“As an adjudicated insurrectionist, Trump is an illegitimate president according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and therefore every official act as president will be illegitimate.”
–Mike Zonta, co-editor of OccupySF.net
The 14th Amendment states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Call your Congressperson and your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121
Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman raises her arms to thank her supporters at the end of her election night speech at Boomtown Brewery in Los Angeles. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
With just 115 days to campaign after a surprise entry, Councilmember Nithya Raman secured a spot in the Nov. 3 mayoral runoff against incumbent Karen Bass.
Raman relied on a ground game that targeted renters and younger voters, while painting Spencer Pratt as too radical for L.A.
Nithya Raman had 115 days to make her case to Los Angeles voters.
The City Council member made a surprise late entry into the mayor’s race, the last of the major candidates to file for the primary. That left little time for her to form a campaign team, build her name recognition and persuade voters that she would be the best choice to lead the city.
On Monday, the Associated Press called the race, concluding that Raman would have enough votes to make a Nov. 3 runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, the first-place finisher who secured her spot in the showdown last week.
Reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who was in second place on election night, saw his lead over Raman steadily erode as mail-in ballots postmarked as late as June 2 were counted.
On Monday, Raman widened her gap over Pratt to nearly 3 percentage points. Bass had 34.3% of the vote, compared with 28.6% for Raman and 25.8% for Pratt, the latest results showed.
Raman, in a statement, said she was “incredibly honored” by the results, and invited Angelenos who are “frustrated by the broken status quo” to join her campaign.
“For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them,” she said.
Raman led Pratt by 21,819 votes, 229,576 to 207,757, election officials reported Monday evening, with an estimated 148,100 votes countywide still outstanding.
Bass strategist Douglas Herman responded to Monday’s results by issuing a broadside against Raman.
“A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” he said in a statement.
Pratt didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Republican and onetime star of MTV’s “The Hills,” Pratt grabbed much of the national spotlight, appearing on “Fox & Friends” and chatting up podcaster Joe Rogan.
Raman spent her time crisscrossing the city, going to dozens of events and zeroing in on renters and younger voters — groups she viewed as her base. Her team also navigated the city’s complex matching funds program, which quickly secured $1.25 million in taxpayer money to power her campaign.
Raman attended nearly 100 community meet-and-greets, her political team said. Those included numerous sessions with restaurant owners, including one in Echo Park, a “Families for Nithya” event in South L.A. and a comedy show at Upright Citizens Brigade.
Pratt “made a lot of noise and did a lot of television and got a lot of social media amplification, while she was out actually campaigning, meeting with voters, canvassing,” said Mike Bonin, a progressive former City Council member who now runs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. “That matters.”
In the end, Raman accomplished two crucial goals: Make herself better known to Angelenos outside her Hollywood Hills-centered district, while framing Pratt as someone whose views were radically out of step with L.A. voters.
While Bass largely floated above the fray, Raman worked to amplify Pratt’s political views, linking them to President Trump and the far right. During a freewheeling debate on NBC4 Los Angeles, she said Pratt — who had been portraying the city as a dystopian hellscape — was offering a “MAGA Republican’s idea of what Los Angeles looks like.”
Raman’s team went much further on social media. In one video, the campaign excerpted Pratt’s interview with an ABC7 Los Angeles reporter, distorting his voice as he claimed that the city’s homeless residents are all drug addicts. That video cut back and forth between images of Pratt and footage of Trump.
In another video, Raman urged voters directly to keep Pratt from making the runoff. Using clips from his appearances on “The Alex Jones Show” — one where he questioned global warming, another where he discussed claims that 9/11 was an inside job — Raman portrayed Pratt as a far-right extremist.
“These are the politics that Spencer Pratt wants to bring to Los Angeles — hatred, fear, conspiracy theorizing, stupidity — the same thing that we’ve seen from the Trump administration,” Raman said. “If his campaign is allowed to continue for even a few more months … it’s going to make this city a lot more hateful and a lot more stupid.”
Pratt repeatedly sought to downplay his party registration, pointing out that the election is nonpartisan. He insisted that his campaign was aimed at Angelenos angry about how the city was being managed, as evidenced by disrepair of city streets and unchecked homeless encampments.
Still, Pratt limited his own appeal by going on Trump-friendly news outlets and doing “Trump performative stuff,” said Mike Murphy, a Los Angeles-based political strategist. Although that type of behavior grabbed attention on social media, it did not resonate with a significant percentage of L.A. voters, he said.
“There was a lot of hype, because he was different, loud and provocative,” said Murphy, a conservative who has advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and many other Republicans. “But a lot of the hype was on the internet, not in the city of Los Angeles voter rolls.”
If Raman was assailing Pratt on the right, she was also fending off an insurgent campaign from the left run by another member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Rev. Rae Huang.
Huang pitched herself as the true progressive in the race, saying Raman had drifted too close to the middle during her time on council.
Raman’s campaign attempted to get Huang to drop out just weeks before the election, saying such a move was needed to defeat Pratt. Huang declined and went public about those efforts.
