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Jewish Democrats press for oversight as Trump’s Iran war rages on
After Congress failed to rein in President Donald Trump’s authority to wage war alongside Israel against Iran, Democrats say the fight over congressional oversight is far from over.
Jewish Democrats, many of whom support U.S. action to curb Iran’s nuclear program and dismantle its ballistic missile infrastructure, are grappling with how to respond as the midterm elections approach and opposition to the war runs deep within their party.
All but one member of the congressional Jewish Caucus voted last week for the War Powers Act resolution, which would have required the administration to halt U.S. strikes against Iran until it received congressional approval.
Trump further complicated things when he described the U.S. strikes as “war” in his public remarks and proclaimed Sunday that “everything is on the table,” including possible ground troops, in destroying Iran’s capabilities to develop nuclear weapons and creating the conditions for regime change. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, said Monday that the mission’s goal is to dismantle the Iranian “terroristic regime’s” ability to develop and launch missiles that threaten its neighbors and the broader region by land and sea. Seven U.S. servicemembers have been killed in Iranian missile strikes.
On Monday afternoon, Trump said the war could end “pretty quickly,” but that the U.S. has not yet “won enough.”
Halie Soifer, the head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in an interview that members of Congress are exploring new ways to demand oversight as it becomes increasingly clear that the administration “lacks a coherent strategy in Iran.” She said lawmakers will have an opportunity to seek transparency from the White House about its objectives and the path forward in the conflict when the White House requests supplemental funding for the war.
The conflict is estimated to cost as much as $1 billion a day. The Pentagon is expected to request a defense supplemental package of up to $50 billion in the coming days.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hasn’t outlined his strategy in public. In his response to the failed war powers vote, he pointed fingers at Republicans enabling Trump. “It’s another sign that this administration is allergic to having a plan and thinking about the consequences in advance,” he said. A Senate official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal conversations, said Democrats have been quietly talking with Republicans about negotiating a path forward, as some in the GOP appear increasingly uneasy about the war.
At a press conference Monday, Trump again called Schumer, America’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, a “Palestinian” over his criticism of the war. “He’s gone from totally pro-Israel to totally pro-Palestinian,” Trump said. “He wants to protect the Iranian people, that are quite nasty.”
Senate Democrats have reportedly launched an effort to force top administration officials to testify in congressional hearings and are threatening to disrupt business if Republicans resist. Some members have already introduced five additional war powers resolutions seeking to halt U.S. strikes on Tehran as the situation unfolds.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who has at times crossed party lines in support of Israel and offered forceful support for action against the Iranian regime, both before and after the strikes began, introduced with a number of his colleagues a more moderate alternative that would order Trump to end the military campaign within 30 days unless Congress authorizes a formal declaration of war. Gottheimer ultimately voted in favor of the war powers measure last week.
Some Jewish Democrats took issue with that vote and want to move on. “Sadly, it is purely political games,” said Abe Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League.
Foxman noted that previous Democratic administrations conducted military operations without explicit congressional authorization. “Ninety-nine percent of Democrats are on record saying Iran is a terrorist state and cannot have nuclear weapons. So why this game?” he asked.
Recent polling in Israel suggests overwhelming support for the war effort across Israel’s political spectrum. Some 80% of Israelis support the military campaign, including 77% of voters who support opposition parties. A Jewish People Policy Institute survey of 692 American Jews with relatively strong ties to the Jewish community, Jewish identity or Israel found that 68% support the U.S. decision to go to war against Iran, while 26% oppose it.
Trump said Sunday that any decision on when to end the war with Iran would be made “mutually” with Netanyahu.
That gap between Israeli public opinion and Democratic sentiment in Washington has become a central talking point for Republicans, portraying it as evidence that the party is further drifting away from Israel ahead of the midterms.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome is melting Democrats’ brains,” said Sam Markstein, a spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition. “Democrats continue to play politics with the national security of the United States, and the American people will remember in November.”
Jewish Democrats say lack of oversight and strategy complicates support
Pro-Israel groups aligned with the Democratic Party pushed back, insisting their position reflects concern about strategy and constitutional authority rather than any sympathy for the Iranian regime.
Amanda Berman, head of the liberal feminist Zioness Movement, said the debate over Trump’s approach has been mischaracterized in a binary and partisan manner, with Republicans defending the unlimited use of force without congressional authorization and most Democrats portrayed as broadly opposing military action to curb Iran.
