previous administrations. Primer has won at least $7.2 million in contracts from the Department of Defense since 2021, according to federal spending records. Hidden Level earned just under $3 million in Pentagon contracts to monitor airspace and bolster the federal system that manages drone traffic between 2022 and 2024 under former President Joe Biden.

“We’ve seen just how brazenly people can manipulate the label ‘national security and counterterrorism’ and the ways it can mask government efforts aimed at people who never pose a threat to our country. As a civil rights lawyer and activist, I get very nervous when people are quick to invoke the language of national security and counter-terrorism,” said Cahn, the civil rights lawyer. “It raises more questions than it answers.”

The seat in suburban New York, which includes north Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, and Dutchess counties, is a top priority for Democrats. It was one of four New York House seats the party lost to Republicans amid a slew of upsets in the 2022 midterms. The winner of the June Democratic primary will take on Lawler, a Republican who flipped the seat that cycle after a combination of redistricting and Democratic infighting helped him beat former Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. 

Conley is one of six candidates running for the Democratic nomination. Other contenders include local official and tech founder Peter Chatzky, who has funded his own campaign with more than $5 million; Rockland County Legislator Beth Davidson; lawyer and former television reporter Mike Sacks; nonprofit executive Effie Phillips-Staley; and Air Force veteran John Cappello. 

Conley has campaigned on her military experience and highlighted the fact that the Russian government banned her from the country because of her work on Biden’s National Security Council. She said she hopes voters in the swing district will see her lack of traditional political experience as a positive. “We need people who take public service seriously, who are not politicians, who are actual leaders and problem solvers,” Conley told the New York Times in March.

Her campaign originally focused primarily on issues of affordability and improving Hudson Valley infrastructure, including criticizing Trump’s economic policies. As the campaign progressed, Conley has become more aggressive in criticizing Trump’s intensifying attacks on cities around the country and his nationwide crackdown on immigrants. 

Goldson said that Conley believed in holding ICE accountable, investigating the officials responsible for the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “Congress must pass legislation ensuring ICE operates lawfully like local law enforcement, including banning masks and requiring judicial warrants for arrest, and sending CBP back to the border where it belongs,” she added. 

Lawler, meanwhile, has urged immigration agents to “reassess their current tactics,” while refraining from criticizing Trump.

Conley has faced criticism throughout the campaign — much of it from Republicans — for not voting in recent midterm elections and registering as a Democrat just before she launched her campaign. Critics attacked her for moving to the district in January from Virginia, though she grew up in the Hudson Valley. 

Her detractors have pointed out that many of her donors come from outside the district, several of them from the defense and tech industries.

Conley has received $10,000 in contributions from Matt and Kimberly Grimm, the former of whom is the co-founder of Anduril Industries. Anduril, which was heavily backed by Thiel, builds autonomous drones, systems to surveil the border, and surveillance towers powered by AI.

“There’s a lot of questions to answer, and I think that this is true for candidates across the country who have worked for these companies in the past or who you know are receiving large donations from their employees,” Cahn said. “There’s a growing recognition that many of these tech firms are carrying out a mission that is fundamentally at odds with the values that Democrats hold and most Americans hold.”

Conley’s donors also include a vice president and other employees at the top Washington lobbying firm BGR group, which has represented the Saudi government – until it cut ties with the country in 2018 – and companies like defense giant Raytheon and the energy behemoth Chevron, as well as big pharmaceutical firms. BGR vice president Joel Bailey gave Conley’s campaign $500 in July, while BGR principals Syd Terry and Fred Turner each also gave Conley’s campaign $250. BGR senior director Hai Peng has given $5,500 to Conley’s campaign since May. None of the BGR donors listed residences in New York. 

In a statement to The Intercept, Peng said he met Conley at Oklahoma’s Fort Sill close to two decades ago and made the contribution in his personal capacity. “I genuinely believe she is the kind of leader our country needs right now,” Peng said. 

Conley has been endorsed by several political action committees including MD PAC, previously known as Majority Democrats PAC, which has given $90,900, VoteVets, Equality PAC, and Giffords PAC. She’s also endorsed by several local officials and political leaders, as well as Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y. 

Cahn said he wasn’t sure who, if anyone, he would vote for in the primary. But he sees the race as an example of the opportunity voters have to hold Democrats to a higher standard of accountability than in the past, particularly when it comes to policy issues like technology, surveillance, and artificial intelligence. 

“We’re at a new moment of accountability within the tech sector more broadly, as we start to recognize that so many tech companies are part of the apparatus that is powering ICE’s attacks,” Cahn said. “This is especially notable for someone who’s running based off of their time in military defense roles.”

Update: February 10, 2026

This story has been updated to note that after publication, Conley’s campaign acknowledged she still advises the tech companies, and that Politico reported she would not leave her job at Primer.

Correction: March 4, 2026

This story has been updated to correct the amount of money Peter Chatzky contributed to self-fund his campaign.

The post NY Democratic House Candidate Works for Palantir Partners Pushing AI Border Surveillance appeared first on The Intercept.

As of Friday, the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 11th district is too close to call between organizer Analilia Mejia and former Rep. Tom Malinowski. Former Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way trails in a distant third. This story details pro-Israel contributions to Way’s campaign ahead of the election.

Former Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way is not the clear front-runner in New Jersey’s special congressional election on Thursday. She’s seventh in fundraising out of 10 candidates as of last week’s Federal Election Commission deadline, and public polling has been sparse. But as the race drew close to the finish line, the Israel lobby made her the beneficiary of a last-minute push. 