Although the push to get Huang out of the race failed, the leftist’s campaign ended up falling flat, securing less than 3% of the vote in the primary.
Leslie Chang, a Raman supporter and co-chair of DSA’s L.A. chapter, said Raman had a sophisticated field operation to reach voters directly, while also relying on influencers and actors on social media to boost her name recognition.
Chang also said DSA’s voter guide, which recommended Raman, played a part in winning over progressive voters who may have considered Huang.
The voter guide recommended Raman, while not formally endorsing her, and questioned Huang’s experience in politics, saying it raised “significant questions on on how she plans to accomplish the specifics of such an ambitious agenda.”
One of the major differences between Huang and Raman’s campaigns was the amount of cash each had on hand to reach out to voters.
Huang’s campaign tried and ultimately failed to receive matching funds from the city, whereas Raman’s campaign unlocked the maximum allowed, $1.25 million.
Raman’s campaign also received contributions from writers and comedians who have made up the council member’s donation base in her previous elections. Her husband, Vali Chandrasekaran, is a prominent television writer.
Raman’s campaign expenditures included $300,000 to Middle Seat, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting business that also worked on the independent expenditure group supporting Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York City.
The company helped the Raman campaign with digital advertising.
While Pratt ran as an outsider, critiquing Bass over her handling of the 2025 Palisades fire and the homelessness crisis, Raman pursued a different lane, saying Angelenos want a well-run city — one where potholes and streetlights are repaired in a timely manner. She also argued that City Hall makes decisions on favors and political expedience, not what’s best for the public.
Her campaign’s slogan reflected that.
During an early conversation with staffers and volunteers, conducted in a back house behind Raman’s Silver Lake home, she said: “We’re trying to build a city that works.”
“Those of us in the room at the time said, ‘That’s it. That’s the slogan for the campaign,’” said Adam Conover, a comedian who volunteered for Raman.
Days later, the campaign was printing the slogan on lawn signs and using it on social media.
Noah Goldberg covers Los Angeles City Hall for the Los Angeles Times. He previously worked on its breaking news team and has also written an array of offbeat enterprise stories. Before joining The Times in 2022, Goldberg worked in New York City as the Brooklyn courts reporter for the New York Daily News and as the criminal justice reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle. He graduated from Vassar College.
From New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author Evan Osnos comes a timely and provocative collection of essays exploring American oligarchy and the culture of excess, providing a wry, unfiltered look at how the ultra-rich shape—and sometimes warp—our social and political landscape.
The ultra-rich hold more of America’s wealth than they did in the heyday of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. Here, Evan Osnos’s incisive reportage yields an unforgettable portrait of the tactics and obsessions driving this new Gilded Age, in which superyachts, luxury bunkers, elite tax dodges, and a torrent of political donations bespeak staggering disparities of wealth and power.
With deft storytelling and meticulous reporting, this is a book about the indulgences, incentives, and psychological distortions that define our economic age. In each essay, Osnos delves into a world that is rarely visible, from the outrageous to the fabulous to the a private wealth manager who broke with members of an American dynasty and spilled their secrets; the pop stars who perform at lavish parties for thirteen-year-olds; the status anxieties that spill out of marinas in Monaco and Palm Beach like real-world episodes of Succession and The White Lotus; the ethos behind the largest Ponzi scheme in Hollywood history; the confessions of disgraced titans in a “white-collar support group.” A celebrated political reporter, Osnos delves into the unprecedented Washington influence of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, drawing on in-depth interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and other billionaires, about their power and the explosive backlash it stirs.
Originally published in The New Yorker, these essays have been revised and expanded to deliver an unflinching portrait of raw ambition, unimaginable fortune, and the rise of America’s modern oligarchy. Osnos’s essays are a wake-up call—a case against complacency in the face of unchecked excess, as the choices of the ultra-rich ripple through our lives. Entertaining, unsettling, and eye-opening, The Haves and the Have-Yachts couldn’t be more relevant to today’s world.
Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008. He is a correspondent in Washington, D.C. who writes about politics and foreign affairs. He is the author of “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, May 2014). Based on eight years of living in Beijing, the book traces the rise of the individual in China, and the clash between aspiration and authoritarianism. He was the China Correspondent at The New Yorker magazine from 2008 to 2013. He is a contributor to This American Life on public radio, and Frontline, the PBS series. Prior to The New Yorker, he worked as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He has received the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and a Mirror Award for profile-writing. Before his appointment in China, he worked in the Middle East, reporting mostly from Iraq.
The Tantura massacre occurred on May 22–23, 1948, when Israeli forces from the Alexandroni Brigade captured the Palestinian coastal village of Tantura. Following the village’s surrender, Israeli troops executed dozens to over 200 unarmed Palestinian men, burying them in mass graves believed to be beneath the current Tel Dor beach parking lot. [1, 2, 3]
The Event
Date: May 22–23, 1948 (during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War).
Location: Tantura, a Palestinian fishing village of roughly 1,500 residents, located about 35 kilometers south of Haifa.
