Some big AIPAC news.
Jewish Insider reported that the pro-Israel lobbying group is recalibrating its approach and “will no longer issue endorsements or directly earmark contributions to candidates.”
The move comes just 5 years after AIPAC launched a Super PAC and began endorsing candidates.
The JI article quotes a letter from AIPAC leadership to its member states:
“To win the fight for the future of the country and the U.S.-Israel alliance, we must build a more strategic, consequential, and nimble political operation. We will prioritize increasing direct, organized contributions from individual Americans to candidates — expanding upon our current efforts — and maximizing the emerging political fundraising tools. Endorsements, direct PAC contributions, and earmarking will no longer be part of our approach so we can expand individual giving and utilize new tools to help our friends win.”
This word salad can’t obscure the obvious. AIPAC has grown deeply unpopular in recent years, and the group’s support is actually hurting candidates, so it can’t afford to publicly endorse candidates any longer. The group spent millions on the primaries and still suffered multiple losses.
“What’s different from 2024 isn’t AIPAC’s capacity,” explains a report from the campaign finance website Inside Political Money. “It’s the opposition. Until 2026, AIPAC contested Democratic primaries without organized counter-PAC opposition or a revolt among the party’s voters. This year’s results increasingly suggest that AIPAC’s involvement can itself become part of the argument against the candidate it is trying to help.”
AIPAC says it will continue to rely on its United Democracy Project super PAC, but it’s urging members to donate directly to candidates. In other words, AIPAC’s involvement must be more secretive.
On the same day that the group announced its new strategy, the New York Times reported that the organization is planning to dump another $9 million on the Michigan Senate race. Of course, this isn’t being donated directly; it’s being funneled through something called the Great Lakes Conservatives Fund, a PAC that is exclusively focused on electing GOP candidate Mike Rogers.
AIPAC made the donation after the October 14 deadline, which means that the public wasn’t supposed to learn about it until after the election, but two people aware of the move informed the paper anonymously.
Rogers has consistently attacked Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed over his criticisms of the U.S.-Israel relationship. In the race’s final debate, Rogers claimed that Jewish people were fearful of an El-Sayed victory.
“Jewish Democrats who are afraid for their children when their daughters can’t wear their Star of David walking across Michigan’s campus, these are real,” he told the crowd. “My opponent’s rhetoric, his vitriol, is having consequences.”
Dem presidential contenders remain committed to Israel
“The 2028 Presidential ‘Shadow Primary’ Descends on the Midterms,” declares a New York Times headline.
“In the final stage of this year’s midterms, prospective presidential candidates are parachuting into battleground states to rally support for candidates on the ballot this fall, road-test their stump speeches, and introduce themselves to voters and activists,” the paper explains.
Atop the list sits California Governor Gavin Newsom, who recently said that U.S. military aid to Israel should be conditioned.
Newsom provided no details about what should be conditioned or what criteria should be applied in conditioning. He also made the usual distinction about “defensive” systems like the Iron Dome and framed the issue as one specific to the current Israeli government.
“Bibi Netanyahu has done a remarkable job of really isolating himself from the rest of the world and increasingly from the American people…the damage he’s done is incalculable,” he told the conservative Washington Examiner.
The door is purposely left open here. Maybe Netanyahu loses the election, and the subject of military aid need not be broached.
You’ll recall that earlier this year, Newsom said military support for Israel should be reconsidered because it looked like an apartheid state. Days later, he publicly recanted the comments and expressed regret about his phrasing.
“That’s a word you may hear others use,” he explained.
Newsom certainly isn’t alone, as a number of potential 2028 Democratic contenders refuse to break from Israel.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who ran for the nomination in 2020 and has spent the past month campaigning with Democratic candidates, recently told Fox News, “Iran is our enemy, Israel is not. They’re an ally.”
In a televised debate with GOP challenger Rep. Mike Collins, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) refused to refer to Israel actions as a genocide.
“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group,” said Ossoff, responding to a question from the moderator on the issue. “There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.
“I care deeply about the security of the Israeli people, among whom are members of my family,” he added. “I also care about innocent Palestinian life and make no apology for my votes.”
This all feels completely disconnected from reality, even by the standards of U.S. politics. Every poll on the subject shows that support for Israel is crumbling and that voters want to see action on that front. The latest survey from IMEU shows that the majority of likely voters in six “swing states” support Senate measures to block the sale of bombs to Israel.
Odds & Ends
- Mondoweiss: Can AIPAC stop an El-Sayed victory in Michigan?
- Mondoweiss: Inside the fight to stop Israel-bound weapons at the East Coast’s biggest port
- New York Times: U.S. and Israel Draw Up Plans for Renewed Strikes on Iran After Elections
- Responsible Statecraft: Most voters in key states want to block US arms transfers to Israel
- The Intercept: Dems Have an Opportunity to Force an End to the Iran War. Will They Take It?