In the final weeks before the election, an Intercept analysis has found, 30 donors to groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its super PAC, and Democratic Majority for Israel have poured more than $50,000 into Way’s campaign. On Friday, amid the fundraising push and less than a week before the election, DMFI officially endorsed her. 

The lobby is known for spending against progressives and the most vocal critics of the state of Israel, but in New Jersey, it appears to be backing one moderate to pick off another. Yet more pro-Israel money in the race comes at the expense of Tom Malinowski, who is no progressive on Israel policy but nevertheless has become the subject of AIPAC ire — marking a reversal for the group, which supported him in 2022.

AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent more $2.3 million on ads against Malinowski. The ads do not mention Israel but attack Malinowski on immigration, saying he helped fund “Trump’s deportation force” because he voted in favor of a 2019 bipartisan appropriations bill that funded the Department of Homeland Security. The majority of Democrats, including many supported by AIPAC, voted for the bill.

In a statement to The Intercept, UDP spokesperson Patrick Dorton made no mention of Malinowski’s DHS funding vote. He said Malinowski had fallen afoul of the group’s policy priorities by discussing the possibility of conditioning aid to Israel.

“It’s our goal to build the largest bipartisan pro-Israel majority in Congress. There are several candidates in this race far more pro-Israel than Tom Malinowski,” Dorton said.

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Way and Malinowski are competing in a crowded race in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District to replace former Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who vacated the seat after she was elected governor. 

Way and Malinowski’s campaigns did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

Also running are Analilia Mejia, the former political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign; veteran Zach Beecher; Passaic County commissioner and election lawyer John Bartlett; former Morris Township Mayor Jeff Grayzel; and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill. 

Way already had substantial support from the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, which endorsed her and has spent more than $1.7 million backing her campaign, almost half of what it spent in total last cycle. But even with close to $4 million in outside spending on her side, she has lagged behind her opponents in fundraising. She’s raised just over $400,000 — compared to Malinowski’s over $1.1 million, more than $800,000 for Gill, and over half a million for Beecher. Bartlett has raised more than $460,000, Grayzel has raised $428,000, and Mejia has raised just over $420,000. 

Now, pro-Israel donors who have given to AIPAC to boost other pro-Israel candidates are trying to help Way close the gap. They include retired investor Peter Langerman, who has given $75,000 to AIPAC’s United Democracy Project since 2023 and $12,000 to AIPAC since 2022. Another Way donor, Florida loan executive Joel Edelstein, has given $25,000 to UDP since 2023 and $3,500 to AIPAC since 2022.

Among Way’s other donors are Bennett Greenspan, founder of the genealogy company Family Tree DNA, who has given $40,000 to United Democracy Project, $4,000 to DMFI PAC, and $1,250 to AIPAC PAC since 2022. Way donor and New Jersey real estate developer Michael Gottlieb gave $25,000 to UDP in 2023. Another Way donor, founder and former president of Microsoft partner HSO, Jack Ades, has given $10,750 to AIPAC since 2024. Gottlieb and Ades have given to Republican candidates including Reps. Mike Lawler and Elise Stefanik in New York; Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La.; Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign; and the Republican group WinRed. 

More than half of the contributions to Way — $33,000 of the $53,000 in total — all landed on January 14, a common sign that outside groups have sent out a fundraising push to their network.

Another donor to Way’s campaign is Joseph Korn, a New Jersey real estate developer who served on the New Jersey board of the Jewish National Fund, a controversial national organization that has funded settler groups in the West Bank. 

Way is campaigning on a relatively centrist platform that primarily includes fighting against President Donald Trump’s agenda. She’s also running on strengthening the Affordable Care Act, ensuring access to reproductive care, protecting democracy and voting rights, and lowering costs without raising taxes, including raising the cap on state and local tax deductions, or SALT. Her website does not mention foreign policy or Israel. 

Way is also endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC; the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State; IVYPAC, which backs candidates who are members of the historically Black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority; and several other New Jersey organizations. 

The Israel lobby’s support for Way may not ultimately help its policy priorities. As a recent column in the Forward points out, by pitting Way and Malinowski against each other, AIPAC donors might help a more progressive candidate get elected.

The post AIPAC Donors Fail to Elect Last-Minute New Jersey House Pick appeared first on The Intercept.

National progressives see a chance in Texas to install a new member of the Squad in the place of departing Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett — by electing her pastor.

With Crockett vacating her House seat to run in a competitive — and increasingly ugly — Senate primary, pastor Frederick Haynes III is running to fill her seat. The progressive outfit Justice Democrats endorsed Haynes’s campaign on Wednesday, becoming the first national group to wade into the primary for the Democrat-friendly 30th Congressional District.

The primary in Texas is just a month away, and Justice Democrats views Haynes as one of its first real chances to notch a win for the electoral left this cycle, the group’s spokesperson Usamah Andrabi told The Intercept. The 65-year-old Dallas pastor has already attracted some national attention for his outspoken criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, putting him at odds with many of his peers in Texas and the Deep South, where an open affinity between right-wing Christianity and pro-Israel Zionism is common.

That stance also marks an apparent difference between him and Crockett. While Haynes is running on ending U.S. military support for Israel and the genocide in Gaza, Crockett has drawn criticism for voting to send U.S. military aid to Israel and taking a trip there as a first-term member of Congress in August 2023 with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Israel Defense Forces. She has similarly faced criticism for accepting campaign support from the crypto industry, while Haynes has called for new regulations on cryptocurrency.