The narrative should be that this is about process, not outcome, Berman said. “Congress has to determine whether the war is in the best interest of the people of the United States, and I believe that there is a strong argument that it is in the best interest,” she said. “The issue is that there is a lack of clarity around the strategy and the goals.”
JDCA’s Soifer, who was a national security adviser to former Vice President Kamala Harris while she was in the Senate, said it “oversimplifies it to characterize our position as opposition to the war.”
“We support some of the short-term tactical gains that have been made, and we support Israel in its efforts to ensure its security,” Soifer said. “But no, we will not stop pressing the administration to fulfil its responsibility to explain to the American people how it’s going to achieve its objectives in this war, and what those objectives are.”
Brian Romick, president of Democratic Majority for Israel, said the party’s voters overwhelmingly “agree on the fundamental threat posed by Tehran. He pointed to the House resolution reaffirming the U.S. position that Iran remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism that passed last week with bipartisan support, 372 voting in favor and only 53 Democrats voting against.
“Ending Iran’s nuclear threat, ballistic missile program and ability to sponsor terrorism will unequivocally make the world safer,” Romick said. At the same time, he said, lawmakers are seeking clarity from the administration about its long-term strategy.
The pro-peace J Street group lobbied Congress to support the war powers resolution, saying it was opposed to any action against Iran without congressional oversight. Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street president, said at its annual conference in Washington, D.C. last week that their position applies to all administrations. “This idea of presidential ability to use the armed forces at their whim is a very dangerous one,” he said.
Ben-Ami also said J Street supports a diplomatic solution to end the war, even if it would come with strict terms set by Trump. “The right way to get out of this will be through some form of diplomatic agreement,” he said.
The post Jewish Democrats press for oversight as Trump’s Iran war rages on appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump urges Iran to make a deal after Iran fires missiles at Israel for first time in 2 months
(JTA) — Iran fired multiple barrages of missiles toward northern Israel on Sunday night local time, in the first direct fire from Iran on Israel since early April.
No one was immediately reported injured in the barrages, according to Israeli media, and the Israeli military said it shot down all the missiles aimed at the country on Sunday night.
The attack came hours after a stabbing attack by an Israeli Arab on Jews in central Israel killed one person and left several others injured.
The Iran salvo added to the turmoil for Israelis living in the north, who have been under constant fire from Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, and upsetting an uneasy quiet in the rest of the country. Schools across Israel will be closed on Monday.
Iranian officials said the barrage was a response to Israel’s strike earlier Sunday on a Hezbollah installation in the suburbs of Beirut, which the Israeli army said targeted a command center used to direct attacks on its troops.
Hezbollah last week rejected a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal that would have halted Israeli strikes in Beirut, saying that it could not abide by terms that would have required it to exit southern Lebanon.
During a five-week war that Israel and the United States initiated against Iran on Feb. 28, at least two dozen Israelis were killed when Iran fired hundreds of missiles at the country in near-daily barrages. Active hostilities involving Israel ended when U.S. President Donald Trump initiated a ceasefire on April 8. He and Iran have not yet agreed to terms that would permanently end the war.
Trump said he was “not happy about” Israel’s strike in Beirut and signaled that he did not see Iranian barrage as an impediment to a future deal.
“It’s certainly not going to help negotiations,” he told Fox News. “We’re very close. I would say an agreement would be signed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of this coming week. And now this takes place.”
Addressing Iran directly, Trump said, “You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough. Get back to the table and make a deal.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond publicly to the Iranian attack on Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Maine Democrats are poised to nominate Graham Platner, as Jewish Democrats withhold support
Maine Democrats are poised to nominate Graham Platner on Tuesday to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins in one of the most important Senate races this year. But a series of recent domestic violence allegations and controversies surrounding Platner could become a major political problem for the party in its effort to regain control of the Senate.
The controversy extends beyond questions about electability. Jewish Democratic organizations have withheld support from Platner over his past Nazi-linked tattoo, criticism of Israel and rhetoric that some Jewish leaders view as troubling, even as top national Democrats rally behind his candidacy.
The primary was effectively decided weeks ago when former Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign after lagging in polls and struggling to raise money. Mills never formally withdrew from the ballot, leaving open the possibility that some Democrats will use Tuesday’s primary as a protest vote against Platner
The dilemma facing Democrats is unusually stark.
