Uncategorized
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.
Uncategorized
Graham Platner drops out of Maine Senate race, citing push to ‘end the genocide’ in parting message
(JTA) — Maine Democrat Graham Platner announced Wednesday evening that he will drop out of the U.S. Senate race following new allegations that he had committed sexual assault.
“We believe that for the movement to continue, it can’t be me, and for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” he said.
Platner’s withdrawal came two days after Politico reported that a former girlfriend had accused him of entering her home uninvited about five years ago and forcing her to have sex with him.
“All we were asking for was healthcare, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas,” Platner said in a Facebook address announcing his exit. He denied the allegations against him in the address, adding that a “corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury and executioner.”
The allegations were the latest in a series of controversies that have hit Platner’s campaign, including his since-covered-up Nazi tattoo, unearthed Reddit posts and other reports about his behavior toward women.
Platner, who won his Democratic primary in June on an anti-Israel progressive platform, denied the fresh allegations, telling Politico that “any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.”
But the report prompted a rapid collapse in support for Platner among Democratic leaders, progressive allies and organizations that had backed his bid to beat GOP Sen. Susan Collins. It also sparked a scramble among Maine Democrats to find a different nominee ahead of the July 27 deadline for a replacement to appear on the ballot.
On Wednesday, the Maine Democratic Party announced that they had voted to hold a nominating convention to fill Platner’s vacancy.
“There is an unprecedented amount of energy and enthusiasm among Maine Democrats, driven in part by many of the dedicated volunteers and supporters who were inspired by Graham Platner’s campaign,” the party said in a statement. “We look forward to coming together and harnessing that energy around our new nominee as we work to defeat Susan Collins in November.”
The state Democratic Party leadership called on Platner to withdraw as the Democratic nominee on Monday, adding that the party needed to “refocus this campaign” on the fight against GOP Sen. Susan Collins. The seat is key to Democratic hopes of taking back the Senate.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of Platner’s most high-profile supporters, as well as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also called for Platner to step aside on Tuesday.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who initially backed Platner’s opponent before she dropped out, had said in a joint statement with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee “will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.”
The post Graham Platner drops out of Maine Senate race, citing push to ‘end the genocide’ in parting message appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Rahm Emanuel: Democrats who support Israel can still lead the party to the White House
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Pausing as he looked out at the packed hall at Tel Aviv University, Rahm Emanuel offered his audience a warning about what he was about to say.
“Hold your applause, because you may not like this,” he said, before laying out his proposal for U.S. sanctions targeting Israelis who attack Palestinian civilians and property, Israeli officials who voice support for that violence, and companies and banks that support “illegal settlements.”
The crowd applauded anyway — three separate times.
Under a 2017 law, Israel bars foreign nationals who publicly call for boycotts of Israel or its settlements from entering the country. Emanuel issued his call for sanctions from a stage in Tel Aviv, a measure of how far Democratic politics on Israel have shifted since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Widely viewed as a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, Emanuel, a former congressman, White House chief of staff, Chicago mayor and U.S. ambassador to Japan, and one of the most prominent Jewish figures in American politics, arrived in Israel on Sunday. His speech Wednesday afternoon, billed as “An Honest Conversation: The U.S.-Israel Relationship, Where It Stands Today and The Road Ahead,” was the keynote of the visit, and was meant to signal the need for a “fundamentally new and different approach” to the U.S.-Israel alliance, as he put it.
Whether Emanuel’s critique will land with the Israeli establishment, or with the ruling coalition, remains to be seen. Emanuel made a point of avoiding Israel’s elected officials during his visit, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he did not want to interfere with elections set for the fall. He did meet with President Isaac Herzog, who is appointed by the government, as well as visit hospitals in Tel Aviv and Nablus that partner with each other.
But it was clear that it was resonating with attendees. Moti Porath told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he believed Emanuel correctly diagnosed the ailment at the heart of the Israeli government, a leader who has become an outcast abroad but remains too skilled a politician to easily dislodge.
Porath, who splits his time between Newton, Massachusetts, and Tel Aviv, and who attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the same time as Netanyahu, said he recognizes the prime minister as a singularly talented political operator. “He’s a fantastic politician,” Porath said. “Maybe he’s a manipulator.”
To the attendees who spoke with JTA, Emanuel’s message was not anti-Israel but pro-Israel, in Porath’s telling, what a good friend is obligated to do when the other is acting out of line. Emanuel put it similarly from the stage, “True friends tell each other the truth.”
Porath said he hopes the United States and Israel can once again find “a common political vision,” but that doing so will require tough love from America’s next president.
The event was hosted by Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of the United States and moderated by its founding director, Yoav Fromer, alongside Yael Sternhell, the professor who heads the university’s American studies program. Organizers solicited questions from students in advance and said more than 100 were submitted.
But with a university audience likely to skew liberal, attendee Yoam Barash said the program would have benefited from a right-wing voice to push back on Emanuel’s comments, since most Israeli voters lean right. A February poll by the Midgam Institute for Israel’s Channel 12 news found 68% of veteran voters and 75% of those voting for the first time identify as right-wing. “Why didn’t they bring somebody from the right?” Barash asked.