Crockett, who has brushed off some criticism of her record as “intellectually lazy,” says she’s in favor of Haynes’s campaign and endorsed him last month.

“Every leader approaches things differently, and I greatly respect Congresswoman Crockett’s work and approach,” Haynes told The Intercept. “My worldview and my positions are deeply rooted in my community, and the struggles I see those around me experiencing on a daily basis. Our community is justice minded here in Dallas.”

Also running in the March 3 Democratic primary for Crockett’s seat are former Texas state Rep. Barbara Mallory Caraway and pastor Rodney LaBruce. To win a primary in Texas, candidates have to receive a majority of votes or compete in a runoff in May.

A pastor for 40 years and a fixture in Dallas, Haynes is the 11th candidate Justice Democrats has endorsed this cycle. The group is backing more new candidates ahead of the upcoming midterm elections than it has in any other year since its inaugural 2018 cycle, which ushered in now well-known Squad members like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. After major losses last cycle, Justice Democrats says it’s deploying a more aggressive strategy this time, seeking to capitalize on voter frustration with the party establishment.

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“We try to be as selective and intentional about the races and candidates we pick and really evaluate their path to victory,” Andrabi said. “We’re hoping we can really, as a movement — but if not, as Justice Democrats — to start this cycle off with some wins.”

In Haynes’s view, “Dems have let us down,” he told The Intercept. “The wolves of hunger, fascism, and injustice are at our door, and what does the Democratic establishment have to offer in response — strongly worded letters? Our community deserves better than this: they deserve leadership that will fight for them with the courage and commitment that this moment requires.”

As the pastor at Crockett’s church, Haynes has been an activist on issues from predatory lending to voting rights. His church holds a legal clinic, hosts a toolkit for congregation members to contact their legislators, and runs programming on food security, economic and environmental justice, and civic engagement. The church website hosts a link to a petition calling for a ceasefire in Gaza led by former Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo.

That activism has also made him a target of the right. In a story last week, Jewish Insider wrote that Haynes delivered “an anti-Israel polemic from the pulpit” the day after the October 7 attacks. In his remarks, Haynes denounced Israeli apartheid.

“The Palestinians don’t have the financial backing from the United States that Israel has, and so they throw their rocks and shoot their arrows,” Haynes said on October 8, 2023, “and Israel is able to bomb them and kill them.”

“You see a much tighter grip on evangelical Christians and churches in the south, particularly ones that represent Republican constituencies, from the Israel lobby and AIPAC,” Andrabi said. But Haynes “sees it as his moral imperative to call out Israeli apartheid and genocide, particularly because so many other Christian leaders have used it for their own benefit and used it to advance their own interests and the interests of right-wing politicians.”

In addition to ending U.S. military support for Israel and regulating the crypto industry, Haynes is running on abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, providing Medicare for All, getting dark money out of elections, and banning congressional stock trading. He’s also rejecting corporate PAC money.

“Every time we choose imperialism abroad, or tax cuts for the wealthy, we are telling working people in our communities that we value their lives less,” Haynes said, citing the notion that a budget is a moral document, often attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. “Every bomb dropped in Palestine is money for an underfunded school, an unpaved road, a mother who has to decide between groceries and insulin. Our tax dollars must go to supporting life in our families at home, not death in other families abroad.”

At age 65, Haynes contradicts the narrative that the battle over the future over the Democratic Party is purely about pitting younger candidates against older incumbents. The gerontocracy in Congress is its own issue, Andrabi said; being represented by corporate interests and right-wing lobbies is another. 

“It is a new generation. But that generation is not necessarily just defined or limited by an age group,” Andrabi said. “It doesn’t do us much good to replace old corporate shills with young corporate shills. The problem is that they’re corporate shills, not just that they are aging.” 

The post He’s Running to Fill Jasmine Crockett’s House Seat From Her Left. He’s Also Her Pastor. appeared first on The Intercept.

The group is endorsing Claire Valdez, a State Assembly member from Queens and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez in New York’s 7th Congressional District. Valdez launched her campaign last week alongside Mamdani and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, two of her highest-profile backers, in a signal that the race could prove divisive among the most influential figures in the Democratic Party’s left flank.

Several prominent New York City groups and progressives, including Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and City Council Members Sandy Nurse and Lincoln Restler, are endorsing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, a longtime ally and disciple of Velázquez who announced his candidacy to replace her early last month. 

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Reynoso and Valdez may appear difficult for voters to distinguish on many fronts. They share several stated policy priorities — like Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and ending U.S. military support for Israel —  and both have backgrounds in labor organizing. Reynoso served as a city council member from 2014 to 2021 before being elected borough president in 2021. Valdez was first elected to the State Assembly in 2024. Prior to that, she worked in visual arts at Columbia University and was an organizer with UAW.

“We need a Democratic Party with a real agenda for the working class — one that organizes to govern and governs to deliver,” Valdez said in a statement to The Intercept. “Justice Democrats have helped show what’s possible when we fight alongside working people and raise expectations about what politics can be. I’m proud to have their support as we keep building a movement that takes on the billionaire class and wins real power for working people.”

Valdez is the ninth congressional candidate Justice Democrats has endorsed so far this cycle in what the group, which rose to prominence backing fellow New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, describes as a national campaign to end the Democratic Party’s submission to corporate PACs and billionaire donors.

