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In an unusual alliance, Jewish media and striking journalists are uniting to cover the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — How many times should an alleged synagogue shooter’s name be mentioned in a news story about his trial, now beginning after more than four years?
For the Pittsburgh Union Press last month, the answer was seven. For the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, it was an uneasy five, in a departure from its usual answer of zero — a number chosen out of deference to a community devastated by the shooting.
The slight difference was the only discrepancy between one set of stories published by the two news organizations covering the trial of Robert Bowers, accused of murdering 11 Jews in their synagogue here in 2018.
The anomaly offers a window into an unusual partnership between the two publications — the city’s Jewish paper and the news site established by striking staffers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — born in February when it became clear that the trial would last months.
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle editor Toby Tabachnick was dreading the trial coverage, with a staff of just three on the editorial side: herself and two reporters, David Rullo and Adam Reinherz.
“I started getting really nervous. Like, how are we going to do this?” Tabachnick said on the eve of the trial, speaking at the federal courthouse where jury selection would soon begin. “Our regular reporters could have been here. But it would have been extremely taxing, difficult and emotional for us, because we’re so ingrained in the community too.”
Plus, she added, “In addition to this trial, which is going to be every day for three months, we’re covering the synagogues, events and the holidays, the lectures, we still have a regular community newspaper to put out.”
Tabachnick knew Andrew “Goldy” Goldstein, one of the Post-Gazette’s team that picked up a Pulitzer for their coverage of the massacre, from his time as a Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle intern. She also knew he was on strike and wondered whether he could use the extra freelance opportunity.
Instead, Goldstein immediately offered up a better idea: Join with the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the strike paper, in a joint reporting project, organized in part through the Pittsburgh Media Partnership, an incubator for local journalism. (The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is raising funds for the coverage.)
Working together just made sense, Goldstein said. The Chronicle was deeply resourced and credible in the Jewish community, and the Progress had on board Torsten Ove, a local legend.
From left to right, Bob Batz of the Pittsburgh Union Progress, Toby Tabachnick of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and Andrew Goldstein of the Progress pose in the Joseph Weis Jr. Courthouse in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
“We have the all-star federal courts reporter in Torsten and we have a lot of really great journalists who love Pittsburgh, love this community, and we’ll do our best to cover it,” Goldstein said, noting that the Chronicle would also have access to the Progress’s photographers. “But the Chronicle brings something different entirely to the table, which is, they’re so deeply sourced in the Pittsburgh Jewish community, and they have such an interest in this trial in particular.”
Newsroom collaborations have become more frequent in recent years as publications realize they can expand their impact and audience by working together. But while there are a growing number of relationships between local and national publications and between daily and investigative outlets, ties between mainstream newsrooms and community or ethnic media are less common.
S. Mitra Kalita, the founder and director of URL Media, a network of Black and Brown community news outlets that share content and revenue, said the value in such partnerships was not just in delivering relief as media staffs shrink, but also in sensitizing mainstream media to minority sensibilities.
“Talking about who [the ethnic media outlet is] serving and why we’re doing it this way — the spirit of real collaboration is a bit of that give and take,” she said. “We make mainstream media way better because it starts to infuse mainstream media with aspects of community and thus redefine the mainstream.”
The residual trauma of the massacre in the Pittsburgh collaboration made it all the more important for the mainstream reporters to be sensitive to the nuances that the Jewish media was bringing, she said.
“Especially a story like this one, which was such an attack on a community — a community that was singled out for their sheer existence, the strategy cannot be ‘let’s just work in parallel,” Kalita said. “It’s not going to work. It has to be kind of a cross-pollination and a real collaboration.”
That’s exactly what is happening, according to the reporters and editors involved in the project, with communication easy between each publication’s editor and expertise flowing in both directions.
Ove a denizen of the Joseph F. Weis Jr. Courthouse for so long that he can tell stories about a sizable stretch of the portraits of judges that line its corridor walls; he may be the only court reporter to seek an interview with a judge after his death, to ask him why he was haunting the place. (The judge never showed, but his widow was less than surprised to hear that he was still working.)