Barash is the uncle of Daniel Barash, a managing director at the public affairs firm SKDK who helped organize the event He attended with Hannah Winkler, a friend from his army days and now a doctor in the Tel Aviv area. She said she pins her hope not on the U.S.-Israel alliance but on a left-wing victory in the upcoming elections. “Without that, I have no hope,” she said.
Told that some attendees had wanted a more politically diverse lineup, Fromer defended the format. “This is academia,” he said. “The goals here are very different than they would be on a political panel.”
At the same time, Fromer echoed the attendees’ view that Emanuel’s message was that of a friend rather than an adversary. “To say to someone, look, I’m trying to save you, if you don’t change your behavior, you’re going to self-destruct — that’s someone who cares,” he said.
The stakes, in his telling, are high for Israel and for the university. “Israelis have become pariahs. We used to be admired, the most admired,” he said, echoing Emanuel’s own warning from the stage that Israel’s leadership has turned it into a “territorial pariah.”
The damage is not merely reputational, he argued. “It’s not just feeling bad. It has practical implications,” he said, speculating about investment and capital that will stop flowing, students and tourists who will stop coming, Israelis who will lose their jobs.
During the anti-Israel protests that swept U.S. campuses in 2023 and 2024, ties with Israeli universities, including Tel Aviv University, were frequent targets of divestment demands. Emanuel himself warned in his speech that Israel’s scientists face exclusion from international research networks and that its artists and academics are being shut out of exhibits and conferences.
Inside the hall, at least, the message was received. “Most of the people in this room are quite sympathetic to what you have to say,” Barash told Emanuel on stage. “That is not the case across Israel.”
The post Rahm Emanuel: Democrats who support Israel can still lead the party to the White House appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Synagogue targeted by picketers inspires Ann Arbor ordinance to protect houses of worship
Ann Arbor, Michigan has become the latest city to pass legislation aimed at protecting houses of worship from protests, echoing similar policies passed by New York and proposed by California earlier this year.
But while New York and California introduced such legislation in response to occasional anti-Israel protests outside synagogues, Ann Arbor has been home to the persistent and brazen protest of a Holocaust denier who shows up to picket the same congregation every week on Shabbat.
While synagogue leaders are moved by the city council’s gesture, they don’t expect the protests to end anytime soon.
“The significance of the resolution is that a city council in a highly progressive city had the bravery to call out the antisemitism of Jew haters,” said Rabbi Nadav Caine, the spiritual leader of Ann Arbor’s Beth Israel Congregation. And that’s no small thing.
For the past 23 years, a small group of protesters have gathered outside Beth Israel on Shabbat carrying signs with hateful slogans like “Jewish Power Corrupts,” “No More Holocaust Movies” and “Antisemitism is earned, never given.”
Partly in response to those decades of hateful demonstrations, the Ann Arbor City Council on Monday unanimously passed a resolution directing the city manager to develop a plan for protecting houses of worship during protests, which can include protest-free buffer zones.
Jerry Sorokin, executive director of Beth Israel, expressed gratitude for the city council’s sentiment — though he also believes the measures “won’t make any real difference.”
The protesters carry “incredibly offensive” signs, Sorokin said. But they also stay off synagogue property and don’t interfere with congregants trying to enter, he said, making it unlikely that a security perimeter would affect their demonstrations.
“They’ve found out exactly what the limits of their legal rights are in terms of what they can say, where they can say it, and how they can interact with the public, and they push it right to the limit without going over,” Sorokin said.
A court agreed. In 2019, a congregant and local Holocaust survivor lost a lawsuit against the Beth Israel protesters and the city of Ann Arbor, with a court concluding that the protesters were engaging in protected speech.
Buffer zones across the country
The measure in Ann Arbor reflects a broader national debate about balancing protesters’ free speech rights with worshippers’ ability to safely access religious services, as New York and California have also moved to enact buffer zones outside houses of worship.
In May, demonstrators outside Park East Synagogue in Manhattan chanted “We don’t want no Zionists here” and “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” outside an event promoting real estate sales in Israel and the West Bank. New York lawmakers approved a 50-foot security buffer around houses of worship proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul. Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani allowed a bill that requires the New York City Police to develop a plan for managing protests at houses of worship.
In Los Angeles, protesters targeting Wilshire Boulevard Temple for hosting speakers affiliated with the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems prompted California lawmakers to introduce a buffer-zone bill that would make it a crime to approach a person within 100 feet of a synagogue in order to hand out a leaflet, hold a sign, or “engage in oral protest.” First-time offenders would face up to six months in jail.
At the federal level, U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York introduced the SACRED Act, which would make it a federal crime to intimidate, obstruct or harass people within 100 feet of a house of worship.
But those proposals all face the same constitutional constraint: They can regulate how protests are conducted, but not the viewpoints being expressed. There’s no legal remedy to the offensive messages painted on placards and yelled at passing drivers, Sorokin said.
“I think what the city council did is laudable, and it is reassuring to us that they’re showing support for freedom of worship and for access to synagogues, churches, and mosques,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s going to change what goes on outside our building every Saturday.”
The post Synagogue targeted by picketers inspires Ann Arbor ordinance to protect houses of worship appeared first on The Forward.