“At a time when working class communities nationwide are being screwed over by corporations and billionaire bosses, we need leaders like Claire in Congress who will bring the whole might of organized, worker power to Washington DC,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi. “With her experience in both the labor movement and State Assembly, this is a real opportunity to transform Congress from a corporate establishment that exploits labor into a tool for workers to take their power back from the billionaire class.”

Reynoso’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The 7th District encompasses some of the city’s most left-leaning neighborhoods in North Brooklyn and Queens, and Valdez’s DSA membership could bolster her candidacy among an emboldened socialist bloc. Mamdani’s decision to buck some of his progressive allies in the city drew attention when he endorsed Valdez, especially after the then-mayor-elect declined to support City Council Member Chi Ossé’s short-lived primary against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, urging the local DSA chapter to do the same.

Valdez’s campaign has pledged to reject corporate PAC money and is centering her campaign around her background as a labor organizer. Asked about differences between her and Reynoso, Valdez has pointed to her early leadership on Palestinian human rights issues amid the genocide in Gaza.

“I look forward to hashing out our differences over the course of this primary. What I want to bring to Congress is the experience and perspective of a union organizer and proud democratic socialist who’s been a longtime leader in the movement that elected Zohran Mamdani as our Mayor,” Valdez said. “And I’ve been a vocal and consistent opponent of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the system of apartheid that denies freedom for all Palestinians.”

The post National Progressives Side With Mamdani in House Race Splitting NYC Left appeared first on The Intercept.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee waged a proud and public campaign to assert its dominance last cycle — sinking more than $100 million into the 2024 elections to oust critics of Israel from Congress. AIPAC spent more on elections that cycle than any other individual single-issue interest group; celebrated its super PAC, United Democracy Project, as “one of the largest bipartisan super PACs in America”; and took credit for endorsing 361 pro-Israel candidates who prevailed in hundreds of races.

That success met with public disgust with Israel’s genocide in Gaza and drove a massive backlash, fueling a growing movement to eradicate AIPAC’s influence and propel insurgent candidates to Congress on pledges to refuse the pro-Israel lobby’s support. Now, as the 2026 midterms approach, AIPAC and its preferred candidates have pulled back from the aggressive electoral strategy they pursued last time.

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None of this is to say that AIPAC is planning to let its influence slip away. While the group has not yet publicly endorsed any new candidates this cycle, there’s still time, and it’s working behind closed doors to boost its preferred candidates’ campaigns. Earlier this month, for example, AIPAC’s board president held a fundraiser for an Illinois House candidate who has said publicly that she isn’t seeking the group’s endorsement. In another district in the same state, AIPAC donors rallied around a real estate mogul’s congressional campaign.

The moves represent the latest in a series of strategic adaptations AIPAC has made in recent years while navigating a shifting political landscape on issues related to Israel.

“They are fully aware their brand is in the toilet,” said former Rep. Marie Newman, D-Ill., whom pro-Israel donors helped oust in 2022.

By this time last cycle, AIPAC had already endorsed most of its slate. But with a growing field of candidates running on rejecting AIPAC money and attacking those who take it, the group is returning to a quieter strategy that it used for years to build its influence.

“AIPAC is thought of toxically across the nation,” Newman said. “On doors, when you knock and go to canvasses and go to speaking engagements here, standard rank-and-file centrist Dems are like, ‘No, no more AIPAC and no more corporate PACs.’”

Merely rejecting AIPAC money will not be enough to serve as the new standard for progressive candidates for long, said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

Swearing off the group’s cash “doesn’t mean anything,” on its own, Friedman said. “What is going to matter is where candidates, or incumbents who are trying to return to office, where they stand on issues. As it becomes clear that AIPAC is going to work around the ‘people don’t want to take our money’ and find other ways to support candidates, it’s really going to be a question of, where do people stand on what are in some ways litmus-test issues for AIPAC?”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom appears to have picked up on the anti-AIPAC trend. During a press tour as rumors swirl about a potential run for president, Newsom said earlier this month that he won’t take money from the group. In October, Newsom told the podcast Higher Learning, “I haven’t thought about AIPAC in — it’s interesting, you’re like the first to bring up AIPAC in years.”

Despite Newsom’s statements, his record on Israel policy leaves questions about how far he’d go to ally himself with the Palestinian cause. He’s celebrated accolades from far-right pro-Israel groups like the Anti-Defamation League, and his last two public statements on anniversaries of the October 7 attacks did not mention Palestinians killed. Newsom did not call for a ceasefire in Gaza until March 2024, after both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris did so.

While some pro-Palestine advocates applauded Newsom for vetoing an online hate speech bill they said would have targeted politically protected speech, Newsom did not cite those concerns as part of his decision. California’s powerful tech industry had also hoped he would reject the bill.

Newsom is also facing criticism over a controversial bill he signed into law in October to address antisemitism in California schools, which a coalition of teachers associations, civil rights organizations, and interfaith groups argue would censor legitimate criticism of Israel and pro-Palestine voices. Opponents are suing to stop the law from going into effect on January 1.

Anticipating criticism, other candidates have kept their policy stances regarding Israel quiet. George Hornedo, who’s challenging Democratic Rep. André Carson in Indiana, had a secret pro-Israel policy page on his campaign website this summer that’s since been taken down. Hornedo has not said publicly whether or not he’ll take AIPAC money, but he told The Intercept that his campaign “rejects corporate PAC money.”