He led a passel of Chronicle and Progress staffers through the warren-like courthouse on the Friday before the trial, handily impressing them with his intimacy with the building — he knew the provenance of the paintings in each courtroom — and its staff. Soo Song, the assistant U.S. attorney who is leading the prosecution team, smiled and nodded as she passed.
Torsten Ove, left, of the Pittsburgh Union Progress and Adam Reinherz of the PIttsburgh Jewish Chronicle confer on the first day of jury selection for the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre trial, April 24, 2023. (Toby Tabachnick)
Ove showed the reporters how to access court records for free, and while they stood around him at one of the computer terminals, the teams’ different emphases emerged: Ove predicted that jury selection, which started last week and is expected to last as long as three weeks, would not be a news generator, because in his experience, it rarely has been.
Reinherz and Tabachnick, attuned to reporting on faith communities, were not so sure: Reinherz wondered whether believing Catholics, who reject the death penalty, would be eliminated, and Tabachnick wondered whether defense attorneys would seek to keep Jews off the jury — and how they would go about doing that.
Reinherz ended up covering the first day of jury selection. “Local and national reporters decided the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle should have one seat during the initial session of day one,” Reinherz explained in a story that appeared on both news sites. He noted that the first member of the public to enter the courtroom was Daniel Leger, one of two survivors of the attack.
Working together across platforms was odd, said Bob Batz Jr., the Progress’s interim editor, but he could get used to it.
“This is uncharted territory for someone like me, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, and we don’t, you know, we don’t collaborate,” he said.
“We compete!” Tabachnick interjected.
“What we’re doing is not common, and it’s not going to be easy,” Batz said. “Surely, we’re going to tick each other off about something or somebody is going to put the wrong word in or there’s a million things that can go wrong, but the breaking of ground where you’re actually working together, it just makes sense in so many ways on this story. We’re really trying to serve the community.”
Tabachnick said she saw added value in keeping journalists she admired in the limelight while they are on strike. Journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette went on strike back in October over wages and working conditions, in a crescendo of mounting tensions between the paper’s longtime owners and the staff that contributed to a newsroom exodus even in 2018, when the paper won a Pulitzer for its synagogue shooting coverage. The strike is now one of the longest in journalism history, and the staffers contributing to the Pittsburgh Union Progress are doing so despite earning well below than their regular salaries.
“I feel good about getting their names, their publication’s name out,” Tabachnick said.
Each story is running in essentially identical form on both publications’ websites, with a line crediting their collaboration. Tabachnick and Batz had a brief and friendly email exchange before each clicked “publish” on their story about debate among victims’ families about the appropriateness of the death penalty.
The Chronicle is minimizing appearances of the name of the accused killer, out of sensitivity to readers who may want to see their community members centered rather than their aggressor. Some researchers and law enforcement officials have also called on journalists not to print mass shooters’ names and photographs, citing evidence that doing so may contribute to their glorification and even copycat crimes.
Batz says he totally gets the Chronicle’s thinking, despite making a different choice in his newsroom.
“We’re still feeling our way, we’re still figuring this out,” Batz said. “They don’t name the defendant in their story, and they haven’t. And our guy Torsten who’s an all-star courts reporter, he’s going to use the guy’s name. And then in real time going back and forth on email and text we came up with his solution and that story was on both websites in minutes and it was really kind of cool.”
Tabachnick picked up the account of the previous night’s collaboration as if she’d been working across a desk from Batz for decades instead of online since February.
“The solution was that I realized that with the trial starting, it really didn’t make sense not to use his name at all anymore that we really needed to as a news organization,” she said. “But that didn’t mean we had to overuse his name. And I’m not saying Torsten overused his name. He used it as much as he needed to use it in terms of style, but I took out a few of them and replaced it with ‘the defendant’ and we were all happy.”