Maine, considered a purple state, is widely viewed as one of the party’s clearest opportunities to flip a Republican-held Senate seat. Collins, 73, is running for a sixth term, though critics argue her image as a political moderate has diminished in recent years. In her last reelection campaign in 2020, Collins defeated her Democratic challenger 51-42. Sara Gideon, who is married to a Jewish lawyer, ran a competitive race and drew support from Maine’s estimated 15,000 Jewish voters and outside Jewish Democratic groups.
The 41-year-old Platner, an oyster farmer and former Marine, appeared to be the kind of insurgent candidate Democrats dream about. He led Mills by a significant margin and consistently ran ahead of Collins in public polling.
But the past two weeks have left Democrats struggling with his candidacy.
Reports about explicit messages sent to women while married and allegations from former partners describing threatening and troubling behavior, along with scrutiny of past online posts, put the Platner campaign on defense.
For Jewish voters, Platner’s rise and the party’s embrace of him were already hard to swallow. Platner faced backlash last year after acknowledging that a black skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest resembled a Nazi symbol. He has since covered it up. In past posts on Reddit, Platner defended a man with a Nazi SS lightning bolt tattoo who impersonated a federal officer at a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas in 2020.
A New York Times story last week cited an ex-girlfriend who said Platner knew for years that the tattoo on his chest was associated with Nazi imagery, an allegation he has forcefully denied.
Also troubling to Jewish Democrats, Platner has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and suggested the U.S. should cut off all aid to Israel. Last week, Platner accused Collins of taking money from AIPAC and being “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly.”
Halie Soifer, head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in an April interview that her group was not prepared to back Platner. JDCA had endorsed Mills in the primary before she suspended her campaign. On Sunday, Soifer said the group continues to stand by its endorsement of Mills, signaling that voters who remain uneasy about Platner still have the option of casting a vote for the former governor, whose name remains on the ballot.
“If he were running in Jersey, he’d either be thrown off the ballot or buried under the Meadowlands,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat from New Jersey, said on Friday.
Top Democratic strategists told Politico that Platner could face pressure to drop out of the race if Mills receives a significant amount of votes.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S., has so far continued to show support for Platner. After meeting with Platner last week in Washington, D.C., Schumer told reporters that defeating Collins remains a top priority for Democrats seeking to reclaim power in the Senate.
The likely result is a question Democrats increasingly cannot avoid: If Platner wins Tuesday as expected, how much longer can national Democrats continue treating him as their standard-bearer and excuse conduct they would condemn in a Republican candidate? Jewish Democratic organizations, having already distanced themselves from Platner, will also have to decide how to respond if he becomes the party’s nominee, as other nominees are also coming under scrutiny for past remarks and associations with antisemitic influencers.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in an interview Sunday on Fox News, was asked whether he’s concerned that his party “has an antisemitism problem,” citing Platner’s rhetoric and that of other Democratic candidates.
Platner is “going to have to speak for himself, and that’s what any candidate, particularly in a high-profile race, is going to be called upon to do,” Jeffries said. He added that the effort to crush antisemitism is an “American issue” and shouldn’t be a partisan issue. “It can’t be a red or blue issue. It’s a red, white, and blue issue.”
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Some Jewish Republicans say Tucker Carlson is no longer a threat. Others worry he’ll run for president.
(JTA) — At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual gala last November, much of the discussion centered around right-wing antisemitism. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz warned that there was “an existential crisis in our party” as figures such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes built their online audiences, while right-wing firebrand Rep. Randy Fine of Florida slammed Carlson as an antisemite.
At the RJC’s “America 250” gala six months later, the mood was cheerier, and the cautionary words gave way to declarations that emerging antisemitism on the right was being dealt with properly.
Fine reminded the audience at the RJC event held in Manhattan on Sunday that in his speech to the RJC in November, he’d called Carlson “the most dangerous antisemite in America.” Now, he said, “I don’t know that that’s true anymore.”
Fine and other Republicans at the RJC gala told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that enough Republicans had spoken out against Carlson – most significantly, President Donald Trump – and his ilk to damage their image and dampen the threat they might pose. They also pointed to major GOP critics of Israel who had lost their seats in recent months.
But others have warned that it’s a mistake to celebrate too soon, or think Carlson’s star has really faded, especially amid speculation that he might launch a presidential run as a Republican.