“I’m not coordinating with, nor am I relying on or seeking, financial intervention from national organizations in this race. This campaign is focused on building support directly here in Indianapolis, not inviting national groups to shape or define the race,” Hornedo said in a statement. “On Gaza, my position is straightforward. Gaza should be flooded with humanitarian aid and the U.S. should not provide offensive weapons to any country unless their use complies with international humanitarian law.”

“We’re seeing an uptick in Democrats who forswear AIPAC money because it’s become an electoral liability,” said Hamid Bendaas, communications director for the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project. “But it’s unclear if they will keep that standard by rejecting support from other organizations — chiefly but not limited to Democratic Majority for Israel — who have similar policy agendas to AIPAC, especially regarding more weapons to Israel.”

In its current approach, AIPAC has returned to a strategy in previous races when it funneled money to candidates through other vehicles to keep its name — and the criticism it’s increasingly drawing — out of the race. AIPAC donors have supported its picks by giving to other dark-money groups that outwardly have nothing to do with Israel policy, like the political action committee 314 Action, which helps elects scientists and last cycle flooded the campaign of Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore. — whom AIPAC never formally endorsed.

“We know AIPAC knows their brand is toxic,” Newman said. “So much so, they are taking their brand out of campaigns and funneling their money through other PACs and donors such as 314 science, DMFI, several small PACs, and of course individual AIPAC members who give as a donor because the candidates can say they received money from donors, not AIPAC, to avoid association with AIPAC.”

AIPAC isn’t necessarily backing off under fire — it’s returning to the way it operated before it started spending directly on elections in the 2022 cycle.

Prior to launching its super PAC and regular affiliated PAC, AIPAC was active in politics for more than half a century, working quietly in the halls of Congress and around Washington, D.C., to establish one of the most successful lobbying apparatuses in the country. First launched as a machine to counter negative press coverage of Israel, AIPAC quickly expanded its focus to influencing U.S. policy toward Israel. It positioned itself as a key source of information on Middle East issues for members of Congress and built out regional offices across the country, energizing a network of local pro-Israel activists. AIPAC has routinely lobbied presidents and congressional offices, funded trips to Israel for members of Congress and hosted members to address its annual policy conference, extending its reach into the halls of power without touching electoral politics.

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The approach was hugely successful, allowing AIPAC to maintain the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus on the hill for decades. The group had long said it would never launch a PAC — but that changed as a growing number of candidates began running on criticizing unconditional U.S. military support for Israel in the late 2010s. AIPAC then began spending on campaigns, starting with funding ads from Democratic Majority for Israel, attacking Bernie Sanders in Nevada during his 2020 presidential primary campaign.

In 2021, the group launched AIPAC PAC, which allowed it to wade into congressional races; shortly after, it officially launched its super PAC, United Democracy Project. The group drew scrutiny in the 2022 cycle for endorsing 37 Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“Clearly, AIPAC knows exactly how toxic they are to Democratic Party voters who see them as a right-wing extremist lobby, championing a right-wing agenda, and funded by right-wing megadonors trying to buy our elections,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi. “Voters are not interested in politicians who say one thing to their constituents and another to billionaire Republican donors, but AIPAC excels at finding candidates eager to reject authenticity and embrace moral cowardice if it means a seat in Congress.”

The post AIPAC Is Retreating From Endorsements and Election Spending. It Won’t Give Up Its Influence. appeared first on The Intercept.

The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit best known for backing police facing legal consequences for their actions, plans to ask the federal government to use a provision previously used to probe police violations of civil rights to investigate the office of Fairfax County, Virginia, Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano over his handling of cases involving undocumented immigrants, Fox News reported.

The Trump administration recently put Descano in the spotlight when it attacked his office over claims that he dropped charges against a 23-year-old undocumented immigrant who was accused of killing a man the next day. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has also blamed former President Joe Biden’s administration for dismissing the man’s immigration proceedings and labeling him as “a non-enforcement priority.”

The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund is invoking the same provision of federal law that the Biden administration previously used to investigate police in Louisville, Kentucky, after they killed Breonna Taylor in 2020. The law calls for policing to abide by the Constitution and establishes procedures for when police display a “pattern or practice of conduct” that violates civil rights.

Now, the pro-police group wants to argue that prosecutors like Descano are discriminating against the public by favoring undocumented immigrants in prosecutorial decisions. The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund is effectively arguing that a pattern of leniency toward immigrants by Descano constitutes discrimination against American citizens.

“The MO of MAGA groups like LELDF is to partner with the Trump Administration to weaponize the justice system and go after people they don’t like — in this case, reform prosecutors they disagree with philosophically,” said Michael Collins, an independent consultant who works on prosecutorial reform.

“Laws designed to protect people’s rights and curb official misconduct shouldn’t be repurposed to target officials over policy differences or prosecutorial discretion,” Collins said. “This kind of legal warfare erodes trust in our justice system and undermines the very protections these laws were meant to uphold.”

Neither Descano nor the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund immediately responded to a request for comment.

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The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund has made attacking elected prosecutors a cornerstone of its work in recent years. This year, the group released a report focusing on the Wren Collective, an organization that works with progressive prosecutors around the country, and claimed that left-wing donors like George Soros are controlling the group and corrupting the criminal justice system.

In Virginia, the group has been trying to remove Descano and another elected prosecutor in Arlington County, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, since shortly after they first won office, though so far the police group has gotten little traction.

Descano has faced two efforts to launch recall elections against him, both organized by groups headed by Sean Kennedy, who directs policy for the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund and leads another group, Virginians for Safe Communities, which tried to launch a recall against Descano in 2021.