Perpetrators: The 33rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade (part of the Haganah).
Casualties: Estimates range from “dozens” to over 200 fatalities. [1, 2, 3]
Historical Context & Aftermath
The Attack: Tantura was specifically targeted under Plan Dalet, the Haganah’s master plan for military control of Palestine. The village fell to Israeli forces a week after the declaration of the State of Israel. [1, 2, 3]
The Massacre: Survivors reported—and later investigations corroborated—that after combat operations ceased, disarmed Palestinian fighters and young men were systematically separated, tied up, and shot in groups. [1, 2, 3]
Expulsion & Destruction: Surviving women, children, and the elderly were expelled to the nearby village of Furaydis. Tantura was subsequently demolished, and the Israeli kibbutz and beach resort of Nahsholim was later established on its lands. [1, 2, 3]
Modern Controversy and Investigations
Teddy Katz’s Research: In the late 1990s, Israeli graduate student Teddy Katz collected extensive oral testimonies from both Palestinian survivors and Alexandroni Brigade veterans for a master’s thesis. His findings prompted veterans to sue him for libel. Facing immense pressure, Katz signed a retraction, though he later stated he did so under duress and maintained that the testimonies were accurate. [1, 2, 3]
The 2022 Documentary: The massacre gained renewed international and Israeli attention following the 2022 release of the documentary Tantura by Israeli director Alon Schwarz. The film featured archival audio of Alexandroni Brigade veterans confessing to the killings and confirming the presence of mass graves. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Forensic Investigation: In 2023, independent researchers at Forensic Architecture published a visual and spatial investigation that analyzed aerial photography, historical records, and survivor testimonies to reconstruct the events and pinpoint the probable locations of the mass graves. [1, 2, 3]
Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance in front of an ambulance being donated to China, 1939, Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) Collection. 1939 年，纽约华侨衣馆联合会在他们捐赠给中国的救护车前合影，美国华人博物馆（MOCA)
A sign states that a business accepts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in Gas City, Indiana on July 22, 2025.
(Photo by jetcityimage/iStock Editorial/Getty Images)
“This protects every Oregon family who depends on these programs to put food on the table,” said the state’s attorney general, who is among the 21 AGs behind the case.
A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked an attempt by the US Department of Agriculture to force state governments to comply with President Donald Trump’s positions on gender and immigration or lose out on billions of dollars in funding, including for food assistance.
The attorneys general of the District of Columbia and 20 Democrat-led states sued the department and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in March, arguing that “USDA has now thrown unconstitutional and unlawful roadblocks between the programs created by Congress and the states that rely on them, threatening critical nutrition support, vital agricultural research, and the safety of our national food chain and communities.”
Specifically, the Trump administration imposed “a vague set of funding conditions relating to USDA’s purported anti-discrimination ‘policies,’ ‘gender ideology,’ ‘fair athletic opportunities’ for women and girls, and immigration,” without specifying the policies or even confirming “that certification is limited to currently existing policies,” says the complaint, filed in the District of Massachusetts.
The March filing also makes the case that “even if USDA went back and cured its vagueness problem and conducted a reasoned analysis before taking final agency action, the challenged conditions would still be unlawful.”
While US District Judge Myong Joun has not explicitly agreed, the appointee of former President Joe Biden granted a preliminary injunction sought by the AGs and said he would issue a memorandum explaining his decision at a later date.
Welcoming the judge’s unexplained decision on social media, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield highlighted that the move safeguards funding for school lunches, emergency aid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
“This protects every Oregon family who depends on these programs to put food on the table,” Rayfield said. “The court rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to hold school lunches, WIC, and SNAP hostage to its political agenda. These are lifelines for 86,000 Oregon kids, working families, seniors, and rural communities—and they will remain protected.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James also celebrated that “we won a court order protecting billions of dollars in USDA funding as our lawsuit continues,” and pledged that “my office will keep fighting to protect New Yorkers and stop the federal government from punishing our state for refusing to bend.”
The other states involved in the case are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Collectively, according to the complaint, “’plaintiff states receive over $74 billion annually in funding from USDA.”
The judge’s decision came on the heels of four Democrats in the US House of Representatives voting with Republicans to approve legislation that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has estimated would strip modest fruit and vegetable benefits from “nearly 5.4 million toddlers, preschoolers, and pregnant and postpartum WIC participants.”
Already, since congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, at least hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost federal food assistance. Last month, Trump’s USDA chief suggested that some of them were receiving SNAP benefits fraudulently—without offering evidence—while others are “moving into the American dream and off of welfare.”
Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at CBPP, responded that “unless the Trump administration has redefined ‘the American dream’ to mean ‘losing the help your family needs to afford groceries because of federal cuts,’ I have some bad news for Secretary Rollins.”
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Mary Alice Pilafian wears a hat that reads, ‘Lock Him Up,’ as she joins with other protesters outside of the Trump National Doral golf resort urging congress to impeach President Donald Trump on December 17, 2019 in Doral, Florida.