Fine told JTA in a text that he now believes the country’s “most dangerous antisemite” is Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s anti-Zionist mayor. In contrast, he said, Carlson’s impact had only plummeted in the past half-year.
“I think that brand has been destroyed [in] the last six months,” he wrote, attributing the change to politicians like himself calling Carlson out, as well as “the damage he has done to himself.”
A number of speakers at the RJC who lauded Republicans’ response to antisemitism in the party also pointed to the recent primary defeat of outspoken Israel critic Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie. Brooks said to loud applause that the group spent $5 million in that race, and called the effort “a fight worth having and a victory worth celebrating.”
Speakers also recounted the resignation from Congress of Marjorie Taylor Greene in January, maintaining that the Republican Party is squashing its anti-Israel voices, while the Democratic Party is electing them.
“Being anti-Israel in today’s Republican Party is not — unlike the Democratic Party — a path to success,” said RJC CEO Matt Brooks during his remarks. Brooks later told JTA that Carlson, Owens and Fuentes’ “influence and credibility is less than it’s ever been” and that “they don’t represent” the mainstream of the MAGA movement.
But the Anti-Defamation League warned that it would be a mistake not to see the audience and impact of Carlson in particular as worthy of continued concern.
Oren Segal, the ADL’s vice president of counterextremism and intelligence, said in an interview with JTA that his organization’s biggest worry regarding Carlson is “not merely his relationship with any conservative or elected officials” but also the “normalization” of his views.
Segal pointed to the accusation that an Israeli attack on an American spy ship during the 1967 Six-Day War was intentional — used by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Jewish state cannot be trusted — despite U.S. investigations determining that it was a mistake.
“No one’s been a bigger boon to the USS Liberty Conspiracy of late than Tucker Carlson,” he said.
Segal added that it would be “absurd” to count out anyone as a potential presidential contender, while several political observers have speculated that Carlson may be weighing a run.
New York University professor Scott Galloway recently said on his New York Magazine podcast “Pivot” that the former Fox News host could be a serious contender. There is an “enormous lane,” he assessed, for a candidate who, like Carlson, has “very conservative values, an enormous media platform, an enormous army of acolytes that he could weaponize right away, and is anti-Trump and anti-the war on Iran.”
Some of Carlson’s allies are gunning for a campaign. Speaking Thursday on Russian state television during a trip to St. Petersburg, Owens said she personally did not plan to run for office but said Carlson would be a great candidate for president.
“I would love for him to run,” she said, adding, “I would gratefully get behind someone like Tucker Carlson.”
Back in March, TV host Piers Morgan asked Carlson whether he has White House ambitions. Carlson said that politics is “not what I do,” adding, “The whole idea of, ‘I’ve been a successful cable news host, I should be president!’ — that whole way of thinking is disgusting to me.”
Asked about the possibility of Carlson running for president, Brooks told JTA in a statement that the RJC would continue to push back against Carlson and similar anti-Israel figures.
“There is only one party where American Jews can be proudly pro-Israel, and it is the Republican Party — and those who imperil that will have to come through the RJC first,” Brooks said.
Others who attended Sunday’s RJC gathering felt the possibility of a Carlson candidacy was overblown. Shabbos Kestenbaum, a prominent Jewish conservative activist who sued Harvard University over alleged antisemitism, dismissed concerns that Carlson could be a serious presidential candidate.
In an interview, he pointed out that Carlson’s support of Massie and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Casey Putsch did not yield electoral success. Putsch, who has a history of dog whistling to neo-Nazis, received 17.5% of the vote in Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial primary. Unlike Massie, Carlson did not issue an endorsement for Putsch, but he did host Putsch on his podcast last year.
“His endorsements mean absolutely nothing, and outside of the ‘Podcastistan’ universe, his words carry very little weight,” Kestenbaum said of Carlson.
Brooks said in an interview with JTA that he feels “very pleased” with how the party has responded to voices like Carlson’s. President Donald Trump has publicly cast Carlson aside since his former ally sharpened his objections to the administration’s war in Iran.
“It’s been marginalized,” Brooks said of the party’s anti-Israel wing. “They tried to hijack the term MAGA. Groups like ours, but equally important, the president, has made it clear they are not MAGA.”
Asked about Vice President JD Vance, who has not offered a condemnation of Carlson to some Jewish Republicans’ chagrin, Brooks said, “When you have the president speaking, that’s the voice that matters right now.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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