The LELDF spends about three-quarters of its program service budget on public and media relations, according to its most recent tax filing. About a quarter of its program service expenses goes toward legal defense for cops.

Republicans have also made Descano a target. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has repeatedly attacked Descano’s office for turning the county “into a safe haven for criminals and a nightmare for law-abiding families” and his handling of cases involving transgender defendants.

The post Cop Group Alleges “Discrimination” by Prosecutor for Being Too Nice to Immigrants appeared first on The Intercept.

AIPAC board president Michael Tuchin hosted a private fundraiser for Fine on Monday at his Los Angeles law office, where an Intercept reporter was turned away in the building’s front lobby. “The Intercept should not be here at all,” said a building security guard, relaying a message from fundraiser organizers.

Three people entering the Century City high-rise office, however, confirmed that they were there to attend the Fine fundraiser. An attendee wearing a pin with adjoining U.S. and Israeli flags said she was there for the event and was whisked away by building security when asked why she supported Fine.

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Meet the U.S. Donors Funding ELNET, the AIPAC of Europe

After spending years exerting largely unchecked influence over elected U.S. officials, AIPAC appears to be putting more distance between itself and several of its preferred candidates this midterm cycle amid public outrage over Israel’s genocide in Gaza — and as a growing slate of progressive candidates position themselves explicitly against the group. But AIPAC and the broader pro-Israel lobby are still working to shape the next Congress to preserve the U.S.’s diplomatic alliance with Israel and maintain the steady flow of weapons shipments.

The day Fine entered the race in May, Jewish Insider reported that she had met with pro-Israel lobbying groups including AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel. The groups did not support Schakowsky, who was instead backed by the more centrist pro-Israel group J Street during her career — meaning the 14-term congresswoman’s retirement represented an opportunity for the lobby to install a more hard-line supporter of Israel.

Fine’s campaign, AIPAC, and Tuchin did not respond to a request for comment.

Fine is running in a crowded Democratic primary field that includes Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian American activist who has made her opposition to AIPAC spending and Israel’s genocide a central plank of her campaign; Daniel Biss, the current mayor of Evanston, Illinois; and Bushra Amiwala, a local school board member and activist. Abughazaleh and Biss led the pack in fundraising as of September, according to Federal Election Commission filings, pulling in $1.5 million and $1.3 million respectively. Amiwala has raised $642,000.

Fine had raised just over $660,000 by the same deadline — about half of it from close to 300 donors who AIPAC appears to have directed to her campaign, as the local outlet Evanston Now reported in October. The group sent at least two fundraising emails urging donors in its network to support Fine, after which AIPAC donors poured more than $300,000 into her campaign.

It’s not the first time the group has taken such an approach this cycle, including in Illinois. In the state’s 7th Congressional District, where Democratic Rep. Danny Davis is retiring, AIPAC hasn’t endorsed a replacement — but its donors are funding real estate mogul Jason Friedman, The Intercept reported.

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When asked about meeting with AIPAC prior to entering the race, Fine played down her support from the group, telling the university newspaper Loyola Phoenix in October that she was not pursuing its endorsement.

“Senator Fine has not received and is not seeking endorsement from J Street, AIPAC, or any Jewish organization,” her campaign said at the time. “She’s deeply aware of the diversity of political views in the Jewish community and in this district at large. The Senator’s priority is to represent all constituents, bridge divisions, continue standing up against antisemitism wherever it may appear, and continue to represent all members of her district.”

The post AIPAC Head Hosts Fundraiser for House Candidate Who Swears AIPAC Isn’t Backing Her appeared first on The Intercept.

The European Leadership Network, or ELNET, takes elected officials on networking trips to Israel, hosts events with members of European parliaments, and lobbies on foreign policy issues — much like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee operates in the U.S. Its co-founder, Raanan Eliaz, is a former AIPAC consultant and alumnus of the Israeli prime minister’s office. The group credits itself for key pro-Israel foreign policy decisions, including getting Germany to approve a $3.5 billion deal to purchase Israeli drones and rockets, the largest in Israel’s history. Since the October 7 attacks in Israel — and amid two years of genocide in Gaza — ELNET has broken fundraising records.

Funding ELNET’s work are more than 100 U.S. foundations, nonprofits, trusts, and charitable giving organizations that have poured at least $11 million into the group’s U.S. arm since 2022, an analysis by The Intercept found. This is the first major analysis of how U.S. donors are fueling the pro-Israel machine in Europe, exporting the same tactics that have for years helped AIPAC crush concern for Palestinians in the halls of power and advance unchecked support for Israel.

ELNET is smaller than AIPAC, but it operates in a smaller market, feeding a steady stream of pro-Israel material to European parliamentarians. While the U.S. gives more financial and military support to Israel than any country in the world, the European Union is Israel’s biggest trading partner — and holds critical sway over whether global political consensus stays on Israel’s side. Amid public outcry and cracks in European support over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ELNET sees its work as more essential than ever.

“ELNET states clearly that their role is to legitimize and deepen economic ties with Israel, at a time when international law tells us we should be sanctioning Israel and sever trade ties,” said European Parliament member Lynn Boylan, an Irish representative from the Sinn Féin party. “As an EU lawmaker, I am very concerned that U.S. groups are seemingly successfully able to determine EU policy on Israel.”

Friends of ELNET, the group’s U.S. nonprofit arm, transfers almost all of its revenue to ELNET’s chapters around the globe. It raised more than $9.1 million in 2023, the last year for which its tax forms are publicly available, up from $7 million in 2022 and more than double its revenue from 2018.