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
As wild and crazy Trump becomes more of a political disaster for the GOP in November, Republicans will want to save their own political skins over Trump’s.
Several leaders of national progressive citizen groups are counseling delaying such a drive until after the election in anticipation of a Democratic Party victory in both the House and the Senate. This mirrors what the feeble Democratic Party leadership (Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer) are telling their increasingly restless rank and file in the House and Senate (see the April 11, 2026 article in the New York Times by Annie Karni, “Democrats Warm to Idea of Removing the President”).
Meanwhile, as Trump’s illegal and erratic daily behavior and executive dictates worsen the wrecking of our country, the present majority of Americans favor impeaching Trump and removing him from office is nearing 60 percent.
Consider the pluses for launching an Impeachment drive supported by the people focused on Capitol Hill and a Congress controlled by the Republicans, who are likely to block any vote or formal Committee hearings.
1. It is a great campaign issue – tying together in an authentic way – see Res.1155 – all of Trump’s vicious shredding of the people’s health, safety and economic benefits and constitutional freedoms. Majorities despise openly corrupt Trump, whose support in polls is slumping, but many voters also don’t trust or believe in the wavering Democratic Party, which can’t come up with a credible compact that addresses the needs of the people and a set of political commitments embodied in specific pending bills. A compact with voters should be convincingly advanced and emblazoned across the land.
H.Res.1155’s thirteen Impeachment Articles, introduced by Cong. John Larson (D-CT) and their connection to “kitchen-table necessities” must be highlighted in this year’s political campaigns.
The people want fighters for them who care for them in Washington, D.C., using the citizens’ delegated powers and tax revenues in the interest of the people, the families, and the children. “Impeachment” is our founding fathers’ word for “YOU’RE FIRED,” a phrase used by Tyrant Trump against millions of civil servants, contractors, and other people working to help make a better country.
Regardless of their political labels, just about all families want fair play, justice, protections, and opportunities where they live, work, and raise their children. Articles of Impeachment are constitutional-level MANDATES for a political party and candidates to run on, replacing insincere throw-away lines and bloviating rhetoric so despised by a disgusted populace.
2. Making Impeachment front and center educates and inspires people about how central this Constitution of ours is to their daily lives. The mission of our government is to “promote the general welfare.” Only Congress can spend your money, not the president. Only Congress can take us from peace to war, not the president. Only Congress can define the authority entrenched in the executive branch, not the president or six “Injustices” on the Supreme Court for life. Only Congress can tax or not tax, not the president wielding arbitrary tariffs, charging fees, or riddling the tax code with loopholes and escapes for the super-rich and powerful.
Only “We the People,” not “We the Corporations,” nor “We the Congress,” is in the Preamble to our Constitution, making us the fundamental sovereign power in our country.
3. A grassroots Impeachment movement – already petitions are circulating (see impeachtrumpagain.org) – signals deterrence if Trump, with his rabid, dangerous personality, is thinking of more major disruptions of the November elections. Foreshadowing his invoking the Insurrection Act to take over the gears of the states’ election machinery, the fevered Trump said in January, “…we shouldn’t even have an election” in November. This is subversion of our Republic, and the Constitution for which it stands, beyond the wildest imaginations of our historic overseas enemies.
The most promising reform movements are often sparked and strengthened by the perpetrating outlaws providing continual, incriminating evidence of their own lawlessness. That is the essence of the foul-mouthed, lying, violent, corrupt, delusional, egomaniacal Trump. (See the April 30, 2026 statement from medical professionals in the Congressional Record – “Medical Concerns About President Donald J. Trump and His Fitness For Office.” Remember, with Trump the worst is yet to come as he continues to double down. Even a conservative columnist for the Washington Post, military historian Max Boot, is fearful of what might come abroad from the zigzag actions of an impulsive, fact-deprived Trump with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
All this is to say that what the Democratic Party leadership thinks is prudent to delay until after the election is in reality a very risky position. They are barely in contention to recover the Senate, even with the advantage of having far fewer seats (12) up for election than do the Republicans (20).
The Democrats, who are comfortable taking big bucks from giant corporate PACs, should run WITH and FOR the people. The time for political posturing is over. If their “loser leaders” don’t step aside, they should at least free the rank and file, including the progressive primary winners, to show the way to landslide, by far, the worst GOP in history. That means, for starters, let a willing Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, have “shadow hearings” on Trump’s many ongoing impeachable offenses. Such a hearing would draw prominent witnesses and great media attention to further galvanize the people.
Since all Democrats on Capitol Hill, if asked, would say “Yes,” Trump should be impeached, but the Party’s upper echelons say taking it to a vote can’t go anywhere so long as the GOP runs Congress. The push for Impeachment doesn’t have to reach a vote. As wild and crazy Trump becomes more of a political disaster for the GOP in November, Republicans will want to save their own political skins over Trump’s.
That’s what happened with defiant Nixon in 1974, after the one-time Watergate scandal, when the GOP jumped ship and forced his resignation. Trump’s crimes are far worse than Nixon’s and intensifying every day. As in 1974, it is before the elections when the GOP feels more insecure. Today Republican members of Congress know their majority is at risk.