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The post In an unusual alliance, Jewish media and striking journalists are uniting to cover the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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JD Vance blames Israel and Iran war for GOP’s crushing defeats
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance blamed the Republican Party’s massive midterm losses on the country’s connection to Israel and the war in Iran in a social media post early on Wednesday.
“The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” Vance wrote on X, as results from Tuesday’s midterm elections showed that Democrats had wrested control of Congress from his Republican Party.
The vice president then listed four strategies to persuade those voters who abandoned the GOP “to come back to our team”: end the war in Iran; focus on the cost of living and inflation; put America first and “Change our relationship to Israel.”
“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance added, referring to interviews President Donald Trump gave on Tuesday about the influence of the war on gas prices.
Addressing the defeats, Trump told Fox News that “a part of it was Iran,” while also doubling down on the importance of the war itself. Similarly, he told The Wall Street Journal that “Iran was a piece of it.”
The president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., backed Vance’s statement with a re-post on Wednesday, simply adding: “Every word of this is 100 100 100.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post JD Vance blames Israel and Iran war for GOP’s crushing defeats appeared first on The Forward.
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People used to have guests over often. Why do so few of us do that anymore?
אין אַן אַרטיקל לעצטנס אינעם זשורנאַל „די אַטלאַנטיק“ האָט מען איבערגעגעבן, אַז אינעם יאָר 1975 האָבן בערך 42 פּראָצענט אַמעריקאַנער געזאָגט, אַז צום ווייניקסטן איין מאָל אַ חודש נעמען זיי אויף געסט (פֿרײַנד אָדער קרובֿים) אויף אַ מאָלצײַט בײַ זיך אין שטוב.
אין 2026 איז עס אָבער געווען בלויז 12 פּראָצענט — אַ ירידה פֿון בערך 70 פּראָצענט.
די פֿאָרשער האָבן דעם פֿענאָמען אַ נאָמען געגעבן „די גרויסע ירידה פֿון הכנסת־אורחים“ (The Great Disinvitation בלע״ז). דער נאָמען פּאַסט טאַקע ווײַל אָט די ירידה פֿון אויפֿנעמען געסט איז נישט בלויז וואָך שייך דעם פֿאַרבעטן מענטשן אויף אַ מאָלצײַט. אַ סך געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע אַקטיוויטעטן וואָס זענען אַ מאָל געווען אַזוי פֿאַרשפּרייט זענען אַ פּנים „אַרויס פֿון דער מאָדע, צי דאָס איז אַרויסגיין עסן מיט פֿרײַנד, שפּילן קאָרטן, גיין אויף אַ פּיקניק, הערן אַ קלאַס, טאָן פֿרײַוויליקע אַרבעט, גיין אין שענק אָדער אויף אַ זיצונג פֿון אַ קלוב. מיט אַנדערע ווערטער, אַזוי ווייניק מענטשן באַטייליקן זיך אין די אַקטיוויטעטן, אַז מע באַטראַכט זיי ווי סתּם חנעוודיקע מנהגים פֿון אַ פֿאַרגאַנגענער תּקופֿה, נישט מער ווי אַ קוריאָז.
פֿאַר וואָס איז דאָס געשען? ערשטנס, איז דאָס לעבן אין דער היים געוואָרן זייער באַקוועם, אַזוי אַז ס׳גלוסט זיך נישט אַרויסצוגיין. צווייטנס, ניצט מען אויס יענע שעהען וואָס מע פֿלעג אויפֿנעמען געסט צו אַרבעטן מער. דריטנס, ווען מע זעט כּסדר אויף דער סאָציאַלער מעדיאַ (בפֿרט אינסטאַגראַם) פֿאָטאָגראַפֿיעס פֿון פּרעכטיקע עסצימערן, וווּ אַלץ אויפֿן טיש זעט אויס פּערפֿעקט, און דער סאַלאָן איז שיין אויסגעסדרט און קרישטאָל־ריין, פֿילן זיך מענטשן אַז זיי קענען נישט דערגרייכן אַזאַ הויכן סטאַנדאַרט און באַשליסן דערפֿאַר נישט צו פֿאַרבעטן מענטשן צו זיך.