The U.S. arm is chaired by Larry Hochberg, a Chicago philanthropist and former AIPAC national director who sits on the board of the nonprofit group Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. Its president is David Siegel, previously an Israeli diplomat, an AIPAC legislative writer, and an IDF officer. ELNET’s U.S. board members include donors who have given more than $170,000 to AIPAC; its super PAC, United Democracy Project; and the related pro-Israel group DMFI PAC since 2021. One of those board members, Jerry Rosenberg, is a member of AIPAC’s exclusive major-donor Minyan Club, according to his ELNET bio. European media have also reported on a handful of ELNET donors who have also supported President Donald Trump.

Top U.S. donors to Friends of ELNET include the William Davidson Foundation, founded by the late Michigan businessman, which has given $800,000 to the group since 2022; the Newton and Rochelle Becker Charitable Trust, founded by the couple to work toward “ensuring the future of the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” which gave just under half a million dollars in 2023; and the Ocean State Job Lot Charitable Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the northeastern chain of discount retail stores, which gave $445,000 in 2022. Representatives for the foundations did not respond to requests for comment.

Other major donors include the Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation, the family foundation for ELNET U.S. board member Joseph Feinberg; the National Philanthropic Trust; and the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation, each of which have given $675,000, $560,000, and $430,000 respectively since 2022. Jewish Federations in Palm Beach, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco have given $443,000 altogether since 2022.

Those dollars have powered ELNET in its advocacy to transfer two drones to the IDF, cut off funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and push a EU resolution affirming Israel’s right to self-defense and calling for the eradication of Hamas.

Boylan, who chairs the European Parliament Delegation for relations with Palestine, told The Intercept that she was alarmed by the role U.S. donors are playing in lobbying European governments to back Israel.

“While it is not surprising that U.S. donors are funneling millions to influence EU policy on Israel, this demonstrates just how much European institutions are out of touch with their own citizens on the genocide in Gaza,” Boylan said.

“As more U.S. politicians refuse to accept money from warmongering groups like AIPAC, U.S donors appear to be increasingly sending more donations abroad in an attempt to curry support for the Israeli military across Europe,” said Beth Miller, political director for Jewish Voice for Peace Action. “It’s shameful that so many here in the U.S. play a key role in the ongoing apartheid and genocide against Palestinians.”

Many of the U.S. institutions directed funds to Friends of ELNET through donor-advised funds, or DAFs, which let donors make tax-exempt contributions through an intermediary and give them the choice to remain anonymous. DAFs aren’t allowed to contribute to lobbying efforts, but there are many ways around that prohibition, said Bella DeVaan, associate director of the charity reform initiative at the progressive think tank Institute for Policy Studies.

“It’s a way to rinse your name off of any kind of donation that could be perceived as controversial or something that you just want to keep anonymous publicly,” DeVaan said. DAFs also confer significant benefits for donors looking to reduce their tax burden.

The National Philanthropic Trust, the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego, and the Jewish Federation of Atlanta all directed money to ELNET through DAFs. That’s not uncommon: A July report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that donors disproportionately use DAFs more than other funding sources for political giving.

“When you involve the sort of shell-game capacity of DAFs, it can become really difficult to trace direct impact,” DeVaan said. “That can really manifest in a lot of political consequences that I think the average taxpayer would not like to know that they’re subsidizing, because of the tax breaks that charitable givers get for their gifts.”

DeVaan said it was concerning that donors are using DAFs to support international lobbying efforts. Critics of Israel’s genocide in Gaza have called on institutions to clarify ethical guidelines around DAF distributions amid concerns about funding groups linked to the Israeli military. Pro-Israel advocates have also criticized DAF distributions to Palestine solidarity groups.

“No matter what kind of lobbying it is, at home or abroad, these implications are really concerning. For every gift an ultra-rich person gives to charity, the average taxpayer is chipping in an estimated 74 cents on the dollar,” said DeVaan. “Do we want to give people a tax break to amplify their influence around the world? I don’t think most people would agree with that.”

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Many of the same groups funneling money to ELNET’s U.S. nonprofit arm have also given to other pro-Israel organizations. Six foundations that have given more than $570,000 to Friends of ELNET since 2022 have given $344,800 to AIPAC over the same period. Donors to Friends of ELNET have also given more than $37.8 million to AIPAC’s educational arm, the American Israel Education Foundation, which sponsors trips to Israel for members of Congress. Michael Leffell, an investment firm founder and AIPAC donor whose foundation gave $50,000 to Friends of ELNET in 2017, has given $1.5 million to United Democracy Project since 2022. More than 50 ELNET donors have given $11.6 million to the Central Fund of Israel and $8.9 million to the Jewish National Fund since 2022 — both of which fund Israeli settler groups in the West Bank, where settlers have ramped up attacks on Palestinians since the October 7 attacks.

Friends of ELNET did not respond to a request for comment.

Thousands of Europeans protest each week to pressure their officials to stop the genocide in Gaza. “Their concerns are ignored in favour of organisations specifically established to defend Israel at all costs,” said Boylan.

“Aligning With the U.S. in Support of Israel”

After October 7, ELNET set to work arranging screenings of the attacks in European parliaments and embarking on a campaign that would rapidly elevate the group’s profile in the next two years. The group has arranged meetings between members and families of Israeli hostages, taken some 300 policymakers and opinion leaders on trips to Israel, and celebrated what it describes as its successful influence on European policy.