In raw politics, sometimes it doesn’t take a vote. It just takes pressure from a President’s Congressional base and, for Tiring Trump, the public humiliation that comes with abandonment.
In addition to all its collateral benefits, an impeachment drive is a road to Trump’s resignation.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012). His new book is, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All” (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).
A supporter of Israel counterprotests as Palestine solidarity activists take part in a demonstration on Nakba Day on May 15, 2026, in New York City. Photo: Adam Gray/Getty Images
Adam Johnson is co-host of the Citations Needed podcast and author of “How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza,” which is available now.
As Israel’s standing in the U.S., and among liberals in particular, continues to crater, the mainstream American media is vaguely taking notice. But when they report on this increasingly potent political dynamic, national publications continue to frame it as a tension among Democratic voters — rather than a tension between Democratic voters and their party leadership.
“A Democrat’s Dodge on AIPAC Points to the Party’s Tensions Over Israel,” read one recent New York Times headline. “Tensions over pro-Israel lobbying group highlight rifts in Democratic primaries,” read another Reuters headline. “Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza has driven a significant, deeper-than-ever divide among Democrats,” NBC News reported last week. “The U.S.-Israel alliance has rapidly gone from a point of bipartisan consensus to a wedge issue dividing both parties,” opined the Washington Post.
All of those were just last month, but the false equivocation goes back further. “The Democratic primary electorate,” The Hill informed readers in March, “is increasingly divided over Israel.” “Israel tensions threaten Dems’ midterm plans,” Politico announced in a January headline, which continued in the piece: “Just as Democrats are finding their footing by focusing on affordability, their differences on Israel are threatening to tear them apart.” “New York City’s annual Israel Day Parade has long been considered a bipartisan tradition — but this year, the event is becoming a symbol of the growing divide within the Democratic Party over Israel,” Sinclair’s National News Desk reported last week.
There’s only one problem with the “tensions,” “divided,” and “wedge issue” framing: It is not supported by any polls. The “divide,” such as it is, is increasingly not among Democrats or even liberals; it is between the supermajority of Democratic Party voters and party leadership. While party leaders such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and big Democratic donors, are pro-Israel, actual Democratic voters have moved on from Israel with remarkable speed and consistency. Let’s take a look at the polling:
According to an August 2025 Quinnipiac poll, 77 percent of Democrats think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza versus 11 percent who say it is not.
According to a May 2026 New York Times/Siena poll, 74 percent of Democrats oppose “providing additional economic and military support to Israel,” while 20 percent support doing so.
According to a June 2026 Institute for Global Affairs/YouGov poll, 67 percent of Democrats think the U.S. relationship with Israel does more to hurt the U.S. than help it, and only 5 percent think it does more to help than hurt.
According to a May 2026 NBC News poll, 67 percent of Democrats now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis (17 percent). Just 13 percent of Democrats have a positive view of Israel, and 57 percent, a majority, have a negative view.
To contextualize that 13 percent — which is down from 34 percent of Democrats who said they viewed Israel positively back in 2023 — it’s even lower than the number of Democrats who say they support traditional right-wing stances, such as:
Allowing teachers to lead children in Christian prayers in public schools (18 percent, Pew 2024)
Making all abortions illegal (14 percent, Pew 2024)
Not mandating MMR vaccines in schools (14 percent, Pew 2025)
The media justifiably treats all of these issues as Republican or conservative-coded views. Yet support for Israel is still treated as a mainstream, if contested, liberal value.
In reality, it’s simply not: It’s overwhelmingly a Republican, right-wing view not backed by a supermajority of Democrats. So why has this consistently misleading narrative in U.S. media been allowed to persist?
The Israel “divide,” such as it is, is increasingly not among Democrats or even liberals; it is between the supermajority of Democratic Party voters and party leadership.
There’s an obvious tension over Israel and the U.S. role in supporting it, which has been writ large in high-profile battles, from Democratic Senate campaigns to debates over the Democrats’ platform. The media has to cover that tension, but describing it more accurately — as a divide between party elites and the rank and file — is an awkward narrative, one that requires a deeper class and material analysis.
So instead, it’s just indexed under the misleading and generic label of “party divisions.” Naturally, Israel is not a 100–0 issue in favor of Palestine among voters, but no issue is that one-sided. A minority of Democrats support all kinds of relatively fringe, right-wing opinions. Here are some of them compared alongside the issue of Israel–Palestine. The percentage of Democrats who:
Support sending military aid to Israel: 20 percent
Believe teachers should be allowed to lead children in Christian prayers in public schools: 18 percent
Believe Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza: 11 percent
Believe there is solid evidence of “widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election”: 10 percent
Polls are not a perfect snapshot of political beliefs and can be somewhat contradictory (a profile of the 2 percent of Democrats who think Israel is committing genocide and have a positive view of the country would make an interesting read). But polls over the past three years, and the last few months in particular, show a very clear trend that support for Israel is now an increasingly fringe belief among Democrats. It’s worth emphasizing that the issue of Democratic voters souring on Israel is not particularly sectarian, either, with Jewish Democrats, especially those under the age of 35, steadily abandoning Israel. A Washington Post poll from October found that among Jewish Americans ages 18 to 34, only 36 percent claimed to have an “emotional attached to Israel,” and half agree with the broad liberal consensus that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
But if watching how Democratic leadership and the party’s funders continue to back Israel to the hilt was your only barometer, you might assume there’s been no shift in public sentiment at all.
