Politics
DNC punts on the big Israel questions
Democrats are, once again, punting on what to do about Israel.
DNC members on Thursday rejected a symbolic resolution to limit the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and dark-money corporate groups in Democratic primaries — an unsurprising result that is nevertheless a blow to those within the party who have been infuriated by the pro-Israel group’s recent interventions.
They also punted on a pair of sweeping resolutions concerning conflicts in the Middle East that pushed the party to support conditioning military aid to Israel. The measures were referred to the party’s nascent Middle East Working Group, which is meeting for the fourth time this week and has been slow to coalesce around an agenda.
While the resolutions were not expected to pass, the outcomes reflect a party establishment still grappling with how to respond to the increasingly thorny politics around Israel and AIPAC — and their base’s sharp turn away from the longtime U.S. ally.
The AIPAC resolution called for the DNC to condemn “the growing influence of dark money” in Democratic elections, including from the pro-Israel group that has pumped tens of millions of dollars into recent primaries. Several members of the DNC’s resolutions committee said they voted it down because they had passed a resolution earlier in their meeting broadly condemning the influence of dark money in the midterms without calling out individual groups.
Florida Democrat Allison Minnerly, who introduced the AIPAC resolution, argued there’s “merit to calling out different PACs with intention.” She said that “Democrats overwhelmingly want a party that stands for human rights and against increased conflict in the Middle East.”
The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.
Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?
If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.
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