“Europe aligning with the U.S. in support of Israel is a monumental achievement and a reflection of ELNET’s critical work,” the group wrote in an October 2023 fundraising appeal to support “emergency solidarity missions” to Israel from European countries including France, Germany, the U.K., and Italy. “ELNET’s priority is to ensure that the unprecedented European military and diplomatic support for Israel remains strong for the duration of the war until Hamas is eradicated.”

Among its accomplishments since October 7, ELNET has pointed to its work to get European countries to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which defines criticisms of Israel as antisemitic, push European states to crack down on pro-Palestine protesters and ban certain protests, and secure the historic defense deal between Israel and Germany.

In its latest annual report from 2023, ELNET highlighted its work to pass the defense deal for Germany to purchase the Arrow 3 missile defense system, developed by Israel and the U.S. “ELNET arranged for German political leaders and officials to meet with Israeli officials and thus advance the requisite research and dialogue to consummate this historic deal,” the group wrote.

Eleven days after the October 7 attacks, ELNET brought a group of survivors to speak to members of the European Parliament, a lawmaking body for the EU. The next day, the European Parliament passed a resolution that called for a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza and for Hamas to be “eliminated.”

“Each ELNET office served as a conduit of factual and credible information to parliamentarians and policymakers across Europe by providing firsthand information about what happened on October 7,” the report read. “The day after ELNET brought Israeli survivors to speak at the European Parliament, an unprecedented resolution was passed backing Israel’s right to self-defense and calling for the elimination of Hamas.”

The group boasts a network of thousands of European and Israeli officials in its orbit and has chapters around the world including the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and offices for Central and Eastern Europe and the EU & NATO. Friends of ELNET sends millions to ELNET’s global chapters each year — climbing from $2.4 million in 2020 to more than $6 million in 2023.

Varying financial reporting requirements across Europe make it difficult to account completely for ELNET’s global financial portfolio. Friends of ELNET conducts much of the fundraising for the group’s global chapters, but it’s not clear how much funding those chapters raise on their own. ELNET Germany recently announced it was launching its own Friends of ELNET Germany chapter. A 2023 filing with the transparency body for the EU lists Friends of ELNET as the only source of funding for ELNET’s chapter registered in Brussels. ELNET’s chapters for the EU & NATO and Germany did not respond to requests for comment.

Speaking to The Intercept, Boylan raised concerns about ELNET’s work to expand Israel’s arms industry ties to the Israeli military.

“It is also concerning that an organization who holds ‘strategic dialogues’ chaired by individuals formerly in IDF leadership positions are allowed to have any role in determining EU policy,” Boylan said, referring to former chairs of an ELNET forum that organizes “high-level strategic dialogues” between Europe and Israel. She said she would follow up with the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Parliament, about U.S. donors backing ELNET’s work pushing pro-Israel policies in Europe.

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Critics and journalists have also raised questions about how much money ELNET has received from the Israeli government, which reimbursed ELNET for a lobbying event last month at the French Parliament, the French outlet Mediapart reported. Elnet’s leadership and board members also have ties to the Israeli government and include two former advisers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Before Friends of ELNET launched in 2012, ELNET received funding from the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, which has long been active in policing criticism of Israel on college campuses. StandWithUs transferred just under $1 million in assets to Friends of ELNET to launch the nonprofit in 2012.

While ELNET leaders have pointed to AIPAC as a model, Eliaz, Elnet’s co-founder, envisioned something with a much lower profile that didn’t carry strings attached to well-known U.S. donors. Since he left the group in 2017, ELNET’s U.S. support has almost doubled.

ELNET’s policy goals from its last annual report include continuing to expand the IHRA definition of antisemitism, working to “counter Israel’s delegitimization at the UN,” opposing the International Criminal Court investigation of Israel, and continuing its campaign against UNRWA, which Israel shut down in January.

“Judeo-Christian Civilization”

ELNET’s communications signal that it’s looking for ways to exploit a growing rift between the U.S. and Europe under Trump to Israel’s advantage, including seizing on the wave of anti-immigrant political parties in Europe.

In a February newsletter, a truncated version of which was posted to the Times of Israel as a blog, ELNET-Israel CEO Emmanuel Navon, previously a senior fellow at a right-wing Israeli think tank, wrote that a “widening gap” between the U.S. and Europe on Israel made ELNET’s job harder. But it wasn’t all bad news: The tension also afforded a new “diplomatic opportunity for Israel in Europe” amid the rise of “European parties with Trumpian sympathies and pro-Israel credentials.” Navon stepped down as ELNET-Israel CEO in March, but he still works closely with the group and supports Elnet’s work in France. He did not respond to a request for comment.

In his newsletter, Navon referenced a February speech by Vice President JD Vance to the Munich Security Conference in which the latter lambasted European leaders on issues from free speech to migration.

“As a non-partisan and apolitical NGO, ELNET cannot and must not take a public stance on government policies. But it should be aware of the current Zeitgeist and of its potential for Israel’s relations with Europe,” Navon wrote, including expanding markets for Israel’s defense industry. Then, he quoted Vance, who had asked: “What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?”

“This is a question to which Israel has a clear answer,” Navon wrote. “The core values of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian civilization, of which Israel is a pillar. It turns out that more and more European voters agree with that answer.”

The production of this investigation was supported by a grant from the Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) fund.

The post Meet the U.S. Donors Funding ELNET, the AIPAC of Europe appeared first on The Intercept.