The dynamic is playing out over efforts to push a war powers resolution to end U.S. support for Israel’s bombing and occupation in Lebanon. On Wednesday, Axios, citing “numerous” anonymous “House Democrats” and “aides,” attempted to paint a Rep. Rashida Tlaib-led bill to end U.S. support as a provocation dividing Democrats. “An impending House vote to constrain the Trump administration from joining Israel’s war in Lebanon has some Democrats fuming that one of their own members is forcing them to take an agonizing vote,” reporter Andrew Solender lamented.
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But what Solender fails to note is that Tlaib’s bill is overwhelmingly the majoritarian position among Democrats. A recent Arab American Institute commissioned poll found that 62 percent of Democrats “believe the U.S. should take more steps to pressure Israel to stop bombing and leave southern Lebanon,” and only 17 percent disagree. The substance of Tlaib’s bill is the Democratic voter position by almost 4 to 1. The tension in this story, such as it is, is between anonymous “Democratic leadership” and rank-and-file Democrats. And we know this because every single source in the Axios article opposing the war powers resolution had to be anonymous, while everyone supporting it proudly put their name on their quotes. What does this tell us about how popular support for Israel’s boundless violence in the Levant is?
Democratic leadership, like its Big Donor base, is entirely out of sync with the current sentiment within the party.
Meanwhile, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other majority pro-Israel groups are well aware of the existential shift that’s underway and have responded by intervening in primaries at an unprecedented clip. Already in this midterm cycle, as Donald Shaw at Sludge reported, “four major pro-Israel committees — AIPAC’s PAC, its outside spending arm United Democracy Project (UDP), the closely aligned Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) super PAC, and the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Victory Fund — have poured nearly $50 million into congressional races nationwide.” Receiving money from AIPAC has become politically toxic for Democrats, so much so that the lobbying group is deploying an elaborate web of shell organizations to funnel money to their preferred candidates.
The two most powerful Democrats in the country, Jeffries and Schumer, are prominent and consistent backers of Israel, despite their party’s sizable shift. Jeffries was the largest recipient of pro-Israel money in the House last election cycle out of 435 voting members. And Schumer, who has explicitly said his “job” is to “keep the left pro-Israel,” spent last weekend marching in a pro-Israel parade in New York City alongside war criminals and self-identified “fascists.” Leadership, like its Big Donor base, is entirely out of sync with the current sentiment within the party.
It’s not just pro-Israel donors driving this “wedge.” Backing Israel and the endless arming of its military has been, and continues to be, a boondoggle for the broader U.S. military–industrial complex that captures the Washington consensus. Of the some $22 billion in military aid that Israel has received since October 7, 2023, roughly 75 percent has gone to U.S. arms companies that themselves employ an army of lobbyists and think tank boosters to promote Israel and its sprawling, seemingly never-ending expansionism and mass violence.
Despite 77 percent of Democratic voters saying Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, only 8.5 percent of Democrats in Congress have. Despite Democratic voters sympathizing more with Palestine than Israel at a ratio of 4 to 1, the number of Democrats in Congress who put the rights of Palestinians ahead of the interests of Israel could likely be counted on one hand. How long will our media continue to act like there is meaningful disagreement among Democrats, as such,when — among the rank and file — it’s an issue as settled as prayer in public schools, abortion, and climate change?
As the gap between the will of Democratic voters and its leadership grows more and more apparent, our media will continue to vaguely acknowledge this “division” without identifying the actual source of it. It’s not between the voters themselves, whose opinions are measurable and consistent, but between the voters and the leaders they elected — in theory — to represent their interests.
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California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer speaks during an election night event, Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in San Francisco. Credit: Noah Berger/AP Photo
Let’s begin with California. Though Republican Steve Hilton is currently leading in the jungle primary for the governor’s race, with Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer running second and third, there are still millions of late ballots to be counted. It remains a possibility that the final two in the November election will be Becerra and Steyer.
The late votes are likely to be strongly Democratic and could push Steyer into the top two. That’s because Democrats held their ballots until the last minute to vote strategically, and polls showed Steyer with momentum in the final week.
That would set up a classic center-vs.-left contest for governor. Steyer, though a self-funded billionaire, is by far the most progressive gubernatorial candidate anywhere in the country. Becerra rose in the polls because of massive corporate funding and an organized effort from the state political machine, which meandered among candidates before settling on Becerra once Eric Swalwell’s campaign imploded. An all-Democrat final would also be lethal for Republican down-ballot candidates and a boost to the billionaire wealth tax that will be on the ballot in November.