די סדרה פֿון דער פֿאַרגאַנגענער וואָך, וירא, ווײַזט אונדז אַ בולטן קאָנטראַסט. אַבֿהרם אָבֿינו, וואָס איז אַלט 99 יאָר אַלט און האָט ערשט געהאַט דורכגעמאַכט אַ שטיקל „כירורגיע“ (זײַן ברית־מילה), זיצט בײַם אַרײַנגאַנג פֿון זײַן געצעלט אין דער הייסטער צײַט פֿון טאָג, ווען דרײַ פֿרעמדע באַווײַזן זיך פֿון דער ווײַטנס.
הגם אַבֿרהם האָט אַ גוטן תּירוץ צו בלײַבן בײַם געצעלט, הייבט ער זיך אויף, לויפֿט צו צו די דרײַ פֿרעמדע לײַט און הייבט אָן צוגרייטן אַ סעודה פֿאַר זיי. ער הייסט שׁרהן תּיכּף אָפּבאַקן ברויט און באַפֿעלט זײַן דינער אויסקלײַבן דאָס בעסטע קעלבל פֿון זייער טשאַדע כּדי צו מאַכן אַ געשמאַק הויפּטגעריכט.
מיט אַנדערע ווערטער, אַבֿרהם אָרגאַניזירט אַ סעודה וואָס קיינער האָט נישט פּלאַנירט, לטובֿת מענטשן וואָס ער קען בכלל נישט. ס׳איז זייער מעגלעך אַז דאָס געצעלט איז בײַ אים געווען אָנגעוואָרפֿן מיט זאַכן אָבער דאָס האָט אים נישט געאַרט. דערצו האָבן די געסט געדאַרפֿט וואַרטן עטלעכע שעה אויף דער מאָלצײַט (דער פּראָצעס פֿון באַקן ברויט קאָן דויערן 5 שעה), און דאָס עסן איז אפֿשר נישט געווען אויסערגעוויינטלעך. מיר דאַכט זיך אָבער, אַז דאָס איז דער עיקר פֿון דער מעשׂה.
דאָס אויפֿנעמען געסט איז אָפֿט נישט באַקוועם און פֿאָדערט אַ סך מי.
אין יענע צײַטן איז דאָס געווען אַן אמתע האָרעוואַניע. מע האָט געדאַרפֿט שעכטן די חיות, שעפּן וואַסער פֿון ברונעם, צעמאָלן דאָס מעל און באַקן אַלץ פֿריש. הײַנט איז דאָס אויפֿנעמען געסט גרינגער צוליב אַלע טעכנאָלאָגישע דערגרייכונגען אָבער מע דאַרף פֿאָרט אַרײַנלייגן אַ היפּשע אַרבעט: מע דאַרף קאָכן, קאָאָרדינירן אונדזערע קאַלענדאַרן, גיין אײַנקויפֿן, ראַמען, קאָנטראָלירן צי איינער פֿון די געסט האָט אַן אַלערגיע, און מע דאַרף נעמען אין באַטראַכט די באַדערפֿענישן פֿון קליינע קינדער.
סײַ אין אַבֿרהמס צײַטן סײַ אין אונדזערע, ווערן אָט די גשמיותדיקע צוגרייטונגען לטובֿת הכנסת־אורחים פֿאַרוואַנדלט אין מעשׂים פֿון אמתן חסד.
די תּורה זאָגט אונדז, אַז גאָט האָט געהאַלטן אין מיטן רעדן מיט אַבֿרהמען ווען די געסט זענען אָנגעקומען און ווי עס זעט אויס האָט אַבֿרהם ממש איבערגעריסן זײַן שמועס מיטן אייבערשטן, כּדי צו באַדינען די געסט — אַ זאַך וואָס האָט דערפֿירט צום איבערראַשנדיקן אויספֿיר בײַ חז״ל: אַז הכנסת־אורחים איז נאָך חשובֿער ווי דאָס זײַן אין דער שכינה אַליין.