- Zeteo: First Draft: Why Is Israel Running TV Ads in Iowa Ahead of the Midterms?
- Counterpunch: Decoding Pro-Israel Buzzwords in a Time of Genocide
- Drop Site: The War Tehran Believes Is Coming
- Al Jazeera: Rashida Tlaib demands arrest of Israeli soldier tied to Hind Rajab killing
- Jewish Currents: Emory Hillel Fired its Rabbi Over Her Fiancé’s Criticism of Israel
- Haaretz: Kushner Shares WSJ Article Urging Israel to Cooperate With Gaza Board of Peace Before Election
- SCOTUSBlog: The Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri cases: an explainer
- Common Dreams: ‘Flat-Out Lying,’ Israel Claims Palestinian Farmers, Brad Lander Entered Restricted Area Before Detention
Re: AIPAC has grown so toxic that it has to shift its electoral strategy
This sort of thing is happening in real life to family members: We Questioned A Lord About Israel: His Reaction Was WILD.
That can’t simply be attributed to “strategy.” I’d have my relative committed and examined to eliminate possible poisoning, something toxic in the environment that triggers these psychotic breaks and episodes of violent tendencies directed toward others.
See: Real-World historical and dramatized accounts, like PBS “The Poison Squad: The American People Had No Idea What They Were Eating” and science fiction/Zombie Apocalypse works The Crazies (1973 / 2010 Remake), Doomwatch (1975 ), Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), Batman Begins (2005), and Kingdom (2019). YMMV
Re: SCOTUSBlog: The Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri cases: an explainer:
“During the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the federal government detained and sought to deport several students and academics because of their support for Palestine. … etc.”
That’s an inadequate way to frame the issue. There was already a specific case addressing U.S. legal professionals whose work involves UN Security Council-referred situations including Darfur and Libya, Gabor Rona and Lisa Davis v. Donald J. Trump et al. On July 30, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge Jesse M. Furman granted plaintiffs a permanent injunction on the ground that the Executive Order violates their First Amendment rights. The court held that the Executive Order unlawfully imposes a content-based regulation of their speech-based activities that cannot survive strict scrutiny.
The Judges’ Trial (officially United States of America v. Josef Altstötter, et al.) was held before a U.S.-only military court that found 10 German Judges and officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice guilty. In 1945 the US government already established the first US criminal court with an international mandate that made it both a war crime and crime against humanity to deport citizens or stateless refugees across an international border.
That prohibition was first codified in the US Lieber Code, the Hague Convention, and in the Geneva Conventions. It was universally ratified and declared a war crime binding on any party that engaged in an armed conflict or a crime against humanity in peacetime with no requirement for a nexus to a conflict. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright.voted in favor of establishing both the Yugoslav and Rwandan international criminal tribunals on that basis.
US Judge Theodor Meron presided over the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Slobodan Milošević was prosecuted for deportation as a crime against humanity. The prosecution and Appeals Chamber ruled that included both cross-border expulsions and forced internal displacement, regardless of recognition by other parties or UN membership.
US UN Ambassador Anne W. Patterson did not veto the Security Council referral of the Darfur, Sudan situation to the ICC. US UN Ambassador Susan Rice voted in favor of the Security Council referral of the Libya situation to the ICC. Rubio and Trump can’t sanction any of them.
In other Odds and Ends:
After Bennet’s security was doubled as he faces death threats, and attack plots before the election, President Herzog claimed “Elections are not civil wars” [but still didn’t explain the need to imprison tens of thousands employing The Defence (Emergency) Regulations (1945) and the Transition Act (1948); or murdering citizens using the Hannibal Directive]. He told the IDF and Shin Bet chiefs, as well as Eisenkot “Words Kill” at a ceremony marking 31 years since the 1995 assassination of Rabin. Netanyahu did not attend.
On Wednesday, the Yisrael Beytenu party said its chairman Avigdor Liberman had received a series of death threats. They announced it would not prevent them from telling the truth [without explaining what has always prevented them from telling the truth before]. Billboards for The Democrats party chairman Yair Golan were vandalized. The words, “Wanted dead or alive,” were scrawled across Golan’s face, alongside graffiti accusing him of being “a vile murderer of Jews,” and the letters “KKK.”
The Democrats filed a petition at the High Court of Justice last month, asking for an interim order requiring the Shin Bet and the government to provide state security for Golan, citing what it described as dozens of threats against him. Note: Judicial reforms have prevented the High Court from obtaining that sort of protection for itself. The High Court later asked Golan to withdraw his petition, saying it “cannot intervene in professional security matters handled by the Shin Bet.”