Down-ballot, progressives had an interesting night. Elsewhere in California, in the Central Valley seat currently held by Republican David Valadao, progressive Randy Villegas is ahead of centrist Democratic rival Jasmeet Bains to take on Valadao in the November final. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who has had a rough time governing California’s largest city, symbolized by but not limited to the Pacific Palisades fire, survived, but she will face one of two tough challengers in the November final. Whether that challenge comes from the right or the left remains to be seen.
And in Nancy Pelosi’s former seat in San Francisco, the primary contest featured progressives of different stripes. San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan and state Sen. Scott Wiener advanced to the final, Chan with the help of Pelosi’s endorsement. Saikat Chakrabarti, a former chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and onetime tech executive, spent $10 million of his own money but lagged far behind, criticized as a carpetbagger.
In other notable races, Sam Forstag, a union leader and smokejumper, is winning the primary in a possible swing seat in Montana. AOC stumped for him on the final weekend.
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And Adam Hamawy, a combat surgeon who worked in Gaza, won the primary in a safe New Jersey seat. Hamawy was attacked by the Israel lobby for his forthright defense of the rights of Palestinians, but to no avail.
Part of the backstory there is the crushing defeat of rival candidate Sue Altman. She is not quite as progressive as Hamawy on the issues but is a hero nonetheless for having led the successful fight to end the “county line” system in New Jersey, which was the basis of the power of notorious bosses like South Jersey power broker George Norcross. The reform opened up New Jersey politics. Altman finished a distant sixth, but her actions opened up the election for someone like Hamawy.
On the Republican side, President Trump suffered a defeat when his preferred candidate for Iowa governor, Randy Feenstra, was narrowly defeated by business executive Zach Lahn, who aligned himself with the MAHA movement. (Taking on monopolies was a central theme of his campaign.) Lahn will face Democrat Rob Sand in November in the marquee race, with Iowa Democrats eager to win the governor’s mansion for the first time since 2006. Sand, the Iowa state auditor, is the lone Iowa Democrat to hold statewide office; the Prospectprofiled him on Monday.
Democrats hope to win the Senate seat in Iowa as well, and state representative and former Paralympian Josh Turek, Chuck Schumer’s preferred candidate, won the primary on the back of a $10 million investment from VoteVets, which is closely allied with the Democratic leadership.
Overall, progressives had a good night that could end up even better pending the results on the West Coast.
Trump DOJ says he has the right to bulldoze Statue of Liberty, judge strikes down Trump immigration policy, ICE detainees in four states go on hunger strike
Good evening. I’m John Byrne, in for British Chris.
Trump’s acting Attorney General is already hard at work making it harder for Democrats to prosecute Trump and his allies under a future Democratic administration. The Trump DOJ is now defending the president’s ballroom by arguing Trump has the right to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty. A federal judge just issued a ruling striking down one of Trump’s most extreme immigration policies. And migrants locked in ICE detention facilities across the country are going on hunger strikes to protest conditions that include beatings, tear gas, and contaminated water.
Before we get into the news, I need to ask you to help keep Raw America’s independent journalism funded. When I launched Raw Story 22 years ago, I saw firsthand how dogged journalism can lead to the administration’s preferred narrative crumbling. We’re in a similar moment today, and I feel even more confident that Raw America can be the independent voice that holds power accountable at a time when our legacy media outlets are either too scared of losing their access to challenge those in power, or too captured by right-wing billionaires to serve the people.
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Blanche Already Working to Keep Trump Out of Jail
In 2024, Todd Blanche was Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyer, hired to keep his client out of prison. Now he’s running the same Justice Department that once prosecuted his boss, but his goal appears to be the same: keep Trump out of prison.
In a recent NewsNation appearance, host Katie Pavlich asked Blanche about whether a future Democratic administration could go after Trump. Blanche said he’s convinced a Democratic revenge plot against his boss is coming, and that he’s already making preparations.
Blanche referred to the prosecutions against Trump — which were handled by special counsel Jack Smith — as “weaponization” of the DOJ, rather than an attempt to honestly prosecute an attempted coup and the mishandling of classified documents. Most notably, he said he’s already putting “roadblocks” in place, so Trump is never prosecuted again.
The acting attorney general’s remarks came after Illinois Governor JB Pritzker suggested that a future Democratic administration should pursue criminal cases against Trump officials who broke laws. That kind of talk has sent MAGA world into full panic mode.
Blanche became acting AG in April after Trump pushed out Pam Bondi. Bondi was accused of bungling the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files while failing to deliver the prosecutions of Trump’s political enemies that the president wanted. Blanche stepped in and quickly moved to revive investigations into Trump adversaries like New York Attorey General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
This week, Trump announced he’ll nominate Blanche to the job permanently. Blanche called it “the honor of a lifetime.”
We’re watchin the complete transformation of the DOJ into a shield for one man. Blanche is going far beyond law enforcement and explicitly working to preempt accountability before the process even starts.