אַ מדרש גיט צו אַן אינטערעסאַנטע אָבסערוואַציע: ווען עס דערנענטערן זיך די דרײַ פֿרעמדע (וואָס זענען אין דער אמתן דרײַ מאכלים), שטייט געשריבן אַז זיי „שטייען איבער“ אַבֿרהמען, אָבער בײַם סוף פֿונעם מאָלצײַט, „שטייט ער איבער זיי“. דאָס הייסט, בײַם אָנהייב האָבן די דרײַ געסט זיך געפֿילט גײַסטיק העכער פֿון אַבֿרהמען, אָבער ביזן סוף פֿון זייער באַזוך האָבן זיי אײַנגעזען אַז אָט דער קראַנקער זקן מיט דער אָפֿענער טיר, וואָס זײַן הויזגעזינד מאַכט פֿריש ברויט לכּבֿוד זײַנע געסט, האָט דערגרייכט אַ נאָך העכערע מדרגה ווי זיי.
מיר לייענען ווי די דרײַ מאכלים פֿאַרלאָזן אַבֿרהמס געצעלט און קומען אָן אין סדום, וווּ זיי טרעפֿן אַ גאָר אַנדער מין געזעלשאַפֿט: אַנשטאָט חסד און גאַסטפֿרײַנטלעכקייט ווײַזן די אײַנוווינער פֿון סדום אַרויס רציחה און אַכזריותדיקייט צו פֿרעמדע. אין סדום איז די שׂינאה פֿאַר פֿרעמדע לײַט געווען ממש אײַנגעגלידערט אין זייער סאָציאַלער סיסטעם.
ווען לוט, וואָס האָט זיך באַזעצט אין סדום, נעמט אויף צוויי פֿון די דרײַ געסט וואָס זענען פֿריִער געווען בײַ אַבֿרהמען, זאַמלט זיך אָן בײַ זײַן טיר אַ המון אָרטיקע אײַנוווינער, פֿאָדערנדיק אַז ער זאָל דערלאַנגען די געסט צו זיי. וויסנדיק אַז די סדומער וועלן די געסט ברוטאַל אַטאַקירן, זאָגט ער זיך אָפּ פֿון אַרויסלאָזן די געסט. כאָטש ער טוט דערנאָך עפּעס, וואָס איז פּונקט אַזוי שאָקירנדיק און אַכזריותדיק (ער שיקט אַרויס זײַנע אייגענע טעכטער אַנשטאָט די געסט), איז קלאָר אַז ער האָט געפּרווט פֿאָלגן די פּרינציפּן פֿון הכנסת־אורחים, וואָס ער האָט זיך אָפּגעלערנט פֿון זײַן פֿעטער אַבֿרהם.
מע קען אַוודאי נישט פֿאַרגלײַכן דעם אוממענטשלעכן אויפֿפֿיר פֿון די סדומער מיט אונדזער געזעלשאַפֿט. די ירידה פֿון הכנסת־אורחים איז אָבער אַ סימן אַז מיר שאַנעווען נישט די טראַדיציע פֿון אויפֿנעמען געסט אַזוי ווי אַמאָל. מיר פֿילן זיך באַקוועמער צו בלײַבן פֿיזיש אָפּגעזינדערט פֿון אַנדערע. דורך אַבֿרהמס גאַסטפֿרײַנדלעכקייט ווײַזט אונדז די תּורה וואָסערע נסים קענען פֿאָרקומען ווען מע פֿאַרבעט געסט צו זיך אַהיים: אַן אַלטיטשקע פּאָרפֿאָלק וואָס האָט שוין אויפֿגעגעבן די האָפֿענונג אַז זיי וועלן האָבן קינדער, דערוויסט זיך אַז זיי וועלן טאַקע האָבן אַ זון.
