Politics

The DNC is meeting — and Israel is at the forefront once again

Published

2 months ago

April 9, 2026

Democrats’ internal feud over Israel is rearing its head on the party’s biggest stage — again.

Critics of Israel’s military actions and the pro-Israel lobby’s interference in recent Democratic primaries are setting up thorny test votes at the Democratic National Committee’s spring meeting in New Orleans on Thursday, where members will debate resolutions recognizing a Palestinian state, conditioning military aid to Israel and condemning the “growing influence” of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other dark-money groups.

The measures before the DNC’s resolutions committee are unlikely to pass and are nonbinding even if they do. But they are the latest public clash that will pit more pro-Israel party brass against a base whose views on Israel have turned sharply negative and progressive activists who are increasingly incensed by the glut of special-interest spending in Democratic primaries that is often directed against their candidates.

In a sign of the heightened sensitivity around the politics of Israel, one DNC member who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations said they had received direct calls about the resolutions from two presidential aspirants who would have to answer for the DNC’s positions on Israel and AIPAC if they run. The resolutions are also highlighting sharp divisions within the task force DNC Chair Ken Martin established last year to set the party’s strategy on the Middle East — a committee that remains in early stages and is far from formalizing an agenda.

James Zogby — a longtime DNC member and critic of Israel who is president of the Arab American Institute and who sits on Martin’s Middle East Working Group — said the party needs to wake up to voters’ shifting views on Israel.

“Public opinion has shifted. Democrats have clearly shifted. Candidates have shifted. And we’re not where we were five years ago even,” Zogby said. “We have to avoid the mistakes that we’ve been making, which simply show us to be unwilling to accept or unable to accept the political realities.”

A Pew Research survey released this week showed 80 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents hold unfavorable views of Israel, up from 69 percent last year and 53 percent in 2022. A NBC News poll conducted in late February and early March, meanwhile, found that 57 percent of Democrats view Israel negatively, a dramatic change from when just 35 percent held a negative view of the country after Hamas attacked it on Oct. 7, 2023.

“The Democratic Party, time and time again, is presented with absolutely winning issues,” said Allison Minnerly, a DNC member from Florida who submitted the resolution criticizing AIPAC and corporate-aligned spending, and who unsuccessfully pushed another last year calling for an arms embargo on Israel. “People 1) hate corporate money and 2) do not want to be involved in further conflict in the Middle East.”

But Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which is against the current measures, said the increasing critiques of the Israeli government by prominent elected officials “doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a wholesale shift in support for Israel’s security or its right to exist as a Jewish state.” Soifer, a former Kamala Harris adviser whose group has opposed similar efforts before the DNC in the past, cast the latest batch of foreign-policy resolutions as a “distraction” for a party that’s showing early success in the midterms by honing in on domestic issues.

The DNC and a spokesperson for AIPAC declined to comment.

Democrats have been here before. The party conducted a 2024 autopsy that found its approach to Gaza hurt the top of the ticket — then decided not to release it publicly.

At the party’s meeting in Minneapolis last summer, Minnerly’s weapons ban failed, while Martin yanked his measure calling for “unrestricted” aid to Gaza and a two-state solution after it passed in favor of creating the task force to advance “solutions” to the party’s divide.

The Middle East Working Group is slated for its fourth meeting this week in New Orleans. Some members lamented to Blue Light News that the group lacked structure and any real institutional power. And they disagree on how best to approach their mission.

Joe Salas, a member of the working group from California, believes that Gaza was “one of the things that lost us the White House” in 2024 and is urging the party to adjust its response. He put forward the resolution recognizing the “State of Palestine” and pausing or conditioning weapons transfers to “any military units credibly implicated in violations of international humanitarian law or obstruction of humanitarian assistance,” telling Blue Light News he hoped it would serve as a guidepost for the task force.

But Andrew Lachman, another task force member and the past president of the California Jewish Democrats, said he doesn’t want to see members of the group trying to “undermine the work of the commission” by pushing catchall resolutions that could bigfoot its efforts.

“It would be much better for us to try to find ways for us to work together as a party, to stand together against these wars, than engaging in this kind of approach,” he said.

The resolutions have also set off a fresh round of lobbying among interest groups. IMEU Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian group, sent members a memo on Wednesday urging them to pass the measures.

“The signs are growing that the gap between Democratic leadership and their voters on this issue will be a liability in 2026 unless serious action is taken,” the group warned in its memo, a copy of which was shared with Blue Light News.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

7 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”