DOJ Argues Trump Has Absolute Right to Tear Down Statue of Liberty if He Wants to
The Trump administration’s legal team went to a federal appeals court Friday and made an argument that should stop every American in their tracks.
The case is about Trump’s White House ballroom project, which would take the place of the demolished East Wing. A federal judge tried to halt construction back in March. The appeals court paused that ruling and let construction continue. And now the administration is defending the whole thing with a legal theory that has almost nothing to do with the ballroom itself.
The administration’s lawyers are arguing that once the federal government moves fast enough and spends enough money, courts can’t touch it: even if it’s illegal.
Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, pressed DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth, asking if the same logic applies if the government decided to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and moved too fast for anyone to stop it legally.
Roth said yes.
The DOJ’s position is that because national security is involved, the courts should step back entirely, and if there’s a legal problem, Congress can sort it out later. Roth pointed to the 3 million pounds of steel rebar already installed as evidence the project has crossed the point of no return.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed the lawsuit, arguing the White House grounds are a designated national park and can’t be altered without congressional approval. Their attorney, Tad Heuer, made it simple: “They just don’t want to go to Congress.”
Two of the three appeals court judges on the panel expressed real skepticism about the administration’s position. The third, a Trump appointee, questioned whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue at all.
But the broader legal argument is the thing worth paying attention to. The DOJ is telling the federal courts that speed and scale can immunize presidential action from judicial review. That shows this isn’t about a ballroom, but rather about a president attempting to place himself beyond the reach of the law.
Federal Judge Rules Trump Broke the Law on Immigration
A federal judge handed down a significant ruling Friday, finding that the Trump administration violated the law when it froze immigration applications for people from 39 different countries.
The policy, implemented by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services starting last November, placed a hold on processing asylum requests, work permits, green cards and citizenship applications for immigrants from countries subject to Trump’s travel bans. Those countries span Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
Chief District Judge John McConnell from the District of Rhode Island, an Obama appointee, ruled that the policy was unlawful from the start.
He wrote that USCIS “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo.” He pointed out that the people affected hadn’t done anything wrong, followed the rules, went through the legal process and were still left waiting anyway, “for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate.”
“The rule of law has to apply to everyone equally,” he added.
The lawsuit that led to this ruling was filed back in March by immigrant service organizations and labor unions. They argued that the administration had essentially decided to bypass the immigration system that Congress created and USCIS is legally required to administer. Judge McConnell agreed.
Murad Awawdeh, the president of the New York Immigration Coalition, called the ruling a reaffirmation of what advocates had been arguing all along: that the administration acted against both the rule of law and existing law itself, and that freezing applications based solely on a person’s country of birth is exactly the kind of thing the courts were meant to stop.
Immigrant Launch Hunger Strikes at ICE Detention Centers Nationwide
Hundreds of migrants held in ICE detention facilities in at least four states have launched hunger strikes to protest the conditions inside.
At Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, roughly 300 detainees are taking part in an ongoing hunger and labor strike. The facility is run by private prison company GEO Group under a 15-year contract with ICE. Outside the building, there have been daily protests. Inside, families say their relatives are being beaten and tear gassed by guards.
In Adelanto, California, at least 20 detainees at the Desert View Annex went on hunger strike to draw attention to what they described as substandard conditions, including mold, unsafe drinking water and inadequate medical care.
Last month, hunger strikes broke out at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, which is the largest ICE facility in the Midwest. Detainees are also on a huger strike at Moshannon Valley in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, which is the largest in the Northeast. In Pennsylvania, striking detainees were reportedly placed in solitary confinement.
The GEO Group operates all four facilities.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherill said the state Department of Health tried to conduct a health inspection of Delaney Hall and was denied full access. She’s called for the facility to be shut down, saying the consistent stonewalling “raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide.”
Gabriela Fuentes has been protesting outside Delaney Hall for days. Her husband came to the U.S. from Guatemala on a work visa and told her he’d been beaten and tear gassed inside.
“We’re all human, we’re all people,” she said. “Just because we’re Hispanic does not mean that we need to be treated like this.”
Attorneys and advocates are struggling to even track the full scope of what’s happening. In Pennsylvania, communication lines to affected units were cut after the strike began, leaving families and legal advocates unable to find out what was happening inside. In Michigan, an attorney called for more state oversight, noting that current mechanisms are woefully inadequate.
This is what it looks like when a government refuses to treat human beings with basic dignity.
Raw America is hard at work not only breaking down stories like these, but putting reporters on the ground at the Capitol, breaking exclusive stories the billionaire-owned outlets won’t cover. Our Capitol Hill partner, Joe Galina with Call to Activism, recently interviewed Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in Washington. We’ll be releasing that video this weekend.
We’re also expanding our live interview coverage, speaking to both prominent elected leaders and respected experts offering you inside perspectives on the biggest stories of the day that the Trump regime wants to keep hidden. If you’ve been enjoying Raw America’s independent journalism on a free subscription, now is the time to upgrade to a paying membership. None of this would be possible without you.Subscribe
I’m John Byrne, with Raw America. Thanks for reading. We’ll see you next week.
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