ווען מיר פֿאַרבעטן מענטשן אַהיים אויף אַ מאָלצײַט קענען אויך פֿאָרקומען אַנדערע וויכטיקע זאַכן: אַ גאַסט וואָס האָט נישט קיין שטעלע קען געפֿינען אַרבעט. צוויי געסט קענען זיך פֿאַרליבן און דערנאָך חתונה האָבן.
די תּורה לערנט אונדז אַז מיר זאָלן עפֿענען אונדזערע היימען, אַפֿילו אויב ס׳איז אונדז שווער. און נאָך מער: מיר זאָלן עס טאָן דווקא ווי אַ דוגמא פֿון אַ מיצווה, וואָס איז שווער דורכצופֿירן אָבער ברענגט צונויף מענטשן. און מיר אַלע קענען דאָס טאָן. זאָרגט זיך נישט אויב אײַער היים איז נישט אַזוי שיין ווי די בילדער, וואָס איר זעט אויף אינסטאַגראַם. ווען מיר ווערן פֿאַרבעטן צו יענעם אַהיים געדענקען ס׳רובֿ פֿון אונדז נישט צי די סערוועטקעס האָבן זיך טאַקע געפּאַסט מיטן טישטעך. מיר געדענקען אָבער יאָ ווי אַזוי מיר האָבן זיך געפֿילט ווי געסט, וויסנדיק אַז עמעצער וויל פֿאַרברענגען מיט אונדז.
בײַ די פֿראַנצויזן איז דאָ אַן אַלטער מינהג: ווען מע שטאַרבט, באַערדיקט מען דעם מת אין אַן אָרון געמאַכט פֿונעם האָלץ פֿון זײַן עסטיש. דער סימבאָליזם דערפֿון איז קלאָר: נאָך דעם ווי מיר פֿאַרלאָזן די וועלט, טראַכטן ווייניק מענטשן וויפֿל געלט מיר האָבן געהאַט אָדער ווי באַרימט מיר זענען געווען. אַ סך מער געדענקט מען ווי אַזוי מיר האָבן אויפֿגענומען געסט: די איבעריקע בענקלעך, וואָס מיר האָבן אַרויסגעשלעפּט פֿון דער שאַפֿע; די טישטעכער וואָס מיר האָבן אָפּגעוואַשן, און ואַחרון אַחרון חבֿיבֿ — אונדזער שמייכל בײַם עפֿענען די טיר.
דער אַרטיקל איז איבערגעזעצט געוואָרן פֿון ענגליש.
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6 Jewish takeaways from the midterm elections
(JTA) — The sheer size and geographic scope of the Republican wipeout Tuesday makes it hard to read anything definitive into the results beyond a nationwide repudiation of President Donald Trump (and his candidate selections). But whether or not any other factors were at play in the GOP bloodbath, the fallout will have a range of reverberations. Here are 6 takeaways that point to what comes next.
1. A significantly weakened Donald Trump doesn’t bode well for Netanyahu
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has been a longshot bet that keeps on paying off. It’s hard to overstate how significant Trump’s improbable wins in 2016 and 2024 were in bolstering Netanyahu’s domestic standing and giving him space to advance his regional agenda. Trump also served as a security blanket, leaving Netanyahu and his allies with a sense for many years that they need not worry too much about skyrocketing Democratic and international anger with Israel.
In fact, there was even a hope in Bibi world that The Donald’s support could save Netanyahu from political defeat at home (and, to be fair, his 11th-hour endorsement may have). Whether Netanyahu holds on or chief rival Gadi Eisenkot succeeds in replacing him, Israel is entering uncharted territory. There is little chance that the combination of a weakened Trump and an emboldened Democratic Congress produces similar levels of support for aggressive action against Iran and its proxies, and other policies that a wide spectrum of Israelis see as crucial to their security.
2. Jeffries and Schumer have a massive headache coming their way
With Tuesday night’s Democratic wave, Hakeem Jeffries is on track to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and Chuck Schumer will likely get a second shot as U.S. Senate Majority Leader. These New Yorkers have longstanding ties to the pro-Israel community and are among their party’s strongest Israel supporters – putting them at odds with the growing number of congressional Democrats who want their party to take a much harder line against Israel. It won’t be long before members in each caucus are demanding concrete action, including meaningful limits on U.S. military sales.
Both Democratic leaders have ratcheted up their criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government in the wake of its war on Hamas in Gaza, but they have ultimately voted against various legislative attempts to punish Israel. This past April, Schumer was one of only seven Senate Democrats to vote against a pair of resolutions that together would have blocked the sale of D-9 bulldozers, widely used in military operations, and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel. In July, Jeffries voted against ending U.S. military aid to Israel, but the measure was supported by almost half of the Democratic caucus. As leaders of their respective chambers, Jeffries and Schumer will likely face immense pressure for more such votes and face much tougher scrutiny from the party base over continued support for Israel.
3. The impact of the anti-Israel vote was diluted
On the other hand, the massive Democratic victory dilutes the power of the anti-Israel lawmakers in Congress. Their numbers will grow, causing problems for party leaders trying to keep anti-Israel measures off the agenda. But they will remain a relatively small subset within a much larger Democratic majority that includes many moderates and Israel supporters.
Not only will anti-Israel members have less ability to hold Congress hostage, the overall issue of Israel loses some of its potency when the broader political winds indicate that all Democrats were boosted.
4. John Fetterman just lost his juice
Just as the sizable Democratic House majority makes Jeffries less dependent on anti-Israel lawmakers in his caucus, the next Senate Majority Leader won’t need to rely on Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman. For years, Fetterman has been driving fellow Democrats crazy with his cozying up to Republicans, with progressives especially upset over his die-hard support for Israel. Fetterman has even said that the one thing that could cause him to leave the Democratic Senate caucus would be his party turning decisively against Israel.
Had things broken differently, with Democrats grabbing a narrow 51-49 majority in the chamber, Fetterman’s influence would have been hypercharged. Now, not so much. The Democrats no longer need him to keep control of the chamber. So Schumer, should he regain the majority leader role, will have to worry much less about keeping the party’s top pro-Israel cheerleader happy. In 2028, he’ll be up for reelection and highly unlikely to survive the Democratic primary.
5. AIPAC has not found a formula for success
A few years back, the leading pro-Israel lobby decided the best way to counter the initial anti-Israel rumblings in Congress was to jump deep into the campaign fundraising business. Hundreds of millions of dollars later, the number of Israel critics in Congress – especially on the Democratic side of the aisle – has grown, with a fresh batch on the way. Moreover, in many races, anti-Israel candidates and AIPAC critics managed to turn the lobby’s backing into a liability.
Meanwhile, Trump’s seemingly impromptu announcement Tuesday that his administration would end aid to Israel after this year suggests that Republican backing for such support is dropping alongside Democrats’. And Tuesday’s results suggest AIPAC’s strong support for the U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Iran is out of step with the American public and many incoming lawmakers.
All of this indicates that AIPAC has yet to figure out how to manage the anti-Israel turn sweeping through American politics.
6. It was a great night for Jewish presidential hopefuls
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff says he isn’t running for president in 2028. But that won’t stop the speculation from skyrocketing after his impressive reelection in Georgia – Georgia?! – with nearly 60% of the vote. More importantly, he probably just grabbed frontrunner status in the race to become America’s first Jewish president. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro also registered a similarly sized reelection victory in a state that Trump won just two years ago, but Ossoff – a fierce Trump antagonist and, increasingly, a critic of Israel’s military actions – cemented his rock star status among Democrats this cycle and has demonstrated an ability to bridge the gap between younger progressives and more traditional liberals.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also cruised to reelection. Meanwhile in Michigan, moderate Elissa Slotkin – another senator and likely presidential hopeful (of course, which senator isn’t a presidential hopeful?) – may have at least propped open the door to some progressive support by campaigning hard for Abdul El-Sayed. All four have been highly critical of Netanyahu, with both Ossoff and Slotkin joining most of their fellow Democratic senators in voting in April for a curb on various weapons sales. Both senators have declined to label Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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